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HMS Sirius One of Australia’s most important shipwrecks is HMS Sirius. In 1787 she was the lead ship for the First Fleet of eleven ships setting out from Britain on the voyage to establish the first settlement in Australia. They landed at Botany Bay on the 18th January 1788 and soon after established the settlement at Port Jackson. Within a few weeks of their arrival at Botany Bay, a small group of convicts under the command of Philip Gidley King had set sail to establish another settlement at Norfolk Island, a rocky outcrop 1,500 kilometres north east of Port Jackson. “You never saw such dismay as the news of the wreck occasioned amongst us all; for, to use a sea term, we looked upon her as our sheet anchor” The story of the life and wrecking of HMS Sirius is only one half of her tale. The other is the story that she left lying for close to 200 years on the seafloor, on the reef at Norfolk Island. The recovery of her artefacts over the past 25 years in particular, have revealed much to us. We now have more answers to the story of the circumstances of British settlement in Australia, the Sirius’ construction as a Baltic trader, and the perilous state of this fledgling Nation when she was lost. |
Flagship of the First Fleet
From the sixteenth century onwards the number of people convicted of crimes, many of which were seemingly trivial by today’s standard, was becoming a problem. The gaols in England were overcrowded, filthy and disease ridden resulting in many prisoners ...
The World of Norfolk
Norfolk Island was first brought to the attention of the rest of the world when it was discovered on a passage northwards from New Zealand in 1774 by James Cook, Captain of HMS Resolution. He named this tiny island “Norfolk” after “that Noble family”...
Shipwrecked March 19, 1790
By about February 1790, both settlements in Sydney and Norfolk Island were running low on hardware including items such as blacksmiths’ tools, uniforms and eating utensils. In fact supplies were low of everything but food, which was adequate at that time.
Artefacts Recovered
The Sirius carried four bower anchors and two stern anchors. Three of the bower anchors were recovered and one now dominates the Norfolk Island Museum’s collections. Two others are in Australia and one is still on the reef in a badly damaged condition...