Unbounded by Botany Bay: how Captain Phillip found his harbour
PART 5: Confronted by the limitations of Botany Bay, the First Fleet leader rowed north and discovered a body of water beyond his dreams.
He’s heard songs about these strangers. He once heard an Eora elder speak of the muri nowie, that spectacular enlarged wood canoe that carried James Cook and a vessel of white-skinned ghosts into this bay almost two decades ago. Those ghosts rowed ashore. They wrote notes in their books. They fired strange and powerful weapons, their geerubber, their fire sticks. And they sailed away. His people gave a name to those strangers. They were berewalgal. Now the berewalgal are back.
He doesn’t know it yet but the fleet of 11 ships he sees parting the morning mist of Botany Bay mean life for him and his family will never be the same again. But Joseph Banks was wrong about this man. Banks suggested the Eora were cowardly. He predicted the coastal inhabitants of Botany Bay would meekly retire from Arthur Phillip and his approaching marines of the First Fleet but this man has a warrior spirit that stretches back millennia to a time when the first Australians trudged across a land bridge that once stretched 1600km to connect Australia to New Guinea; a survival instinct as strong and indomitable as the 780 convicts desperate to see daylight beneath the slow-moving prison transports inching closer to this wondrous and wide continent.
The men aboard Supply spot this Eora man standing on the shore of the northern entrance to Botany Bay. There are other native men standing beside him and these men raise their arms and the British sailors are too distant from the shore to tell if they are being waved at or warned away.
On the deck of the prison ship, Charlotte, marine officer Watkin Tench breathes the southern air deep and takes a moment to acknowledge the end of a 17,000-mile odyssey.
“Ithaca itself was scarcely more longed for by Ulysses than Botany Bay by the adventurers who had traversed so many thousand miles to take possession of it,” he writes.
“Heavily in clouds came on the day which ushered in our arrival. To us it was a great, an important, day, though I hope the foundation, not the fall, of an empire will be dated from it.”
Arthur Phillip draws on the knowledge of his hallowed predecessor, James Cook, and anchors close to where the great Pacific discoverer and his men of the Endeavour had located a stream of fresh water.
The fleet’s judge advocate, David Collins, sailing aboard the Sirius, can’t help but reflect on the precision and planning of a captain for whom he has found a deep respect over “eight months and one week” at sea.
“A voyage which, before it was undertaken, the mind hardly dared venture to contemplate, and on which it was impossible to reflect without some apprehensions as to its termination,” he writes. “In the above space of time we had sailed 5021 leagues; had touched at the American and African continents … without meeting any accident in a fleet of eleven sail, nine of which were merchantmen that had never before sailed in that distant and imperfectly explored ocean: and when it is considered that there was on board a large body of convicts, many of whom were embarked in a very sickly state, we might be deemed peculiarly fortunate, that of the whole number of all descriptions of persons coming to form the new settlement, only thirty-two had died since their leaving England … although previous to our departure it was generally conjectured that before we should have been a month at sea one of the transports would have been converted into a hospital ship.”
The exact location of where Arthur Phillip first sets foot on Australian soil will be debated for centuries to come. Some will say he walks on to the beach at Yarra Bay, on the northern side of Botany Bay, now part of the suburb of Phillip Bay, named in the intrepid captain’s honour. Others will say his feet first touch the beach at Congwong Bay, east of Yarra Bay. James Callam, surgeon on the Supply, can see the natives hollering from the shore. They’re running along the beach, children among them. The older men raise wood spears spiked with fish bone.
“Seven of them came opposite to the ship, brandishing their implements of war,” Callam writes. “Throwing their bodies in threatening postures, called out in harsh notes, ‘Warraw! Warraw! Warraw’!”
Second lieutenant Philip Gidley King and Lieutenant William Dawes row a small boat to shore with Captain Phillip.
‘Botany Bay did not afford shelter to ships from the easterly winds’
The fleet leader already suspects this bay is not suitable for the settlement he sees in his head. His near-50-year-old sailor bones tell him so. The blowy wind against his hat tells him so. But for now he’ll keep his burdens where he keeps his dreams, to himself alone.
“We landed near a party of the natives which we saw from the vessel sitting in a group, but on our approach they went away,” King writes. “We found this side of the Bay covered with small trees and a brush underwood which was not more than 60 yards wide and behind it was an extensive marsh or swamp. The soil was nothing but sand, with long grass growing between the trees, we went into the boats and rowed along this (the north side) of the bay to look for the stream of fresh water which Capt. Cook describes, but not finding any, we returned to the shore abreast of the Supply, where we observed a number of the natives had assembled together.
“The boats were put on shore near where we saw two canoes were lying, on which the natives (who before were sitting down) got up and called to us in a very menacing and vociferous tone of voice, at the same time poising their spears or canoes as if intending to throw them at us.”
