The Rohingya carried bags of belongings, toys and chickens and took selfies with each other as they sat on wooden benches during the three-hour trip from Chittagong to Bhashan Char.
Four Bangladesh navy ships on Tuesday took the second and biggest group of Rohingya Muslims yet from crowded refugee camps to an uncertain future on the bleak island.
More than 700,000 Rohingya joined 300,000 already in camps in Bangladesh in 2017 after a deadly purge on their villages in Myanmar that the United Nations has said could be genocide.
The Bangladesh government eventually wants to rehouse 100,000 of the camps' approximately one million Rohingya on the island.
The government insisted that the 1,800 refugees, who have been in camps since fleeing a Myanmar military clampdown, want to start new lives on Bhashan Char, but rights activists expressed new doubts about the transfers.
