Duty is the great business of a sea officer; all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it may be.

Lord Nelson

Star of the southern seas

JIM HAYNES

WHENEVER I VISIT LONDON I like to make a pilgrimage to the National Maritime Museum at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. There you can stand astride the Prime Meridian, longitude zero, from where all time on the planet is measured.

I tend to spend most of my time at Greenwich looking at one object. It’s an object that has so much to do with Australia’s history that I wish we owned it. It’s a truly magical object to my mind. It circled the globe twice on the Resolution—with James Cook on his second exploration of the South Pacific, and on his third, when he didn’t make it back. It led the First Fleet to our shores, and it circumnavigated the world in the good ship HMS Sirius.

It’s a clock, shaped like an enormous pocket watch. It’s thirteen inches across and weighs 1.5 kilograms. It’s called ‘K1’.

The Sirius carried an unusual cargo when she led the First Fleet to Botany Bay. There were the usual provisions of food: bread, beer, salted beef and pork, peasemeal, oatmeal, cheese, biscuit, vinegar and water, but in far greater quantities than a normal escort ship. She also carried goods for setting up the new colony: carpenters’ tools and timber, hardware of all kinds, smithy material—even the surgeon’s piano, and Peruvian bark to treat malaria. The Sirius also carried an assortment of valuable astronomical instruments, along with a young astronomer, trained by Sir Nevill Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal.

Lieutenant William Dawes of the Royal Marines was an excellent astronomer who volunteered not only to serve with the First Fleet but also to set up an observatory in the new colony. Maskelyne supported the proposal and Dawes was attached to the contingent and entrusted with a number of very valuable instruments and telescopes, which were part of the Sirius cargo.

But the Sirius carried a treasure even greater than that collection of scientific devices. She carried the Admiralty’s most prized possession— K1, the Kendall chronometer.

The invention of the marine chronometer by John Harrison had solved the problem of calculating longitude. After a lifetime spent perfecting the device, Harrison was finally awarded part of the prize of £20,000 offered by the Board of Longitude. A copy of Harrison’s fourth and final model was made by Larcum Kendall. Known as K1, this device cost the princely sum of £450. It was carried by James Cook on his second and third voyages of discovery and referred to by him as ‘our never failing guide’.

The very fact that K1 was on board the Sirius when she sailed for Botany Bay indicates just how important the expedition was to the Admiralty and the British government.

Captain Arthur Phillip was instructed that K1 was to be wound every day at noon. When he transferred from the Sirius to the Supply, after leaving Cape Town, Phillip took K1 with him, much to the annoyance of John Hunter, who lamented its loss when he became captain of the Sirius. Unfortunately the chronometer was not wound regularly and it took the expertise of William Dawes to reset the device to Greenwich Mean Time.

To calculate Greenwich Mean Time, Dawes used the incredibly complex ‘lunar distance’ method, from tables that Maskelyne had computed in 1767. The tables listed the angular distance of the moon from nearby stars for every three hours of the year in Greenwich time; by measuring the angles at night with a sextant, Greenwich time could thereby be calculated.

K1 was the first item taken ashore to safety when HMS Sirius ran onto the reef at Sydney Bay, Norfolk Island on 19 March 1790, while attempting to land convicts and cargo in a gale. It was an ignominious and undeserved end for the gallant ship that founded our nation. What remains of her is still there today, under a rocky ledge not too far offshore, near the first line of breakers in what is now called Slaughter Bay.

HMS Sirius began her career as the HMS Berwick. She was built between 1780 and 1781 at Rotherhithe shipyards, on the Thames River near Deptford dockyards, which had been established in the time of Henry VIII as the Royal Navy dockyards. Although the vessel was constructed privately by Christopher Watson & Co., it was purchased by the navy, while under construction, for £5856.

The Berwick was built for the Baltic trade; her design was a cross between a frigate and a barque, perfect for carrying timber from Scandinavia to Britain and for general freight. If you looked at her bow and stern she appeared very like a warship with her full head, bowsprit, rails and figurehead of Lord Berwick at the bow, and her square rear, galleries and transom at the stern: plenty of places for guns.

