THE FUtST FLEET. 4g9 to panme and proMcute out of the lymits of the said proYince, and th^m (if it shall soe please God) to vanqoi^e, apprehends and take, and b^g taken, either, according to the Lawe of Armes, to kill or to keep and pre- serve them att his pleasure.* This power appears in Phillip's Commission, issued two hundred and fifty years afterwards, in much the same words : — And Wee do hereby give and grant nnto yon the said Arthur Phillip, by Modem yonrself or by your Captains or Commanders by you to be authorised, full Eng^lish. }>ower and authority to levy, arm, muster, and command and employ all persons whatsoever residinff within our said territory and its dependencies under your government, and as occasion shall serve, to march from one place to another, or to embs^rk them, for the resisting and withstanding of all enemies, pirates and rebels, both at sea and land, and such enemies, pirates, and rebels, if there shall be occasion, to pursue and prosecute in or out of the limits of our said territory and its dependencies, and (if it shall so please God) them to vanquish, apprehend, and take, and being so taken, according to law to put to death or Iceep and preserve alive, at your discretion. Phillip was thus armed with the same military powers as those conferred on the proprietor of the province of Maine by a Charter which, as Doylef expresses it^ gave him almost kingly power over the territory. THE FIRST FLEET. LisuTKNANT KiNo's MS. Joumal of the Voyage to Botany Bay contains the following information with respect to the ships com- posing the First Fleet : — The construction of a Eling's ship not being deemed proper for this service, the Berwick store-ship was pitched on by the Admiralty, and her name changed to the Sirius, so called from the bright star The swus, in ye southern constellation of the Great Dog. She had been pur- chased on the stocks by Government in 1781, and was sent once to America as a store-ship during ye war, and once after ye peace to ye West Indies ; since which time she had lay'n in ordinary at Deptford till named for this service, when she was taken into dock and, as the Yard people said, thoroughly overhauled; however, we not Btaunch. have frequently had reason to think otherwise in the course of our voyaga [Captain Hunter, in his Journal, p. 287, quotes the following passage from King's Joumal at Norfolk Island : — Of the Sirius, which was never more to return to the Thames, he (King) tells the following anecdote : — " She was built in the river
- Federal and State Constitutions. Part I, pp. 774-8.
t Kiatory of America, p. 90. Digitized by Google
