HMS Sirius
Ship size length 35.5 metres (110 feet); width: 9.8 metres (32 feet) weight: 549 tonnes (540 tons)
Ship carried approximately 198 people including seamen, marines, officers and their families
Ship arrived 20 January 1788
Ship left Wrecked off Norfolk Island in 1790. In March 1790 the settlement was desperately low in food and HMS Sirius and Supply were sent to Norfolk Island. In April the hopes of the settlement were shattered when only Supply returned with the news that Sirius had been wrecked off Norfolk Island.
Museum of Sydney Collection, Sydney Living Museums. Model © Lynne and Laurie Hadley, photo © Jamie North for Sydney Living Museums. The SLM Foundation financially supported the acquisition of this set of First Fleet ships.
HMS Sirius
Built in 1780 and originally named Berwick, HMS Sirius was painted yellow with a broad black band above the water line. The hull was covered in copper sheeting.
Museum of Sydney Collection, Sydney Living Museums. Model © Lynne and Laurie Hadley, photo © Jamie North for Sydney Living Museums. The SLM Foundation financially supported the acquisition of this set of First Fleet ships.
Part of the Reef in Sydney Bay, Norfolk Island, on which the Sirius was reck’d. 19 March 1790
William Bradley, watercolour from his journal ‘A Voyage to New South Wales’, 1802+
State Library of New South Wales: safe 1/14
'You never saw such dismay as the news of the wreck occasioned among us all; for, to use a sea term, we looked upon her as our sheet anchor [The largest anchor, on which one places reliance when all else has failed].'
Arthur Phillip, first governor of New South Wales, 1790
HMS Sirius
Naval ship
The flagship of the First Fleet, HMS Sirius was fitted out as an armed storeship with 20 guns. It was required to carry personnel for the penal settlement, embarking some 136 seamen, marines and officers, as well as her share of provisions and stores for Botany Bay. Sirius was selected over other purpose-built warships because of its storage capacity.
From the beginning of the voyage Sirius was so heavily loaded with provisions for the long voyage that it sailed poorly. It carried, among other things, four boats and even the ship’s surgeon’s piano. In a letter to his mother midshipman, Daniel Southwell (1787) described the extra provisions that were added to Sirius at the Cape of Good Hope:
'Were you to take a view of our ship below you would be apt to take it for a livery stable of note … Among the stock are many of the feathered kind, and also plants of various sorts. These all together will take up much room, and the ship is lumber’d. The people, considering the number, are much crouded, for the cattle are to occupy a deck which till now was theirs…'
It made only one successful voyage after the First Fleet, travelling to the Cape of Good Hope for supplies in October 1788. After being wrecked on a reef off Norfolk Island on 19 March 1790, the remnants of Sirius’s hull finally disappeared beneath the ocean two years later.
