The price of fresh meat at Port Jackson was so exorbitant, that it was impossible to think of purchasing it on the public account.  I obtained one quarter of beef for the ship’s company, in exchange for salt meat, and the governor furnished us with some baskets of vegetables from his garden; and in lieu of the daily pound of biscuit, each man received a pound and a quarter of soft bread, without any expense to government.  But with these exceptions, I was obliged to leave the refreshment of the people to their own individual exertions; assisting them with the payment due for savings of bread since leaving the Cape of Good Hope, and the different artificers with the money earned by their extra services in refitting the ship.  Fish are usually plentiful at Port Jackson in the summer, but not in the winter time; and our duties were too numerous and indispensable to admit of sending people away with the seine, when there was little prospect of success; a few were, however, occasionally bought alongside, from boats which fished along the coast.

In purchasing a sea stock for the cabin, I paid L3 a head for sheep, weighing from thirty to forty pounds when dressed.  Pigs were bought at 9d. per pound, weighed alive, geese at 10s. each, and fowls at 3s.; and Indian corn for the stock cost 5s. a bushel.

To complete the ship’s provisions, I entered into a contract for 30,000 pounds of biscuit, 8000 pounds of flour, and 156 bushels of kiln-dried wheat; but in the meantime, the ship Coromandel brought out the greater part of the twelvemonths’ provisions, for which I had applied on sailing from Spithead; and the contractor was prevailed upon to annul that part of the agreement relating to flour and wheat.  The biscuit cost 33s. per hundred pounds; and considering that the colony was at short allowance, and that the French ships were to be supplied, it was a favourable price.  From two American vessels which arrived, I purchased 1483 gallons of rum at 6s. 6d. per gallon; which, with what remained of our former stock was a proportion for twelve months.  In other respects our provisions were completed from the quantity sent out from England; and the remaining part was lodged in the public stores, in charge of the commissary, until our return.

In addition to the melancholy loss of eight officers and men, at the entrance of Spencer’s Gulf, and the previous deficiency of four in the complement, I found it necessary to discharge the man who had been bitten by a seal at Kangaroo Island, as also a marine, who was invalided; so that fourteen men were required to complete my small ship’s company.  Mr John Aken, chief mate of the ship Hercules, was engaged to fill the situation of master, and five men, mostly seamen, were entered, but finding it impossible to fill up the complement with free people, I applied to the governor for his permission to enter such convicts as should present themselves, and could bring respectable recommendations.  This request, as every other I had occasion to make to His Excellency, was complied with; and when the requisite number was selected, he gave me an official document, containing clauses relative to these men, well calculated to ensure their good conduct.  As this document may be thought curious by many readers, it is here inserted; premising, that the men therein mentioned, with the exception of two, were convicts for life.