Between the bow and stern, however, she was more like a barque, or merchant ship. She was shorter than a warship or East Indiaman and wider, with flat floors, rounded bilges and a wide hold with vertical sides. The ships designed for the Baltic trade had to carry massive amounts of timber, mostly for the Royal Navy, and they were often commissioned or purchased by the navy as store-ships.

Her deep holds, barquentine mid-section and shallow draft made the Berwick look not unlike the Endeavour, which began life as the trading barque Earl of Pembroke, although the Berwick/Sirius was considerably larger than Cook’s famous ship. The Endeavour was 370 tons, the Sirius 520.

Just why the navy purchased the Berwick before completion is unknown, but it seems a fire damaged the vessel during construction and the navy, busy fighting the French, Spanish and Dutch fleets in the American War of Independence, decided to take charge of the final stages of construction, rather than waiting until the ship was completed and then paying for her conversion. The navy was desperate for store-ships and troopships, so she became the HMS Berwick and was never used as a merchant ship.

Taken to the Deptford Dockyard in December 1781, the HMS Berwick was fitted out as an armed transport and store-ship. Like all Royal Navy vessels at the time, she was painted with an anti-corrosive composition and then sheathed with copper. She was launched on 14 January 1782 and commissioned seven days later.

Armed with four eighteen-pound carronades (short-range, inaccurate but powerful cannons), 22 nine-pounders and six four-pounders, she was commanded by Lieutenant Edward-Baynton Prideaux, younger brother of a baronet, and she sailed in convoy to Nova Scotia in April 1782.

Although she was not a warship, the HMS Berwick needed to be well armed to take supplies and troops into the war zones across the Atlantic, and to repel enemy ships and privateers if attacked. The Americans had no warships, but the combined French, Spanish and Dutch fleets comprised 150 ships of the line, against Britain’s 95.

During the war, HMS Berwick made four trips across the Atlantic carrying troops and supplies, two to Nova Scotia and two to New York. After the Treaty of Paris ended the war with the US in 1782, she made a voyage to the West Indies, where war against the Dutch continued until 1784, and another voyage to the friendly Portuguese island of Madeira in early 1786. No-one knows what cargo she brought back for the naval stores on that voyage; perhaps it was a supply of the famous fortified Madeira wine for the officers’ mess.

That was to be the last voyage of the HMS Berwick. She was refitted and modified in 1786 and some of her iron fittings were replaced with copper. It had been discovered that the copper sheathing, fitted to all British naval ships to prevent marine growth and allow them to stay longer at sea without maintenance, produced an electrolytic reaction with the vessels’ iron bolts and fittings, causing them to rot. Most of the ships of the British Navy were leaking badly in the 1780s due to this unforeseen reaction. Unfortunately not all of the Berwick’s iron fittings were replaced—an oversight that would come back to haunt her during the most incredible voyage of her lifetime, when she circumnavigated the world to save a starving colony in 1789.

She was still being refitted, at a cost of over £7000, when the following order came from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Howe:

We direct you to ensure to cause His Majesty’s store-ship Berwick to be registered on the list as a sixth-rate by the name of the Sirius and established with the number of guns and complement of men mentioned . . .

The store-ship and transport HMS Berwick was about to become a ship of the line, HMS Sirius.

This had to happen. The Admiralty had very strict rules about expeditions and commanders. A commodore had to command a ‘ship of the line’; you couldn’t be a commodore in charge of a store-ship. However, most of her below-deck modifications made the Sirius even more of a store-ship than she was as the Berwick: storerooms were enlarged, two more were added, and shelves, lockers, and a sail room were created to make her fit for what was known as ‘foreign service’. In other words, her home port was no longer to be in Britain.

Arthur Phillip had a second captain on board the Sirius, John Hunter. This meant that either Phillip had the status of a commodore, or the Admiralty needed the permission of the Privy Council for the vessel to carry two captains. This approval was granted, but it is a matter of conjecture as to whether Phillip was ever officially approved as Commodore.

