Botany Bay was the inlet Captain James Cook named in 1770 and the intended destination of Britain’s first convict fleet to Australia. Its appeal lay in the combination of a temperate climate and extreme distance from Britain, but the Cables’ arrival revealed that remoteness did not mean refuge: transported convicts reached the new colony with almost no legal rights against those who controlled their property.

Naming and Colonial Purpose

On April 29, 1770, James Cook landed in an inlet on Australia’s eastern seaboard. He called it Botany Bay in recognition of the many species collected there by the naturalists traveling with him. The name thus preserved an encounter with the area’s biological richness, while British officials saw the inlet through a different purpose: a possible place to send convicts far from home.

That purpose emerged after the American colonies became independent in 1783 and no longer welcomed British convicts. Officials considered West Africa, but endemic malaria and yellow fever made it so dangerous to Europeans that they rejected the plan. Botany Bay appeared to offer a more acceptable alternative: a temperate climate, and a distance that made it seem out of sight and out of mind.

The First Fleet and New South Wales

In January 1788, eleven ships carrying convicts sailed for Botany Bay under Captain Arthur Phillip. On January 26, the fleet established a camp at Sydney Cove, in the heart of present-day Sydney, and named the colony New South Wales. Botany Bay was therefore the intended destination within a larger colonial undertaking, though the account places the fleet’s initial camp at Sydney Cove.

The expedition carried Henry and Susannah Cable and their young son, also named Henry. Susannah had been convicted of theft and initially sentenced to death; her sentence was commuted to fourteen years’ transportation to the American colonies. That destination became unavailable after independence. In Norwich Castle Jail, she had met and fallen in love with Henry, a fellow convict. When she was selected in 1787 for transportation to Australia with the first fleet, Henry was not selected, leaving their family facing separation.

Arrival and the Cables’ Claim

The family’s separation prompted a successful campaign by Lady Cadogan, a philanthropist who arranged for Henry to join Susannah and their son on the voyage. She also raised £20 to buy goods for them to receive in Australia. The Cables sailed aboard the Alexander, captained by Duncan Sinclair; on reaching Botany Bay, however, the parcel had disappeared, or so Sinclair claimed.

The missing goods made the bay more than a distant landing place: it became the setting for a dispute over property and power in the new colony. British law gave convicts practically no rights. They could not own property, sue another person, or give evidence in court. The book presents Sinclair as having understood this vulnerability and as probably having stolen the parcel, while noting that he never admitted doing so. He did boast that the Cables could not sue him, and under British law he was right.

A New Setting, an Unsettled Justice

The account contrasts the likely end of the affair in Britain with its continuation in Australia. A writ was issued to David Collins, the judge advocate, describing the parcel as clothes and other items suitable for the Cables’ circumstances, collected and bought by charitable people for the family. It recorded repeated requests to the master of the Alexander, then lying in port, and the delivery of only a small part of the parcel: a few books. The remainder, described as considerably more valuable, was still aboard the ship.

Botany Bay consequently marks both the geographical reach of British penal policy and the limits of the rights Britain extended to those it transported. The setting that officials chose for its distance brought the Cables into a new colony, but did not erase the legal disadvantages they carried with them. The writ’s detailed account of the undelivered goods makes that contradiction concrete: a family had been reunited through charitable intervention, yet on arrival could not rely on ordinary legal standing to recover what had been sent for them.