Orders from King George III are firm in Phillip’s mind. Foundational instructions to build a home with, ideally in harmony and consultation with the Eora. “Conciliate their affections.” “Live in amity and kindness with them.”
Punish anyone who should “wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations”.
“The Governor showed them some beads and ordered a man to fasten them to the stern of one of the canoes and on our rowing off the shore they fetched the beads,” writes King.
“We then made signs to them for water to drink, on which they pointed round the point on which they stood. On landing, they directed us, by pointing, to a very good stream of fresh water. The Governor advanced toward them alone and unarmed.
“An old man walked to meet him but would not go near enough to receive the beads which the Governor held out for him, but seemed very desirous of having them and made signs for them to be laid on the ground, which was done.
“He (the native) advanced with fear and trembling and, at the same time, solicitous that we should not think he was alarmed. He took the beads up but did not express any sensation of pleasure or curiosity. By degrees he as well as some of the rest came so near as to receive looking glasses and seemed astonished at our clothing, they being all quite naked. We were soon after very great with the old man.”
Meaningful connection. Peaceful connection. Phillip wants to know what the old man knows. About food. About water. About the dangers of the land and its riches. But Botany Bay is not the fertile paradise Cook’s and Banks’s vivid journals had planted in his mind.
“I began to examine the bay as soon as we anchored, and found that, though extensive, it did not afford shelter to ships from the easterly winds,” he writes. “The greater part of the bay being so shallow that ships of even a moderate draught of water are obliged to anchor with the entrance of the bay open, and are exposed to a heavy sea that rolls in when it blows hard from the eastward. Several small runs of fresh water were found in different parts of the bay, but I did not see any situation of which there was not some strong objection.”
Later, marine officer Watkin Tench briefly disembarks the transport Charlotte to explore the shore with a small group that includes the seven-year-old son of a fellow marine. Within five minutes on land, the group is approached by Eora locals.
“The child seemed to attract their attention very much, for they frequently pointed to him and spoke to each other,” writes Tench. “And as he was not frightened I advanced with him towards them, at the same time baring his bosom and showing the whiteness of the skin. On the clothes being removed they gave a loud exclamation and one of the party, an old man with a long beard, hideously ugly, came close to us. I bade my little charge not to be afraid and introduced him to the acquaintance of this uncouth personage.
“The Indian, with great gentleness, laid his hand on the child’s hat and afterwards felt his clothes, muttering to himself all the while. I found it necessary, however, by this time to send away the child, as such a close connection rather alarmed him, and in this, as the conclusion verified, I gave no offence to the old gentleman. Indeed it was but putting ourselves on a par with them, as I had observed from the first that some youths of their own, though considerably older than the one with us, were kept back by the grown people.”
Meanwhile, relentlessly priggish and saccharine officer Ralph Clark aboard the Friendship hears word of the peaceful interactions between Phillip and the Eora. “The Supply boat has been on shore and often had intercourse with the natives who they say are very friendly, but I will not trust them,” he writes to his beloved Betsey Alicia. “Thanks to my good and gracious God for his kindness to your Ralph in preserving me in health and welfare and from the dangers of the sea and has brought me safe to the place of our destination. Oh, my beloved Betsey, return thanks and prayers to him for his kindness to me and I hope that he will befriend me still.
“I cannot say from the appearance of the shore that I will like it. The only thing I ask is that it may be a healthy place.”
On another small boat exploration of the bay, officer Philip Gidley King has a remarkable interaction where the Eora locals appear to find humour in his British properness.
“A number of women and children were sitting all in puris naturalibus,” he writes. “But it is to be observed that the heel of the right foot answers the end of a fig-leaf when in this position. The natives round the boat made signs for us to go to them and made us understand their persons were at our service, this mark of their hospitality I declined but showed a handkerchief which I offered to one of the women. Pointing her out she immediately laid her child down and came alongside of the boat, when I applied the handkerchief where decency seemed to demand it. The natives on the shore and round the boat set up another very great shout and my female visitor retired.”
‘Phillip had the satisfaction to find one of the finest harbours in the world’
On Monday morning, January 21, Arthur Phillip departs Botany Bay with a scouting party, sailing 12km north in search of a more suitable settlement site. He’s placing his own fragile hope and the success of this grand social experiment in a small passage he’s read so many times in James Cook’s Endeavour journals that he could say it by heart.
“Having seen everything this place afforded we at day light in the morning weighed a light breeze,” Cook wrote of departing Botany Bay.
“Steered along the shore NNE and at noon we were by observation … about two or three miles from the land and abreast of a bay or harbour wherein there appeared to be safe anchorage which I called Port Jackson … I had almost forgot to mention that it is high water in this bay at the full and change of the moon at about eight o’clock and rises and falls upon a perpendicular about 4 or 5 feet.”
