When the First Fleet of 1,300 convicts, guards, and administrators arrived in January 1788, the Eora numbered about 1,500. By early 1789 frequent remarks were made of great numbers of decomposed bodies of Eora natives which settlers and sailors came across on beaches, in coves and in the bays. Canoes, commonly seen being paddled around the harbor of Port Jackson, had disappeared. The Sydney natives called the disease that was wiping them out ("gai-galla") and what was diagnosed as a smallpox epidemic in April 1789 effectively decimated the Port Jackson tribes. Robert King states that of an estimated 2,000 Eora, half (Bennelong's contemporary estimate) were decimated by the contagion. Smallpox and other introduced disease, together with starvation from the plundering of their fish resources, is said to have accounted for the virtual extinction of the 30–50 strong Cadigal clan on the peninsula ("kattai") between Sydney Cove and South Head. J. L. Kohen estimates that between 50 and 90 percent of members of local tribes died during the first three years of settlement. No settler child showed any symptoms of the disease. The English rebuffed any responsibility for the epidemic. It has been suggested that either rogue convicts/settlers or the governing authority itself spread the smallpox when ammunition stocks ran low and muskets, when not faulty, proved inadequate to defend the outpost. It is known that several officers of the Fleet had experience of war in North America where using smallpox to diminish tribes had been used as early as 1763.