Bible that the ships hy which I have now the honour ol writinj:? may 1)8 the first to arrive/* he carefully recapitu- lated the heatlB of his former letters. A dreary interval ^YaH to olapHe before he received answers to any of t hem- It was not until 1781> that the gallant fiiou was des- patched with supphes in the Gffttnlitui^ which were arrested 028rd Di'C.) hy an ict^berg. Even this abortive attempt to leheve them was for inany months unknown to the starv- iu*^^ colonists, and Philhp resorted to strin^^ent means in order to biisl>aiid the scanty stores he poBsessed. He deter- mined to send n.M.S. Siritts to jlfrica for food, and told Lord Sidney (Oct., 1788), *^We at present depend en- tirely on [a'ovisions heiuf^ sent from En<^lan(U ar*d I beg leave to ulmerve that if a sbixt should be lost in the i>assage, it might be a very considerable time before it could be known in England," The SfHtm sailed, under Captain ^, Hunter, K.N., to the Cape of Good Hope. The passage from Austraha to Africa was then untried. It was not known that Bass's Straits separated Van Diemen's Laud froui New Holland, and Hunter decided to pass to the southward of New iiealand and round Cape Horn. The voyage to the Cape lasted from the '2nd Oct. to the 2nd Jan., and the dreaded ncarvy appeared among the crew, who had for thirteen or fourteen months not tasted fresh provisions of any kind, nor had they touched a single blade of vegetables/' At the Cape only did Caittaui Hunter learn any of the political events which had occmred in Europe after the departure of the first fleet for New Houth Wales, two years before. There also he beard that Lieut. Shortland, who bad sailed from Sydney in JiUy 17HH, had reached Batavia in a distressed condition, with but one ship, tlie Altwafuitr, the other transports, with the exceptioii of the Frifnihhip, having lost his company. Scurvy had raged in the Alexander and her consort, and the hitter struck on a reef on the coast of Borneo. The Altuattth-r had lost '* eighi men, and was reduced to two men in a watch, only four seamen and two boys being at all tit for duty. *' The FrhtNLsJfijf had only five men not disabled. *' In this melancholy state of both ships, the western monsoon being expected soon to set in, it nns iijdisj>ensably necessary to give up one for the sake of
