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.

The expedition was a big affair, and it seems curious enough nowadays that
so little interest was taken in it. There were more than a thousand people
on board, and one would have thought that if the departure of the convicts
did not create excitement, the sailing of the bluejackets and the guard of
about 200 marines bound for such an unknown part of the world would have
set Portsmouth at any rate in a stir. But the Fitzherbert scandal, the
attack on Warren Hastings, and such-like stirring events were then town
talk, and at that period there were no special correspondents or, for the
matter of that, any newspapers worth mentioning, to work up popular
excitement over the event.

On the way out the fleet called at Teneriffe, at Rio, and at the Cape to
refresh; and Phillip's old friends, the Portuguese, gave him a hearty
welcome and much assistance at the Brazils. When the ships reached Botany
Bay in January, 1788, the voyage of thirty-six weeks had ended without
serious misfortune of any kind. Lieutenant Collins, of the Marines,
Judge-Advocate and historian of the expedition, thus sums up the case:--

"Thus, under the blessing of God, was happily completed in eight
months and one week a voyage which, before it was undertaken, the
mind hardly dared to contemplate, and on which it was impossible