Australia’s Surprising Origin As A Prison At The Edge Of The World
This day in history
On this day in history, January 18th, 1788, the first ships of a British convict convoy landed at Botany Bay, Australia. The convoy was dubbed The First Fleet and had departed from Portsmouth, England almost a year earlier. The convoy was made up of eleven ships. Two Royal Navy vessels, six convict transports and three cargo ships filled with provisions.
A group numbering around 1,500 landed on the shores of Australia with the intent of building a new penal colony from scratch to house current and future convicts from the British Empire. This colony would later evolve into the current Commonwealth nation of Australia.
A globe spanning move
Australia had been discovered and documented by the explorer James Cook in 1770 and it was considered to be a remote spit of uninhabited land at the edge of the world. Cook was the first European to discover and document the eastern coastline of the continent.
Before the establishment of Australia as a penal colony for the empire, the British had sent their convicts to the Thirteen Colonies in North America. The state of Georgia had its origins as a British penal colony where thousands of convicted citizens were shipped to live out the rest of their…