It was complicated. Technically Phillip was Commodore as he had another captain below him on a ship of the line. However, Lord Howe was reluctant to give Phillip official commodore status, as on arrival in New South Wales, Phillip was to become Governor of the new colony and be answerable to the Secretary of State, not the Admiralty. So Lord Howe granted him the power of a commodore, but refused him the right to fly a commodore’s pennant.

Phillip was annoyed at Lord Howe’s pedantic technicality, but wanted John Hunter on the expedition, and was worried that persisting in his request for official commodore status would result in Hunter being left behind.

There is no record of Lord Howe relenting on his decision, but there is evidence that Phillip flew a commodore’s pennant on the voyage, when he entered the harbour at Rio de Janeiro.

The name ‘Sirius’ was probably chosen because Sirius is known as the ‘southern star’, the brightest in the southern sky and much relied upon by mariners. The HMS Sirius was now an ‘armed escort vessel’ and a sixth-rate ship of the line.

At around 520 tons after modification, she was a large ship in an age when ninety per cent of British merchant ships were under 200 tons. Her main-mast towered 78 feet (24 metres) above her decks, and her fore and mizzen-masts were only slightly shorter. She was 110 feet (33 metres) long by 33 feet (10 metres) across. However, as a sixth-rater, she was the lowest-grade ship of the line. Sixth-rated ships had to carry between 20 and 32 guns and required a crew of about 160 men.

By comparison, a first-rate ship of the line, like the 2000-ton Victory, carried more than 100 guns and had a crew of 800. Even third-rated warships, such as the 1600-ton Bellerophon, carried 74 guns and a crew of 550.

HMS Sirius was a fighting ship in name only; she was a store-ship and escort for the First Fleet. On her decks she carried less than the minimum requirement of 20 guns for a sixth-rated warship (six carronades, four six-pounders and eight swivel guns) but she carried ten more in storage, deep in her hold, and thus qualified, technically, as a warship.

Even though the expedition was a peaceful one, Phillip found it near impossible to secure a full crew for the Sirius. Years of war had made men reluctant to serve before the mast and the idea of escorting convicts to an unknown land at the end of the earth was not particularly attractive to sailors. The Gordon Riots had destabilised the social fabric of London and times were uncertain.

Despite using every method available, including ‘pressing’ men into service, the crew of HMS Sirius numbered only 135—25 short of the required number—when she sailed from Portsmouth. Many men had already deserted the ship in the two months it took to assemble the fleet.

The fleet departed on 13 May 1787 and sailed to Cape Town via Tenerife and Rio de Janeiro. A month was spent at Cape Town stocking the boats with food, animals and plants, before the eleven ships embarked on the last leg of the journey on 13 November 1787.

Two weeks into the final leg of the voyage, Phillip decided to split the fleet in two. He handed command of the Sirius to John Hunter, who would remain her captain until she was lost on the reef at Norfolk Island in 1790.

From the Sirius Phillip took most of the marines, who were transferred to the Scarborough. Onto HMAT Supply he took the precious K1 and the best navigator on the fleet, Lieutenant William Dawes.

HMAT Supply and the three fastest transports sailed ahead to check that Botany Bay was a suitable site for a settlement and prepare a landing place.

Supply was not a ship of the line. She was in fact the armed tender to the Sirius and was designated HMAT—His Majesty’s Armed Tender—not HMS, His or Her Majesty’s Ship. She was quite a small ship, just 70 feet (21 metres) in length and 170 tons, but she was faster than the Sirius and handled much better.

Phillip assumed he would arrive several weeks ahead of the other ships led by the Sirius. As it happened, Supply arrived first at Botany Bay, on 18 January 1788; the three fastest transports arrived the following day; and Sirius and the rest of the fleet arrived just one day later, on the 20th.

Captain Hunter had his own reliable timepiece, manufactured by John Brockbank of London. Although he lamented the loss of K1, he thought his watch would suffice:

After the time-keeper was taken from the Sirius I kept an account of the ship’s way by my own watch which I had found for a considerable time to go very well with Kendall’s.

