Fleet moves to Sydney Cove and possession is declared
- When
- 26 January 1788
- Where
- Sydney Cove, Port Jackson
On 26 January 1788 the Fleet sailed from Botany Bay to Port Jackson, landing at Sydney Cove, where Phillip had chosen the penal settlement site and possession of New South Wales was declared.
Phillip selected Sydney Cove as the site for the British penal settlement between 21 and 23 January 1788. On 26 January the Fleet weighed anchor and sailed to Port Jackson, landing at Sydney Cove and raising the Union Jack, a date now commemorated as Australia Day. Possession of New South Wales was formally declared there. Of the 1,420 people who embarked in 1787, 1,373 were believed to have landed at Sydney Cove that January.
Sources
- Sydney Cove Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-20
- First Fleet Wikipedia
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.