Phillip’s scouting party of three small boats reaches Port Jackson with enough light in the day left to gaze upon the shimmering wonders beyond its entrance.
Newspapers back home will later tell the world about this glorious moment, quoting from the official British government reports of how “all regret arising from the former disappointments was at once obliterated; and Governor Phillip had the satisfaction to find one of the finest harbours in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line might ride in perfect security”.
It’s a moment in time worth slowing down for. Three small boats gently rowing in and out of the many different coves of this great body of deep blue water, all 55sq km of it, where one day a grand white opera house will sparkle in the setting sun that will bounce off its curved exterior shaped like the blowing sails that carried these foolhardy voyagers to this breathtaking land. Native birds overhead.
Hawks and herons and crows. Cockatoos in the trees on shore, even the odd emu at the water’s edge. Marines and sailors so awed by the place the best tribute they can give it is their silence.
In one cove in the northern reaches of the harbour, a party of indigenous men wade into the water and approach Phillip’s boat. They are unarmed but also unafraid. Hard men, muscular and fit. An adjective immediately enters Phillip’s mind: “Manly.” He dubs this inlet Manly Cove.
“Then coming on dark we landed on a beach on the south side and there pitched our tents for the night,” writes the dashing American adventurer Jacob Nagle, one of Phillip’s oarsmen. “This place was called Camp Cove. The marines were put on their posts and the sailors were employed variously, some getting out the cooking utensils, some making fires.”
Conscious of the 1400 starved and frustrated souls still languishing in the fleet ships anchored in Botany Bay, Phillip rows some 6km further into Port Jackson the next morning and spots what Nagle calls “a run of fresh water running down into the centre of the cove”.
The three small boats move cautiously to the shoreline of a cove that Phillip quickly considers so pristine and mercifully suitable for settlement he names it after the man he’s been writing letters to for the past three years, the driving force behind Phillip’s bold mission: Thomas Townshend — Lord Sydney.
While Phillip and his officers explore the edge of the cove, Nagle keeps watch on the boats, passing his time by casting a fishing line into the still waters before him. Phillip returns to the boats some time later — buoyed by his discovery of his new home for the next four years — and is joyfully taken by the fulsome black bream resting in Nagle’s boat. He turns to the Yank sailor who has found himself an unlikely feature player in the story of modern Australia’s birth. Phillip smiles: “You are the first white man to catch a fish in Sydney Cove.”
“The boat returned on the evening of the 23rd with such an account of the harbour and advantages attending the place that it was determined the evacuation of Botany Bay should commence the next morning,” writes marine Watkin Tench. “In consequence of this decision, the few seamen and marines who had been landed from the squadron were instantly re-embarked, and every preparation made to bid adieu to a port which had so long been the subject of our conversation.”
The fleet readies to set sail for Sydney Cove the following morning, January 24, but Phillip wakes at first light to a destructive high wind pushing walls of water toward his ships.
He postpones the fleet’s laboured exit from Botany Bay to January 25. But what the fleet rises at first light to see beyond their anchorage on this morning defies belief.
‘Confounded by a thousand ideas which arose in my mind in an instant’
The sun has barely risen and Captain Watkin Tench is still getting dressed when an excitable sergeant bursts into his cabin, breathless and uneasy, speaking of impossible visions seen from the deck of their vessel. “At first I only laughed, but knowing the man who spoke to me to be of great veracity, and hearing him repeat his information, I flew upon deck.”
Tench finds other marines on deck looking out to sea. A chilling sailor’s call echoes across the ship.
“Another sail!”
Tench pierces his eyes.
“Confounded by a thousand ideas which arose in my mind in an instant,” he writes. “I sprang upon the barricado and plainly descried two ships of considerable size standing in for the mouth of the bay.”
Tench has imagination enough to consider the wildest possibilities. Are these the ghost ships the first Australians speak of around fires along New Holland’s east coast? Are they the bloodthirsty pirates of the Pacific? Are they monster ships sent from the vengeful belly of mighty Neptune? Tench looks harder at the vision. No, it’s something far more troubling than pirates and monsters. It’s the French.
The First Fleet: A Graphic Journal concludes in Friday’s The Australian
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PART 1: Told through the eyes of Australia’s youngest convict, eight-year-old John Hudson, this is the First Fleet as you’ve never seen it.
PART 2: The fleet sets sail from England, a young child, would-be mutineers and a convict planning escape aboard.
PART 3: Becalmed on stifling oceans, officers record their low opinions of the female convicts and order hellish punishments for four of them.
PART 4: After a hellish, storm-tossed voyage, Arthur Phillip brings his ships into Botany Bay.
PART 6: Arthur Phillip had a brilliantly simple idea for turning the colony from a prison to a community.
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