Second Fleet (Australia)

The Second Fleet is the name of the second fleet of ships sent with settlers, convicts and supplies to colony at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson, Australia. The fleet comprised six ships: one Royal Navy escort, four convict ships, and a supply ship.

The ships were intended to sail to Australia together, arriving at Sydney Cove in 1789. However the escort was disabled en route and failed to make the destination, and one convict ship which was delayed arrived two months after the other ships.

Unlike the preceding First Fleet, where great efforts were taken to ensure the health of the convicts, the Second Fleet was contracted to private businesses who kept the convicts in horrific conditions. Upon arrival the sickly convicts were a drain on the already struggling colony.

Origins and history
The Lady Juliana sailed before the other convict ships and is not always counted as a member of the Second Fleet. The storeship Justinian did not sail with the convict ships and arrived before them. HMS Guardian set out before the convict ships but struck ice after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, returned to southern Africa and was wrecked on the coast.

The Surprize, Neptune and Scarborough were contracted from the firm "Camden, Calvert & King" who undertook to transport, clothe and feed the convicts for a flat fee of £17 7s. 6d per head, whether they landed alive or not. This firm had previously been involved in transporting slaves to North America. The only agents of the Crown in the crew were the naval agent, Lieutenant John Shapcote, and the Captain of the Guard, all other crew were supplied by the firm.

They left England on 19 January 1790, with 1,006 convicts (928 male and 78 female) on board. They made only one stop on the way, at the Cape of Good Hope. Here 20 male convicts, survivors from Guardian, were taken on board. The three vessels made a faster trip than the First Fleet, arriving at Port Jackson in the last week of June 1790, three weeks after Lady Juliana, and one week after the storeship Justinian.

The passage was relatively fast, but the mortality rate was the highest in the history of transportation to Australia. Of the 1,026 convicts embarked, 267 (256 men and 11 women) died during the voyage (26%). On Neptune they were deliberately starved, kept heavily ironed, and frequently refused access to the deck. Scurvy could not be checked. On Scarborough, rations were not deliberately withheld, but a reported mutiny attempt led to the convicts being closely confined below decks.

Captain William Hill, commander of the guard, afterwards wrote a strong criticism of the ships' masters stating that “the more they can withhold from the unhappy wretches the more provisions they have to dispose of at a foreign market, and the earlier in the voyage they die, the longer they can draw the deceased's allowance to themselves”.

Arrival at Port Jackson
On arrival at Port Jackson, half naked convicts were lying without bedding, too ill to move. Those unable to walk were slung over the side. All were covered with lice. At least 486 sick were landed (47% of those embarked). The remainder were described as “lean and emaciated” and exhibiting “more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed in this country”.

Among the arrivals on the Second Fleet were D'Arcy Wentworth and his convict mistress Catherine Crowley, on Neptune, and John Macarthur, then a young lieutenant in the New South Wales Corps, and his wife Elizabeth, on Scarborough. Macarthur's eldest son, Edward Macarthur, who accompanied his parents on the Neptune and Scarborough, is believed to be the only person who sailed in the Second Fleet of whom we have a photograph as well as being the last survivor of the voyage (see reference below).

When news of the horrors of the Second Fleet reached England, both public and official opinion was shocked. An enquiry was held but no attempt was made to arrest Donald Traill, master of Neptune and described as a demented sadist, or bring a public prosecution against him, the other masters, or the firm of contractors. They had already been contracted by the government to prepare the Third Fleet for sailing to Port Jackson in 1791.

Traill and his Chief Mate William Ellerington were privately prosecuted for the murder of an un-named convict, seaman Andrew Anderson and John Joseph, cook. But, after a trial lasting three hours before Sir James Marriott in the Admiralty Court, the jury acquitted both men on all charges "without troubling the Judge to sum up the evidence".

External sources

 * Bateson, Charles, The Convict Ships, 1787-1868, Sydney, 1974. ISBN 0-85174-195-9
 * French, Jenny, Australia's Second Fleet - 1790, IFHAA, 2007
 * Hughes, Robert, The Fatal Shore, London, Pan, 1988 ISBN 0-394-75366-6
 * Rees, Siân, The Floating Brothel, Hodder, Sydney, 2001. ISBN 0-7868-8674-9
 * A. J. Hill, 'Macarthur, Sir Edward (1789 - 1872)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 5, Melbourne University Press, 1974, pp 122–123.
 * Admiralty Proceedings on the Sessions held 7 and 8 June 1792 before Sir James Marriott and others, Trials of Kimber, Traill, Ellerington and Hindmarch for murder and Berry and Slack for piracy, London 1792
 * Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus, Marcus Buford Rediker, Marcus Rediker (eds.), Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, chapter 6 by Emma Christopher, “Slave Traders, Convict Transportation, and the Abolitionists”.