Justinian (ship, 1787)
The Justinian was a 389-ton, three-deck ship that was used as a transport ship in the Second Fleet . It was built in 1787 on the historic Blackwall Yard shipyard in London . The ship cast off on February 17, 1790 under the command of Captain Benjamin Maitland with a crew of 36 men in Falmouth , England . Their destination was the newly founded British colony of New South Wales , the convict colony of Australia .
getting there
The ships Lady Juliana and the Guardian had already left for Australia with female convicts in July and September 1789 . Later the ships Neptune , Scarbourogh and Surprize followed with other convicts. It was recognized in England that there was a threat of famine in the new colony, so the Justinian was sent out only with food and goods without convicts. The ship carried 1,400 barrels of grain, 233 barrels of pork and smaller quantities of beef, peas, oatmeal, vinegar, spirits, oil and sugar. There were also balls of cloth, clothing, blankets and a portable military hospital on board.
The Justinian was without prisoners on board, capable of their short stay in Madeira and Santiago (Cape Verde) , without another stay in Rio de Janeiro , around the Cape of Good Hope right after Sydney to sail. Therefore, the Justinian reached its destination after only five months on June 20, 1790. The Lady Juliana , although she had cast off six months before the Justinian in England, arrived in Sydney only two weeks before the Justinian . The Lady Juliana had brought the bad news that the Guardian had sunk after a collision with an iceberg after circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope. The food for the colony was lost. The Justinian averted the impending doom of the colony with her fast journey. However, the colony's situation deteriorated again when the convict ships Neptune , Scarborough and Surprize arrived in Port Jackson with only about 750 out of 1000 departed convicts . About a quarter of the convicts died under the inhuman conditions while driving. The arriving convicts were severely weakened and some were seriously ill. Food became scarce again and the hospitals, which consisted only of tents, could not take all of them.
By July 19, the Justinian's cargo was unloaded. 500 barrels of food remained on board so that the settlement on Norfolk Island could be supplied. The Justinian cast off at the end of July, and the Surprize three days after her . After the cargo had been unloaded and the 200 convicts had been brought to the island, the Surprize cast off for Canton (now Guangzhou ) in China on August 29, and the Justinian a day later.
Return journey
The ships of the Second Fleet, after they had unloaded their cargo, had to sail to Canton, where they arrived between October 26th and November 7th, 1790. There was a trading post of the British East India Company . The ships had tea to load and cast off with their cargo on March 20, 1791. They reached England on October 2, 1791.
Footnotes
- ^ A b Penny Edwell: Justinian . In: Dictionary of Sydney . Dictionary of Sydney Trust. 2016. Archived from the original on June 16, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