On arriving at Botany Bay, Hunter was annoyed to find the precious K1 had been neglected:

On the 25th we received the time-keeper from the Supply which, I am sorry to say, had been let down while on board . . .

Sirius had led the First Fleet safely on a voyage of 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometres) that lasted 250 days. No ships were damaged or lost, no mutinies had occurred (although at least one had been averted), 48 people had died and 28 had been born.

When the ships were moved to Port Jackson, Sirius anchored at the entrance to Sydney Cove to prevent any escape attempts by sea. Activities ashore took up all the time and energies of her carpenters and other skilled crew, and for seven months maintenance of the tired vessel was neglected. More iron fittings corroded and, under the copper sheathing, the Sirius was developing some serious leaks.

Some unsupervised recaulking and repairs were done by a carpenter’s assistant and an old convict, but the work was woefully inadequate to keep her seaworthy. Soon, a string of events would see the unseaworthy vessel embark upon her most hazardous and daring voyage; it would be her proudest achievement.

By September 1788 things were looking grim in Port Jackson. The cattle had wandered away and been lost in June when their keeper, a convict named Corbett, had absconded and attempted to live in the bush with the Aborigines. He eventually returned and was hanged for losing the cattle.

Phillip realised the colony was in danger of starving. Few crops had grown from the seed carried on the First Fleet, much of which had spoiled on the voyage; these crops, planted out of season in late summer, produced only enough grain for seed.

With the crop failure, the Governor could see famine looming. By September 1788, the situation was desperate, rations were cut and theft of food was a constant problem. Phillip decided to send the Sirius to Cape Town, ‘in order to procure grain and . . . what quantities of flour and provisions she can receive’.

The Sirius’ stoic captain, John Hunter, knew his vessel was in poor shape; ‘much neglected’ was his term. Hunter had already noted that the ship had been poorly prepared and refitted in Britain and had problems with rotten fittings and leaks. He also knew his crew had been on salted rations for over a year and would be prone to scurvy.

However, Hunter was not a man to question orders. Hunter was a loyal friend to Arthur Phillip and followed his instructions to the letter. He had the ever-reliable Lieutenant William Bradley—a teacher from the Royal Naval Academy, who had signed on as first mate on the Sirius to further his scientific knowledge—and he had K1.

Eight guns, with cannon balls and powder, were taken off the Sirius; reluctantly, her longboat was also left behind. It was decided to follow the southern gales eastward and so, on 2 October 1788, Sirius, already leaking badly and without a longboat, headed out of Port Jackson and sailed south towards the Antarctic.

Ten days later she passed the southern tip of New Zealand. Within days, scurvy had appeared among the crew and the ship was leaking badly. Passing under Cape Horn, she sailed through masses of icebergs and experienced gale force winds, snow, sleet and hail.

Hunter’s meticulous notes give some idea of the stoic nonchalance of the brave Scottish mariner:

We now very frequently fell in with high islands of ice. On the 24th, we had fresh gales with hazy and cold weather, and met so many ice islands, that we were frequently obliged to alter our course to avoid them. On the 25th, we had strong gales with very heavy and frequent squalls: as we were now drawing near Cape Horn . . . we passed one of the largest ice-islands we had seen; we judged it not less than three miles in length, and its perpendicular height we supposed to be 350 feet.

The strangeness and danger of such a voyage would prove too much for one man. Third Lieutenant Maxwell became insane as the ship passed under Cape Horn and, while on watch, began cramming on all sail in a gale. Apparently, from his ravings, he had decided that he wanted to see if the ship would sail underwater and emerge from hell ‘with the same set of damned rascals she was carrying’.

Hunter came on deck in his shirt and reefed the sails himself while Maxwell was restrained and confined to his cabin. Maxwell never regained his sanity.

Watkin Tench, the captain of marines whose journals are a great source of information on the colony, wrote:

The Sirius had made her passage to the Cape of Good Hope, by the route of Cape Horn, in exactly thirteen weeks. Her highest latitude was 57 degrees 10 minutes south, where the weather proved intolerably cold. Ice, in great quantity, was seen for many days; and in the middle of December water froze in open casks upon deck.

