All 11 ships arrived within two days of each other.
There was hardly any loss of life.
The 16,000 mile (25,750km) voyage, made at the speed of a man walking, eventually settled in what Captain Arthur Phillip called Sydney Cove, very close to what is now Circular Quay.
So ended one of the great nautical achievements of the modern world.
Detractors
So many books have been written about the First Fleet, its arrival at Sydney Cove and what followed in the next few years, it’s difficult to discern between fact and fiction.
Charles Wilson, in
Australia: The Creation of a Nation, rails against the ‘inefficiency, carelessness and idleness of the masters and servants of the ministries which all had a finger in the pie called the First Fleet.’