in legcuffs for two weeks and then transferred to Alexander. Then in late October, First Lieutenant James Maxwell, who had recently transferred aboard from Charlotte, was found incoherently drunk on duty and promptly returned to Charlotte. Two more children were born to the wives of marines during the voyage. In October 1787 the wife of marine drummer Benjamin Cook died from an unspecified illness and was buried at sea after a brief ceremony. James Scott, a Sergeant of Marines, wrote an account of the voyage in his journals, now held at the State Library of New South Wales Return to England Prince of Wales remained anchored in Sydney Cove for five months after her voyage, while her stores were unloaded. A shipboard inspection during this time found her hull was rotten with shipworm and on 23 May 1788 she was careened on the beach for repairs. In July she was released from government service and set sail for England on the 14th of that month, in convoy with her First Fleet sister ships Alexander, Borrowdale and Friendship, and under the overall command of Lieutenant John Shortland in Alexander. The plan was that the convoy sail north to rendezvous at Lord Howe Island, then set a course broadly parallel to the Great Barrier Reef with the aim of reaching the Dutch port of Batavia. From there the convoy would sail west through the Sunda Straits to the Cape of Good Hope, then north through the Atlantic to England. This route was comparatively well mapped – the first part largely mirroring that of James Cook in his first voyage in the Pacific from 1768 to 1771, and the remainder from Batavia being the traditional route of Dutch East Indiamen returning to Europe. Shortland estimated the voyage would take the convoy between six and ten months. This navigation plan was abandoned when both Prince of Wales and Borrowdale lost sight of Alexander and Friendship during a severe storm in late July, and found themselves alone and off course by the time the weather cleared. The two lost ships anchored while their masters, John Mason in Prince of Wales and Hobson Reed in Borrowdale, consulted. Neither considered it likely they could reach the Lord Howe Island rendezvous. They were also reluctant to hazard the voyage to Batavia through the Great Barrier Reef without Alexander in the lead. Instead, they agreed to turn their ships