The first death from scurvy occurred just after Cape Horn, and another four men died before Cape Town was reached. By then forty men were too sick to move and another ten worked their watch without the use of at least one limb due to scurvy.

On sighting Table Mountain, Hunter was anxious to make port as quickly as possible to save as many of the crew as he could.

The weakly condition of that part of the ship’s company, who were able to do duty upon deck, and the very dejected state of those who were confined to their beds, determined me, if possible, to bring the ship to an anchor before night; as the very idea of being in port, sometimes has an exceeding good effect upon the spirits of people who are reduced low by the scurvy; which was the case with a great many of our ship’s company; and indeed, a considerable number were in the last stage of it.

On arrival at the Cape, Hunter needed to repair both his ship and his crew. A hospital was set up on shore and the men rested and ate fresh fruit and vegetables for a month until all were well again.

An attempt was made to repair the ship, but Hunter realised it was futile.

Before we embarked any of the provisions, we heeled the ship, to endeavour to stop the leak, which had kept the pumps so much employed during the voyage . . . it proceeded from an iron bolt, which had been corroded by the copper, and by the working of the ship had dropt out, and left a hole of more than an inch in diameter. A wooden plug was put in, and covered again with copper. But beside this leak, there were many other smaller holes, which were occasioned by the decay of long spikenails . . . All were closed, as far as we examined, and the ship for the present made less water, but was not so tight as formerly; it was therefore my intention, upon my arrival at Port Jackson, to lighten and examine the ship . . . that such defects as we might find might be remedied while they were trifling.

The trip back was a nightmare. The crew pumped constantly as the overladen ship leaked steadily and a gale arose with mountainous seas, which threatened to blow them onto a lee shore and wreck the ship on the wild west coast or southern tip of Van Diemen’s Land. The sun disappeared for days at a time and the ship was awash as fierce winds and heavy seas bore away her top-masts, and even the figurehead of Lord Berwick. Captain Hunter even began to doubt the accuracy of his beloved K1 and was fearful that his calculations of longitude were wrong:

The time-keeper, which I have already mentioned to have an error of 1°31', seemed, during the time we lay in Table-Bay, to have gradually recovered its original rate . . . this served to convince me . . . that it had been considerably affected by the very cold weather we had near Cape Horn.

Hunter was well aware that the ship was in grave danger of striking the shore, as he could not rely on his best efforts at calculating their position. His dour understated journal entry belies the reality of the danger:

It may not be improper here to observe, that three days had now elapsed without a sight of the sun during the day, or a star during the night, from which we could exactly determine our latitude . . .

Hunter then casually relates how the ship was caught on a dead lee shore, and her destruction seemed imminent.

. . . we set the reefed main-sail, and at half past six we saw the land again, through the haze close under our lee bow, and the sea breaking with prodigious force upon it, it was impossible to weather it . . . I now found that we were embayed, and the gale not in the least likely to abate, and the sea running mountain high, with very thick weather, a long dark night just coming on, and an unknown coast . . . close under our lee; nothing was now left to be done but to carry every yard of canvass the ship was capable of bearing, and for every person on board to constantly keep the deck, and attentively to look out under the lee for the land . . . but as we knew not what bay, or part of the coast we were upon, nor what dangerous ledges of rocks might be detached some distance from the shore; and in our way, we had every moment reason to fear that the next might, by the ship striking, launch the whole of us into eternity.

Lieutenant Bradley noted that the surf breaking on the rocks ‘could not be distinguished from that of the sea which was all breakers to the horizon’. What is truly remarkable to me is how understated is the captain’s account of how they survived the situation:

Fortunately at this instant the wind favoured us near two points, and the ship lay better up upon this tack, than her course upon the other had promised, but still the weather was so thick, the sea so high, the gale so strong, and so dead upon the shore, that little hope could be entertained of our weathering the land. We stood on to the eastward, and the ship, to my astonishment, as well as to that of every person on board, bore such a press of sail wonderfully.

Even when the end seemed inevitable, Hunter declined to worry the crew with his realisation that the ship appeared doomed.

