The appointed Lieutenant Governor James Stirling arrived in Cockburn Sound, Western Australia, on 31 May, aboard the hired transport barque . He brought his family and other intending settlers, numbering 69, to found a colony at the Swan River. On 8 June they were joined by a military detachment of some 56 officers and men who disembarked from the consort ship . On 17 June, a proxy proclamation was read by Stirling confirming Fremantle's earlier one. These immigrants began the history of Western Australia as a British colony, then as a state of federal Australia.