Many prisoners were incarcerated in local prisons for months before being moved to ports and prison ships. Often these would lie at anchor for many more weeks until tides were right or the ships' complement was full.

Read 'The Floating Brothel' by Sian Rees - it's a great book and gives a brilliant description of a prison ship and its inhabitants.

The most difficult bit was actually getting back from Australia. Ships went when they could be paid for, they didn't just go out on the off chance someone would have finished their time. More often than not, prisoners spent years more than their alloted sentence ashore in various God-forsaken places.

LTS