Maritime History

HMS Sirius (1786)

HMS Sirius was a 10-gun sloop-of-war of the Royal Navy, launched in 1781 as the merchant ship Berwick. She was the flagship of the First Fleet, which sailed from Portsmouth, England, in 1787 to establish the first European colony in New South Wales, Australia. Sirius played a critical role in supplying and protecting the fledgling colony, including transporting essential provisions from the Cape of Good Hope. On 19 March 1790, she was wrecked on a reef at Norfolk Island while landing supplies, leaving the colony with only a single naval vessel. Her wreck site and surviving artefacts are now protected as part of Australia’s maritime heritage.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸France–Japan relations (19th century)
• ▸Alexander Wang (designer)
• ▸Fort Trumbull

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.