We now stood on, and I had hopes that this might be the most projecting land; but at two in the afternoon, as I was looking from the quarter deck very anxiously to leeward, I observed the looming of a high and very steep point of rocky land, and the sea foaming with frightful violence against it. I made no mention of it; but just at that instant it was discovered by the sailors stationed forward, and they called out, ‘Land, close under our lee’; I replied it was very well, I had seen it some time, and that as it was now upon our beam . . . there could be no danger from it, we should soon pass it . . . The ship was at this time half buried in the sea by the press of sail, since she was going through it (for she could not be said to be going over it) at the rate of four knots.

All through the storm, with the constant fear of being run aground, the ship continued to leak badly:

In this trying situation, the ship being leaky, our pumps during such a night were a distressing tax upon us; as they were kept constantly at work.

In his dour fatalistic style, Hunter put their survival down to divine providence, with a little help from skilled navigation and seamanship.

I do not recollect to have heard of a more wonderful escape. Every thing, which depended upon us, I believe, was done; but it would be the highest presumption and ingratitude to Divine Providence, were we to attribute our preservation wholly to our best endeavours . . .

On 8 May 1789, Sirius, having circumnavigated the globe in an unseaworthy condition, limped back into Port Jackson, minus her top-masts and figurehead, with seed grain and four months supply of food. It was 219 days since she had left the colony.

Watkin Tench, like all the colony’s inhabitants, was overjoyed to see the Sirius return and reported in his diary:

May 1789 . . . the arrival of the Sirius, Captain Hunter, from the Cape of Good Hope, was proclaimed, and diffused universal joy and congratulation.

They were very kindly treated by the Dutch governor, and amply supplied by the merchants at the Cape, where they remained seven weeks. Their passage back was by Van Diemen’s Land, near which . . . they were in the utmost peril of being wrecked. But it falls to the lot of very few ships to possess such indefatigable and accurate observers as Captain Hunter and Lieutenant Bradley . . .

Phillip was relieved and grateful. He invited the ship’s officers to dinner to express his gratitude. Rations were still in force and food scarce—so scarce in fact that the officers were told to bring their own bread rolls to the Governor’s dinner.

One officer not invited was poor mad Lieutenant Maxwell, who was confined in the hospital on his return to Sydney Cove and was later discovered to have buried the 70 guineas his family sent for his care in the hospital garden, in order that his fortune might grow with a good crop of guineas next year.

The Sirius was now in desperate need of substantial repairs.

The ship was careened in what became known as Sirius Cove, later Mosman Bay, from June to November 1789. A temporary wharf was built and a platform levelled on the beach. Carpenters replaced much of the decking and planking with new timber. Her copper sheathing was partly removed, and the rotten bolts replaced as best as could be done with the limited resources of the new colony. On 7 November she sailed back to Sydney Cove.

Soon the Sirius was once again called upon to save the colony for, by January 1790, the colony was again facing starvation.

Phillip was anxiously awaiting the supply ship, which the Admiralty had promised would sail ahead of the Second Fleet. A beacon and tower had been built at South Head, and a constant watch was kept for the eagerly awaited supplies, which would save the starving settlement.

In fact the supply ship HMS Guardian had set sail from Spithead, on the south coast of England, loaded with livestock, crops, hardware and other supplies, in September 1789.

Among the 320 or so on board were a small number of convicts, a group of skilled convict artisans, and a number of convict superintendents, including the first non-British free settlers to our shores: Hessian soldier and farmer Phillip Schaffer and his ten-year-old daughter Elizabeth. In command was Captain Edward Riou, who had served with Cook on his third voyage.

Guardian took on more livestock and supplies at the Cape of Good Hope in December, then sailed south to pick up the strong winds which would take her to Port Jackson.

Just over a week out, icebergs and pack ice were sighted, so Riou sent boat crews to gather fresh ice to water the animals. That same night, Christmas Eve 1789, fog descended and Guardian struck the ice. Riou and his crew and some of the convicts worked desperately pumping; next day an attempt was made to repair the damage by ‘fothering’, wrapping the hull in two sheets of sailcloth. Now the weather changed again and a dreadful storm came on, the sails were ripped away and more water flooded into the ship, which was slowly sinking, stern first.

