His 26 gun frigate HMS "Challenger" was the first ship to arrive in a fleet of 3 ships sent out from Britain to establish a colony at the Swan River in Western Australia.
Fremantle, pronounced 'Frmantle', was established on 2 May1829 when Captain Charles Howe Fremantle (after whom the settlement was named) formally took possession of 'the whole of the west coast of New Holland in the name of His Britannic Majesty and the Union Jack was hoisted on the south head of the river'.
Fremantle was formally proclaimed in August 1829 and almost immediately the Surveyor General, John Septimus Roe, laid out a grid system of roads on the isthmus which lay between South Bay and North Bay.
Fremantle Gaol - located on the top of a small hill at 16 The Terrace this remarkable historic gaol was built between 1851 and 1859.
Fremantle was born in 1765, and joined the navy in 1777 aged just eleven aboard the frigate HMS Hussar.
Fremantle, despite unspoken rules of engagement which did not require him to engage ships larger than his own, used his superior speed to overtake the 80 gun Ça Ira, which had been dmaaged in a collision.
Nelson requested and received Fremantle as a companion and junior officer when he was detached to Italy in 1796, and the two wreaked havoc along the Italian coastline, evacuating British and royalist civilians to Corsica when the French army invaded, capturing coastal positions and raiding shore installations, capturing the island of Elba.
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