First Fleet - Searching

SEARCHING

This section contains a searchable database of 780 First Fleet convicts. It does not contain information about the other 200 sailors, marines and officers who sailed with them. There are three ways this data can be searched.

Simple Search
Advanced Search
Download the data

An advanced search enables the convict data to be queried about age, gender, occupation, crime, value of crime, sentence, transported for, date and place of trial, partner in crime, description of looks and behaviour, date of leaving the colony, or date of death, and details about marriage and children.

However all this information is not available for every convict. See the Sources section for a better understanding of how historical data is collected and why some is missing.

Searching the database involves you framing a search request. More about how to frame questions and hypotheses for the search request can be found in the Learning section and sample questions can be found in the Investigating section.

To request a search, use the form provided on the screen. There are two ways of entering requests into the search categories: either type enough letters of the data you are looking for e.g. lab for laborer in the Occupation category, or pull down the menu in categories that are more pre-defined such as Ship and Notes. Then select the format of the results by clicking either Names Only or All Details. Finally click Start Search.

For more detailed instructions about Advanced Searches see How to Use the Database below.

If you are a professional historian or an experienced researcher, you may prefer to download the data from the web site into your own database engine so that you are not limited by the speed of web access and so that you can construct more complex search requests and more tailored report formats than the ones we have provided at this site.

The data can be downloaded free of charge provided it is for non-commercial uses. No individual or company can use the data in whole or in part as a component of another product without acknowledgement and without permission.

The result is an alphabetical list of all the convicts on board the ship Lady Penrhyn. You can alter the order by returning to the main search screen called the database screen and use the drop down menu in the centre bottom of the screen to (say) change sort results from Family Name to Given Name.

You can see more details of each convict on the list by clicking on their name. This gives one detailed record at a time.

To see a scrollable list of detailed records, return to the main screen and select the
"All Details" button in the Format of Results section at the bottom left of the screen.

Clear your search screen by clicking the button in the middle of the bottom line of the search screen.

Search requests can be combined. First clear the form. Then use the drop down menus to select Date of Trial=1783 and Transported for=7.

Clear the form again and try Death=1788.

If you want to browse all the records just select Gender = F, and in a second search select Gender = M then start the Search.

While this search capacity will provide for most needs, if you require more detailed Or and Not searches you can download the database, and operate it from within the application of your choice.

For information about what the categories of information mean, go to the section Information About The Data In The Database.

Numeric Symbols used are:

= equals

> greater than or later than

< less than or earlier than

<= less than or equal to, or earlier than or in

>= greater than or equal or, or later than or in

!= not equal to