John Hunter was second captain of HMS Sirius, which led the First Fleet of eleven ships to New South Wales. His account begins with the fitting-out of the Sirius in 1786 and describes the voyage of the ships via Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town to Botany bay. After the squadron’s arrival in Port Jackson, Hunter spent the next nine months exploring and charting the coastline. His journal, first published in London in 1793, is one of the earliest and most authoritative records of the beginnings of European settlement in Australia.