On the 20th of May, the ships being then in latitude 47 deg. 57’, and longitude 12 deg. 14’ west of London, the Hyena returned.  She brought, however, no exact account of the state of the transports; for the sea at that time ran so high, that the Governor found it difficult even to sit to write, and quite impracticable to send on board the several ships for exact reports of their situation, and of the behaviour of the convicts.  All, however, had not been perfectly tranquil; the convicts in the Scarborough, confiding probably in their numbers, had formed a plan for gaining possession of that ship, which the officers had happily detected and frustrated.  This information was received from them just before the Hyena sailed, and the Governor had ordered two of the ringleaders on board the Sirius for punishment.  These men, after receiving a proper chastisement, were separated from their party by being removed into another ship, the Prince of Wales.  No other attempt of this kind was made during the voyage.

We may now consider the adventurers in this small fleet as finally detached, for the present, from their native country; looking forward, doubtless with very various emotions, to that unknown region, which, for a time at least, they were destined to inhabit.  If we would indulge a speculative curiosity, concerning the tendency of such an enterprize, there are few topics which would afford an ampler scope for conjecture.  The sanguine might form expectations of extraordinary consequences, and be justified, in some degree, by the reflection, that from smaller, and not more respectable beginnings, powerful empires have frequently arisen.  The phlegmatic and apprehensive might magnify to themselves the difficulties of the undertaking, and prognosticate, from various causes, the total failure of it.  Both, perhaps, would be wrong.  The opinion nearest to the right was probably formed by the Governor himself, and such others among the leaders of the expedition, as from native courage, felt themselves superior to all difficulties likely to occur; and by native good sense were secured from the seduction of romantic reveries.  To all it must appear a striking proof of the flourishing state of navigation in the present age, and a singular illustration of its vast progress since the early nautical efforts of mankind; that whereas the ancients coasted with timidity along the shores of the Mediterranean, and thought it a great effort to run across the narrow sea which separates Crete from Egypt, Great Britain, without hesitation, sends out a fleet to plant a settlement near the antipodes.

3 June 1787

The high sea which had impeded the intercourse between the ships, as they were out of the reach of rocks and shoals, was not, in other respects, an unfavourable circumstance.  On the whole, therefore, the weather was reckoned fine, and the passage very prosperous from Spithead to Santa Cruz, in the Isle of Teneriffe, where the fleet anchored on the 3d of June.