Riou jettisoned most of the cargo and livestock and announced that he would stay with his stricken ship, but all others were free to leave in the ship’s boats.

Two hundred and sixty people left in the ship’s five boats. Fifteen of them were later picked up by a French merchant ship; the rest were never seen again.

Riou and 62 others stayed on board and attempted to repair and steer the crippled vessel. Among them were the boatswain, carpenter, three superintendents of convicts, including Phillip Schaffer and his daughter, 30 sailors and 21 convicts.

With 16 feet of water in the hold, Riou, whose hand had been crushed attempting to move cargo, had the gun-deck hatches sealed and caulked, making a watertight air-filled space between the top deck and the gun deck. He then set sail as best he could. The floating wreck, with the pumps going non-stop, gradually drifted back towards Cape Town. It took nine weeks.

When the disabled wreck was sighted from Table Mountain, ships were sent out to help. Riou finally moored the ship off a beach near Cape Town and all on board were rescued. A storm drove the Guardian onto the beach several weeks later, and what was left of the ship was sold for salvage the following year.

Those survivors who had originally been bound for New South Wales eventually arrived on other ships of the Second Fleet. On advice from Captain Riou, fourteen of the convicts received full pardons from Arthur Phillip. Riou himself later served with Nelson and was killed at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801.

While the Guardian was drifting back towards Cape Town in February 1790, Sirius and Supply were being prepared for sea once again. Phillip had decided he could not just sit and wait and hope, so he told Hunter to prepare to sail with 275 convicts and marines to Norfolk Island, where crops were reported to be growing well.

Sirius and Supply sailed on 6 March.

Hunter’s journal gives the usual clear, detailed report of the arrival and landings:

On the 13th, at two o’clock in the morning, we made Norfolk Island . . . I well knew there could be no landing in Sydney-bay, where the settlement is fixed, on account of the high surf, which southerly winds occasion. I therefore bore away, and ran round to the north-east side of the island into a bay called Cascade-bay; where . . . it is possible to land; but that only on one spot, which is a rock that projects some distance into the sea, and has deep water to it: on that rock I landed, on the afternoon of the 13th, all the marines, and a considerable number of the convicts, but being set to the eastward in the night, I did not land the remainder until the 15th . . .

The weather, however, worsened into a savage storm, which uprooted trees on the island and made landing stores impossible:

We had put on shore from the Sirius and Supply 270 people, and had no opportunity of sending any stores with them, as we were now driven out of sight of the island.

On the 19th, a slant wind from the south-east brought me again in with the island . . . finding we could fetch the windward part of the island, I steered in for Sydney-bay; and as we drew near, I observed the Supply lying to in the bay, and the signal upon the shore was flying, that long-boats, or any other boats might land, without any danger from the surf.

Anxious to avail myself of this favourable signal, I steered in as far as I judged safe . . . hoisted out the boats, loaded them with provisions, and sent them in; but observing that the ship settled fast to leeward, we made sail, and immediately hauled on board the fore and main tacks . . .

Landing cargo and passengers on Norfolk Island is a risky business. There is no safe anchorage, and the island’s two landing points are never both safe—and often neither is safe. Even today it is a skilled job using large landing boats to unload cargo from the island’s trading ships. The methods used today differ little from those used by Hunter in 1790. La Perouse sailed around the island and found it impossible to get ashore. It seemed a beautiful island, according to La Perouse, but he deemed it fit only for ‘angels and eagles’.

Hunter immediately saw the danger the wind shift had placed him in. Supply was a more agile craft and was able to tack away, but HMS Sirius was ponderous by comparison and when her anchors failed to hold her away from the reef, Hunter cut the cables and attempted to tack away—only to be bedevilled by another wind shift, which saw the gallant ship hit the reef stern on.

