num_pages: 400
description: In 1788 11 small ships set sail from England on an eight-month-long voyage over the roughest of seas carrying 1500 people food for two years and all the equipment needed to build a colony of convicts in a land completely beyond their experience and imagination. In Portsmouth the fleet's preparation was characterized by disease promiscuity and death. The journey itself was one of unbearable hardship but also of extraordinary resilience. Upon their arrival however the colonists faced their biggest challenges of all: conflict starvation and despair. Combining the skill of a vigilant journalist with the magic of a master novelist this entrancing history brings the sights sounds sufferings and joys of the First Fleeters back to life. Journals letters reports and pleas to England are all interwoven here with the author's own insight and together they convey the innermost horrors and joys of the very first European Australians. The result is a narrative history that is surprising compelling and unforgettable.
language: English
title: 1788: The Brutal Truth of the First Fleet
publisher: William Heinemann