The All-Women Prison Ship That Had “the Founding Mothers of Australia”
What you need to know about the special “Lady Juliana”
Lady Juliana is mostly famous for being an all-women prison ship that transported British female prisoners to Australia in 1789. There are a lot of remarkable things to note about the ship. One of them being; although the main aim of Lady Juliana was to revitalize the almost crumbling British colony in Australia, the ship ended up earning the nickname of “a floating brothel.”
How Lady Juliana was born
During the 18th century, Britain found itself with a situation of jails overflowing with prisoners. The best solution was to lower the number of prisoners by transporting some to Britain’s colonial territories.
Thus, in the late 1780s, the “First Fleet” was launched. The ships transported over 700 convicts to Australia, including livestock and seeds. The person who was in charge of the operation, Governor Phillip, led the convicts to Sydney Harbor and established settlements at Sydney Cove.
But, this new British colony faced many hardships such as disease attacks, hunger, and death. The farming activities that the convicts were doing were also unfruitful.
