means of
communication with civilisation.

The Home Government, when they did despatch a second fleet, instead of
sending supplies for the starving people under Phillip's care, sent more
prisoners, and very little to eat was sent with them. The authorities
seem to have had an idea that a few hundred shovels, some decayed garden
seeds, and a thousand or two of Old Bailey men and women criminals, were
all the means needed to found a prosperous and self-supporting colony.
How Phillip and his successors surmounted these difficulties is another
story; but in the sea history of Australia the work of the naval
governors occupies no small space in it. Remember, too, that the Torres
Straits route and the Great Barrier Reef, now as well charted as the
Solent, were only then being slowly discovered by clumsy old sailing
craft, whose masters learnt to dread and avoid the dangers of the
unknown coast as children grow cautious of fire, by actually touching
it.

Hunter, the second Governor of New South Wales, and King, the third
Governor, both did remarkable surveying work on the coast while serving
under Phillip, and both made still more remarkable voyages to England.
Hunter was the senior naval officer under Phillip, and was in command of
the _Sirius_ when she was lost on Norfolk Island.

This is how the dauntless Hunter got home with the crew of the _Sirius_,
after waiting six months on Norfolk Island for the chance of a passage.
The _Waaksamheyd_, a Dutch snow{*} of 300-tons burden, which had brought
supplies to Sydney from Batavia, was engaged to take Hunter and his
shipwrecked crew to England. She was _thirteen months_ on the voyage,
and here are some extracts from Hunter's letter to the Admiralty,
written from Portsmouth on the 23rd of April, 1792:--

"I sailed from Port Jackson on the 27th of March, 1791, victualled
for six months and with sixty tons of water. We were one hundred and
twenty-three people on board all told" (remember this vessel was of
three hundred tons burden). "The master was directed to call at Norfolk
Island to receive despatches, but contrary winds prevented us carrying
out these orders. We steered to the northward and made New Caledonia,
passing to the westward of it, as the master (a Dutchman) did not feel
himself qualified to navigate a vessel in these unknown seas. He had,
upon leaving Port Jackson, requested my assistance, which I gave him. In
sailing to the northward we fell in with several isla