Early in the morning of the 23rd, one of the men at the Lookout discerned a sail to the northward, but, the weather coming on thick, soon lost sight of it.  The bad weather continuing, it was not seen again until the 25th, when word was brought up to the settlement, that a large ship, apparently under jury-masts, was seen in the offing; and on the following day the Surprise transport, Nicholas Anstis master (late chief mate of the Lady Penrhyn) anchored in the cove from England, having on board one captain, one lieutenant, one surgeon’s mate, one serjeant, one corporal, one drummer, and twenty-three privates of the New South Wales corps; together with two hundred and eighteen male convicts.  She sailed on the 19th of January from Portsmouth in company with two other transports, with whom she parted between the Cape of Good Hope and this place.

We had the mortification to learn, that the prisoners in this ship were very unhealthy, upwards of one hundred being now in the sick list on board.  They had been very sickly also during the passage, and had buried forty-two of these unfortunate people.  A portable hospital had fortunately been received by the Justinian, and there now appeared but too great a probability that we should soon have patients enough to fill it; for the signal was flying at the South Head for the other transports, and we were led to expect them in as unhealthy a state as that which had just arrived.

On the evening of Monday the 28th, the Neptune and Scarborough transports anchored off Garden Island, and were warped into the cove the following morning.

We were not mistaken in our expectations of the state in which they might arrive.  By noon the following day, two hundred sick had been landed from the different transports.  The west side afforded a scene truly distressing and miserable; upwards of thirty tents were pitched in front of the hospital, the portable one not being yet put up; all of which, as well as the hospital and the adjacent huts, were filled with people, many of whom were labouring under the complicated diseases of scurvy and the dysentery, and others in the last stage of either of those terrible disorders, or yielding to the attacks of an infectious fever.

The appearance of those who did not require medical assistance was lean and emaciated.  Several of these miserable people died in the boats as they were rowing on shore, or on the wharf as they were lifting out of the boats; both the living and the dead exhibiting more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed in this country.  All this was to be attributed to confinement, and that of the worst species, confinement in a small space and in irons, not put on singly, but many of them chained together.  On board the Scarborough a plan had been formed to take the ship, which would certainly have been attempted, but for a discovery which was fortunately made by one of the convicts (Samuel Burt) who had too much principle