Lady Penrhyn (ship)

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.

Voyage to Australia
Lady Penrhyn was a ship of 333 tons, built on the River Thames in 1786. Her Master, William Compton Sever, was part-owner. John Turnpenny Altree was surgeon to the convicts, and Arthur Bowes Smyth was surgeon to the ship. She left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, carrying 101 female convicts, and arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia, on 26 January 1788. She had been chartered by the British East India Company, and left Port Jackson on 5 May 1788 to sail to China for a cargo of tea. She arrived back in England in mid August 1789. Lady Penrhyn was part-owned 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. Curtis was affectionately known as 'Billy Biscuit' because of his family links to sea-biscuit manufacture. Curtis' speech about reading, 'riting and 'rithmatic', belied his literacy level, which did not have a lot to do with his success in life.

The list of stores unloaded from the 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.