By the dry weather which prevailed our water had been so much affected, beside being lessened by the watering of some of the transports, that a prohibition was laid by the governor on the watering of the remainder at Sydney, and their boats were directed to go to a convenient place upon the north shore.  To remedy this evil the governor had employed the stone-mason’s gang to cut tanks out of the rock, which would be reservoirs for the water large enough to supply the settlement for some time.

December.] On the 3rd of this month the ships Albemarle and Active sailed for India.  After their departure several people were missing from the settlement; some whose sentences of transportation had expired, and others who were yet convicts.  Previous to their sailing (it having been reported that the seamen intended to conceal such as had made interest among them to get off) the governor instructed the master to deliver any persons whom he might discover to be on board without permission to quit the colony, as prisoners to the commanding officer of the first British settlement they should touch at in India.  About this time a boat belonging to Mr. White was taken from its mooring; and it was for a time supposed that she had been taken off by some runaways to get on board one of the ships then about to sail, and afterwards set adrift; but she was found by some gentlemen of the Gorgon the day after their departure, between this harbour and Broken Bay, with two men in her, who on the appearance of the party which found her ran into the woods.  The gentlemen left her with a plank knocked out, an oar and the rudder broken, and otherwise rendered useless to the people who ran away with her.  They also fell in with a convict, an Irishman, who had been absent five weeks from Parramatta, and who had set off with some others to proceed along the coast in search of another settlement.  The boat was brought up a few days afterwards.

Two of the whalers, the Matilda and Mary Ann, came in from sea the day on which the other ships sailed.  The former landed a boat in a bay on the coast about six miles to the southward of Port Stephens, where the seine was hauled and a large quantity of fish taken; but of the fish which they went to procure (whales) they saw none.

The Mary Ann was rather more fortunate.  By going to the southward, she killed nine fish; of five of them she secured enough to procure about thirty barrels of oil; but was prevented by bad weather from getting more.  These ships sailed again immediately, and both ran down the coast as far to the southward as 36 degrees 30 minutes, and returned on the 16th without killing a fish.  The masters attributed their bad success to currents; and, giving up all hopes of a fishery here, they determined, after refitting, to quit the coast.  The Salamander and Britannia whalers came in at the same time, and with like ill fortune.  Melvill the master of the Britannia,