Charlotte Medal
silver medallion
The Charlotte Medal is a silver medallion, 74 millimetres (2.9 in) in diameter, depicting the voyage of the convict transport Charlotte, with the First Fleet, to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Its obverse depicts the ship and the reverse is inscribed with a description of the journey. Struck by convict Thomas Barrett upon arriving in Botany Bay aboard Charlotte in January 1788, the medal is said to be the first work of Australian colonial art. Within a month, Barrett became the first person to be executed in the new colony.
Creation
During the journey Charlotte visited Rio de Janeiro. While at anchor, one of the ship's convicts, a forger and mutineer by the name of Thomas Barrett was caught giving locals fake coins made from buckles, buttons, and spoons. The Surgeon-general of the Fleet, John White was impressed with his skill in making these forgeries, without having the apparent tools and other means to do so. This led him to commission Barrett to make the medal, to commemorate the journey, possibly from the surgeon's silver kidney dish.
Inscriptions
The obverse of the medal depicts Charlotte at anchor at night in Botany Bay. The inscription reads The Charlotte at anchor in Botany Bay Jan'y th.20.1788
The reverse of the medal is inscribed with a journal of the voyage.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charlotte Medal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.