When the carpenter reported to me, that the water flowed fast into the hold; I ordered the masts to be cut away, which was immediately done. There was some chance, when the ship was lightened of this weight, that by the surges of the sea, which were very heavy, she might be thrown so far in up the reef, as to afford some prospect of saving the lives of those on board, if she should prove strong enough to bear the shocks she received from every sea.

Hunter immediately set about anchoring the disabled ship in position and getting the stores ashore. A cable was set up from ship to shore, and this enabled cargo and men to be taken off using a rope pulley system, called a ‘traveller’. Over the next few days all the stores came ashore, except private belongings, which came last. Many of these were lost as the weather worsened and the ‘traveller’ dragged in the sea. As the ship lightened, the cable holding her became less effective; eventually it broke and she went broadside onto the reef and began to break up.

Due to Hunter’s calmness and skilful handling of the situation, no lives had been lost.

Now the Supply was the only means of leaving the island. The crew of the Sirius were stranded there, along with the marines, the convict residents and the newly arrived convicts. The danger in which this placed the non-convict population was apparent to all, especially John Hunter:

We were now upon this little island 506 souls, upon half allowance of provisions; and that could, with our present numbers, last but a very short time . . .

In fact the population of Norfolk Island now exceeded that of Port Jackson. It was the largest British colony in the Pacific. Hunter was worried about law and order and referred to the convicts as ‘some of the worst characters ever sent from Great-Britain’.

He was relieved when Major Ross, who had accompanied him to take over from Lieutenant King as Governor on the island, declared martial law. ‘By this proclamation of the law martial,’ Hunter said, ‘much mischief I am of opinion was prevented.’

Most of the Sirius crew remained on Norfolk Island until 1792, but Hunter returned to Port Jackson on the Supply and eventually went to London to face mandatory court martial for losing a ship of the line. He was exonerated and praised for his efforts to save the Sirius. He returned to New South Wales as Governor in 1795.

The wreck of the Sirius shifted slightly down the reef towards the west in a storm some months later, and then disappeared below the breakers; what is left of her is still there today. One of her anchors was raised in 1906, taken to Sydney and set on a pedestal in Macquarie Place, off Bridge Street. Many artefacts from the wreck are in the museum on Norfolk Island.

So the ship that led the First Fleet had saved the colony from starvation once, and finally met her end trying to do it a second time.

The first object taken ashore from the wreck of the Sirius was the precious K1.

Hunter had doubted the chronometer on the voyage around the world, but later relented and remarked how accurate it had been:

. . . it appeared to be a degree or little more to the westward of the Truth, but we expected, upon our arrival at Port Jackson, to examine its error more particularly.

He decided the main error was in his calculations, not the timepiece. He did believe that extreme cold had affected it slightly, and that another small inaccuracy was caused by the violence of the storm they sailed through returning from Cape Town.

A man ahead of his time in many ways, Hunter suggested the chronometer be given the type of suspended shock-resistant carriage that is now used for many delicate measuring instruments:

. . . the violent agitation of the ship . . . was the cause of that change in the watch, and which I own I was not at all surprised at, but think it highly probable, as the watch lay in a box upon soft cushions, and that box screwed down to a place securely and firmly fixed for that purpose: I cannot help thinking but that so very valuable a piece of watch-work (for I do really think, from the experience I have had of it, that a superior piece of work was never made) would be better fixed upon a small horizontal table, made on purpose, and well secured; and under the box which contains the watch, a kind of spiral spring or worm, which, with every jerk or pitch of the ship, would yield a little with the weight of the watch, and thereby take off much of that shock which must in some degree affect its going.

So, HMS Sirius ended her life on the reef at Norfolk Island.

Whenever I visit the island (which I have seven times, to date), I make a few visits to Slaughter Bay and watch the waves wash over the site of the wreck. Then I think fondly about the gallant store-ship that became a rather cumbersome ship of the line and founded our nation.

K1 found its way back to Britain and remains there, in the National Maritime Museum. Both Cook and Hunter developed a great affection for it, which is not surprising as it is a remarkable and beautiful thing. As Hunter said, ‘a superior piece of work was never made’.

I only wish that our nation owned K1 and it was here in Australia— I’d visit it more often.