There are 20 known contemporary accounts of the First Fleet made by people sailing in the fleet, including journals (both manuscript and published) and letters. The eleven ships of the fleet, carrying over 1,000 convicts, soldiers and seamen, left England on 13 May 1787 and arrived in Botany Bay between 18 and 20 January 1788 before relocating to Port Jackson to establish the first European settlement in Australia, a penal colony which became Sydney.