The two ships of the Malaspina expedition sail from Acapulco directly to Yakutat Bay, Alaska (at this time known as Port Mulgrave), where the rumored Northwest Passage is said to exist.

Finding only an inlet, Malaspina carefully surveys the Alaskan coast west to Prince William Sound.

The expedition makes contact with the Tlingit at Yakutat Bay.

Spanish scholars make a study of the tribe, recording information on social mores, language, economy, warfare methods, and burial practices.

Artists with the expedition, Tomas de Suria and José Cardero, produce portraits of tribal members and scenes of Tlingit daily life.

A glacier between Yakutat Bay and Icy Bay is subsequently named Malaspina Glacier.

Botanist Luis Née collects and describes numerous new plants during this time.

In addition to the expedition's work with the Nootkas, astronomical observations are made to fix the location of Nootka Sound and calibrate the expedition's chronometers.

Nootka Sound is surveyed and mapped with an accuracy far greater than had previously been available.

Unexplored channels are investigated.

The maps are also linked to the baseline established by Captain Cook, allowing calibration between Spanish and British charts.

Botanical studies are carried out, including an attempt to make a type of beer out of conifer needles that is hoped to have anti-scorbutic properties for combating scurvy.

The expedition ships take on water and wood, and provide the Spanish outpost with many useful goods, including medicines, food, various tools and utensils, and a Réaumur scale thermometer.

Knowing that Cook had previously surveyed the coast west of Prince William Sound and found no passage, Malaspina ceases his search at that point and sails to the Spanish outpost at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island.

Malaspina's expedition spends a month at Nootka Sound.

While at Nootka, the expedition's scientists make a study of the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka peoples).

The relationship between the Spanish and the Nootkas us at its lowest point when Malaspina arrives.

Malaspina and his crew are able to greatly improve the relationship, which is one of their objectives and reasons for stopping in the first place.

Due in part to Malaspina's ability to bequeath generous gifts from his well-supplied ships about to return to Mexico, the friendship between the Spanish and the Nootkas is strengthened

The gaining of the Nootka chief Maquinna's trust is particularly significant, as he is one of the most powerful chiefs of the region and had been very wary of the Spanish when Malaspina arrived.

His friendship strengthens the Spanish claim to Nootka Sound, which is in question after the Nootka Crisis and resolved in the subsequent Nootka Conventions.

The Spanish government is eager for the Nootka to formally agree that the land upon which the Spanish outpost stands had been ceded freely and legally.

This desire has to do with Spain's negotiations with Britain than over Nootka Sound and the Pacific Northwest.

Malaspina is able to acquire exactly what the government wants.

After weeks of negotiations the principal Nootka chief, Maquinna, agrees that the Spanish will always remain owners of the land they then occupy, and that they have acquired it with all due propriety.

The outcome of the Nootka Convention depends in part on this pact.

The British have extended their Canadian holdings to include much of the North American northwest.

The longitudinal boundary of 141°W separates the British sector from the Russian sector (modern Alaska).

The British quickly sponsor the Vancouver Expedition of exploration.

The Nootka Sound controversy has also played a part in the French Revolution.

The Spanish Bourbon monarchy had asked for French support in the dispute in the event that it led to war between Spain and Great Britain.

The French Bourbon king Louis XVI had wanted to back Spain against Great Britain, but the National Assembly had disputed his right to enter France into an alliance on his own prerogative, maintaining that the King's right to determine foreign policy and declare war is subject to the sovereignty of the people.

Eventually the Assembly had ruled that a proposal for a declaration of war could be initiated by the king, but had to be ratified by the Assembly; this had been a major blow to the monarchy.

Kamehameha invites Keōua to meet with him when the Puʻukoholā Heiau is completed in 1791.

Keōua may have been dispirited by his recent losses.

He may have mutilated himself before landing so as to make himself an imperfect sacrificial victim.

One of Kamehameha's chiefs throws a spear at him as he steps on shore.

He dodged it, by some accounts, but was then cut down by musket fire.

Keōua's bodyguards, caught by surprise, are killed.

Kamehameha, with Keōua dead and his supporters captured or slain, becomes King of Hawaiʻi island.

King, while in England, had married Anna Josepha Coombe (his first cousin) on March 11, 1791 and returned shortly after on HMS Gorgon to take up his post as Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island, at an annual salary of two hundred and fifty pounds.

King's first legitimate offspring, Phillip Parker King, is born here in December 1791; and four daughters will follow.

Both public and official opinion had been shocked when news of the horrors of the Second Fleet reached England.

An inquiry had been held but no attempt had been made to arrest Donald Traill, master of Neptune and described as a demented sadist, or bring a public prosecution against him, the other masters, or the firm of contractors.

They had already been contracted by the government to prepare the Third Fleet for sailing to Port Jackson in 1791.

Traill and his Chief Mate William Ellerington had been privately prosecuted for the murder of an unnamed convict, seaman Andrew Anderson and John Joseph, cook, but after a trial lasting three hours before Sir James Marriott in the Admiralty Court, the jury had acquitted both men on all charges "without troubling the Judge to sum up the evidence".

The Third Fleet comprises eleven ships that had set sail from the United Kingdom in February, March and April 1791, bound for the Sydney penal settlement, with more than two thousand convicts aboard.

The passengers comprise convicts, military personnel and notable people sent to fill high positions in the colony.

More important for the fledgling colony is that the ships also carry provisions.

The first ship to arrive in Sydney is the Mary Ann with its cargo of female convicts and provisions on July 9, 1791.

The Mary Ann can only state that more ships are expected to be sent.

The Mary Ann had sailed on her own to Sydney Cove, and there is some argument about whether she was the last ship of the Second Fleet, or the first ship of the Third Fleet.

The ships that make up each fleet, however, are decided from the viewpoint of the settlers in Sydney Cove.

For them, the second set of ships had arrived in 1790 (June), and the third set of ships arrives in 1791 (July–October).

The Mary Ann is a 1791 arrival.

The next ship to arrive, just over three weeks later, on August 1, 1791, is the Matilda, which bringss news that there are another nine ships making their way for Sydney, and which are expected to arrive shortly.

The final vessel, the Admiral Barrington, does not arrive until October 16, nearly eleven weeks after the Matilda, and fourteen weeks after the Mary Ann.

One hundred and seventy-three male convicts and nine female convicts had died during this voyage.

This death rate is high but nowhere near as bad as what had occurred on the Second Fleet.

The first free settlers arrive in 1791.

Kōdayū departs for Saint Petersburg in 1791 in the company of Laxman to ask to be returned home.

Through Laxmann, Kodayu is granted an audience with Catherine the Great in Tsarskoye Selo; she permits Kodayu's people to return home in the same year.