Captain Arthur Phillip was given a commission as captain of the expedition and governor of the new colony.
All that is known of Phillip prior to his appointment is contained in a semi—official account of the expedition called Phillip's Voyage, published about a hundred years ago. We are here told that his father was a German teacher of languages who settled in London, his mother the widow of Captain Herbert, of the royal navy, and that young Phillip was born in Bread Street, in the parish of All Hallows, London.
It may be presumed that, by the influence of his mother's connections through her first marriage, he was sent to Greenwich School, and thence into the navy, where he began his career under Captain Michael Everett at the outbreak of war in 1755.
At twenty-three he was serving as a lieutenant in the Stirling Castle, and later on, when peace came, after a turn of farming in the New Forest, he volunteered to serve under the Portuguese Government. Leaving the Portuguese service with distinction, he rejoined the English navy in 1778, and the Admiralty at once made him master and commander of the Basilisk, fireship,
soon afterwards appointing him post captain. He commanded the Ariadne, frigate, later on the Europe, and was then selected for the command of the first fleet to New South Wales. All the remarkable story of the colonizing expedition does not belong to this chapter on Phillip, but it runs through the lives of the four naval governors.
Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary of the day, selected Phillip, and Lord Howe, then at the head of the Admiralty, expressed this opinion on the appointment:—
"I cannot say the little knowledge I have of Captain Phillip would have led me to select him for a service of this complicated nature; but as you are satisfied of his ability, and I conclude he will be taken under your direction, I presume it will not be unreasonable to move the King for having His Majesty's pleasure signified to the Admiralty for these purposes as soon as you see proper, so that no time may be lost in making the requisite preparations for the voyage."
It took a long time to prepare the expedition, and when the fleet sailed from Spithead on May 13th, 1787, the transports had been lying off the Motherbank with their human freight on board for months before; yet, through the neglect of the shore officials, they sailed without clothing
for the women prisoners and without enough [a]1787] cartridges to do much more than fill the pouches of the marine guard.
There were eleven sail altogether: the Sirius, frigate, the Supply, tender, six transports, and three storeships. The frigate was an old East Indiaman, the Berwick. She had been lying in Deptford Yard, had been burnt almost to the water's edge not long before, and was patched up for the job. The Supply was a brig, a bad sailer, yet better in that respect than the Sirius, though much overmasted; she was commanded by Lieutenant Ball.