Scarborough and Friendship accompanied the Supply, and the fleet, thus divided into two squadrons, continued the voyage without noteworthy incident until their arrival within a couple of days of each other at Botany Bay.
'Thus,' writes Collins, the Judge-Advocate, '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 venture to contemplate, and on which it was impossible to reflect without some apprehensions as to its termination. … We had sailed five thousand and twenty-one leagues … without meeting any accident, in a fleet of eleven sail, nine of which were merchantmen that had never before sailed in that distant and imperfectly explored ocean. … Only thirty-two persons had died since leaving England, among whom were to be included one or two deaths by accident; although previous to our departure it was generally conjectured that before .we should have been a month at sea one of the transports would have been converted into a hospital ship. But it fortunately happened otherwise. The high health which was apparent in every countenance' (when Botany Bay was reached) 'was to be attributed not only to the refreshments we met with at Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope, but to the excellent quality of the provisions with which we were supplied by Mr Richards, junior, the contractor; and the spirits visible in every eye was to be ascribed
