The horror of the Second Fleet is one of Australia's most shameful untold stories. Just two years after the First Fleet landed with barely any European causalities, six more ships arrived full of dead and dying convicts.

But what had gone so wrong?

This month, Juliana examines how perverse incentives, greed, poorly written contracts and human frailties all collided to create the catastrophe of the Second Fleet, and what we can learn from it today.