The Fortitude was the first of Dr John Dunmore Lang’s immigrant ships to Moreton Bay, departing Gravesend on 14 September 1848 with 253 on board. After dropping anchor on January 21, the immigrants spent time in quarantine, getting some fresh air and testing out their land legs.
The Schooner Susan brought the first group in to Brisbane on February 7, 1849.
Lang had selected the immigrants with a view to providing the colony with skilled protestant workers. The Fortitude immigrants needed little encouragement to view themselves as pioneers of a new Christian meritocracy in the New World.
Skilled migrants were in short supply, but unfortunately so was accommodation in Brisbane Town. Captain Wickham, the Police Magistrate for Moreton Bay, found himself trying to work out what to do with so many new arrivals at once. Panicked correspondence flew between Moreton Bay and Sydney, all beginning with the words “I have the honour to,” but growing increasingly terse as it became clear that no-one had the faintest idea.
Fortitude was what the immigrants would require to carry out their vision of “laying the foundations of a great State, and they would not allow inferior material to be used in the cement.” (By inferior material, judging by the rest of the article from which the above quote was taken, they meant convicts. And so forth.)
In the end, the Fortitude immigrants were permitted to settle temporarily just outside of town, near York’s Hollow. The place became known as Fortitude Valley, now a fashionable inner-city precinct offering nightclubs, Chinatown and other pleasures that would have had the original Fortitude dwellers appalled.
Sources: The Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld.: 1846-1861), Sat 3 Feb 1849, Page 2, The Brisbane Courier (Brisbane, Qld.: 1854-1833) Sat 21 Jul 1928 Page 21.
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