Lady Penrhyn (1786 ship)

The Lady Penrhyn convict transport ship
History
Great Britain
Name	Lady Penrhyn
Launched	1786, River Thames
General characteristics
Tons burthen	333
Sail plan	Ship rig

Lady Penrhyn was a First Fleet convict transport. She left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, carrying 101 female convicts, and arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia, on 26 January 1788. On her return voyage she was the first Euopean vessel to sight the Kermadec Islands and Penrhyn Atoll in the Cook Islands.

Construction and ownership

Lady Penrhyn was a ship of 333 tons, built on the River Thames in 1786. She was part owned by William Compton Sever - who served as ship's master on her voyage to Australia - and by London alderman and sea-biscuit manufacturer William Curtis. Curtis, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1795–6, sent a regular tea ship to China.

Voyage to Australia

The ship left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, carrying 101 female convicts, and arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia, on 26 January 1788. John Turnpenny Altree was surgeon to the convicts, and Arthur Bowes Smyth was surgeon to the ship.

The list of stores unloaded from Lady Penrhyn on 25 March 1788 at Port Jackson has been widely quoted in books on the First Fleet. In Sydney Cove 1788 by John Cobley the amount of rice unloaded is given as 8 bram. This amount has been repeated in various books on the First Fleet. Bram, however, is not a unit of measurement and the original log entry lists the amount of rice as 8 barrels.

Lady Penrhyn carried the first horses that came to Australia, which it is thought to have consisted of one stallion, one colt, three mares and two fillies from Cape Town, South Africa.

Return voyage

In an attempt to put into execution one of the reasons given for founding the Botany Bay colony, to use the colony as a base to develop the fur trade of the northwest coast of America and for trade with China, Korea and Japan, Lady Penrhyn was under a contract with George Mackenzie McCaulay, an alderman of the City of London, to go to the "North West Coast of America to Trade for furrs & after that to proceed to China & barter the Furrs &ca for Teas or other such Goods..." Her owners had obtained a license to sail to the northwest coast from the South Sea Company, which still maintained its ancient monopoly rights over British trade to the eastern Pacific.

Lady Penrhyn departed Sydney Cove on 5 May 1788, and sailed north into the South Pacific. On 31 May, the Kermadec Islands were sighted—Macauley Island was named after McCaulay and Curtis Island was named after William Curtis. The poor condition of the ship and sickness among her crew compelled Lady Penrhyn to turn back from this voyage when she had gone only as far as Tahiti, where the crew recovered and the ship was repaired. She then visited and named Penrhyn Island—the atoll of Tongareva in the Cook Islands—on 8 August, arriving at Macao on 19 October 1788, then proceeding upriver to Canton (now Guangzhou) to take on a cargo of tea.

She arrived back in England in mid August 1789.

See also

• First Fleet
• Journals of the First Fleet

References

• Hīroa, Te Rangi (Peter. H. Buck) (1953). Explorers of the Pacific: European and American Discoveries in Polynesia. Honolulu, Hawaii: Bernice P. Bishop Museum. OCLC 646912113. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Arthur Bowes Smyth, "A Voyage to Botany Bay & Oteheite, 1787, by A.B.S. Surgeon, Lady Penrhyn", National Library of Australia MS 4568. Cf. G. Fidlon and R.J. Ryan (eds.), The Journal of Arthur Bowes Smyth: Surgeon, Lady Penrhyn, 1787-1789, Sydney, Australian Documents Library, 1979, p.86.

Further reading

• Gillen, Mollie, The Founders of Australia: a biographical dictionary of the First Fleet, Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1989.
• Bateson, Charles, The Convict Ships, 1787–1868, Sydney, 1974.
• Arthur Bowes Smythe's journal aboard the Lady Penrhyn - State Library of NSW
• "Lady Penrhyn". First Fleet Fellowship Victoria Inc. Retrieved 2012-02-22.