Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: Bolters An Unruly Bunch of Malcontents

  • The Catalpa rescue: a Most Audacious Prison Break

    The whaling barque Catalpa.

       In April 1875, the American whaling barque Catalpa quietly slipped out of New Bedford harbour without ceremony. To all appearances, she was just another whaler embarking on a routine hunt in the North Atlantic. However, Captain George Anthony had orders to sail halfway around the world and be stationed off Australia’s west coast, ready to rescue six convicts imprisoned by the British in Fremantle.

       The prisoners were all Irish nationalists who had been found guilty of treason and sent to Fremantle eight years earlier with scores of other revolutionaries. Over the years, most had been pardoned, but these six men had been serving soldiers in the British Army, and the government was disinclined to let them go. However, an Irish Independence organisation in the United States, the Clan-na-Gael, formulated a plan to set them free.

       They purchased the whaler, recruited a captain sympathetic to their cause and sent Irish agents, headed by John Breslin, to Fremantle to organise the escape on the ground. Breslin passed himself off as a wealthy American businessman looking for investment opportunities in the far-flung colony. He made contact with the convicts and warned them to be ready to leave at short notice. Breslin then assembled a small armoury of firearms and organised the hire of horses and carriages. He also reconnoitred the coastline south of Fremantle, looking for a suitable out-of-the-way place to take the escapees. There they would be taken off the beach in a whaleboat and delivered to the waiting ship.

    John J Breslin, AKA John Collins who orchestrated the Catalpa escape.

       By January 1876, all was in place except for the Catalpa. The ship was nowhere to be seen. As the weeks ticked by without any word from the whaler, Breslin grew increasingly concerned that some calamity had befallen her. However, his fears were unfounded. To Breslin’s great relief, the Catalpa finally dropped anchor in Bunbury on 28 March.

       Breslin met with Captain Anthony, and the two men thrashed out the final details of the escape. And, after a couple of unavoidable delays, the pair set on the escape, taking place on Monday, 17 April. On Sunday night, Captain Anthony took the Catalpa into international waters 30 kilometres west of Rockingham and then went ashore in the whaleboat to wait for Breslin and the Irish prisoners at a prearranged beach near Cape Peron.

       On Monday morning, the prisoners left their work gangs on various pretexts and made their way to Rockingham Road. There, they were met by Breslin and his men waiting with a change of clothes and horse-drawn carriages. They then raced south towards the waiting whaleboat. By 10.30, the prisoners, Breslin and all his men, were being loaded onto one of the Catalpa’s whaleboats as a plume of dark smoke from the government steamer smudged the morning sky. Captain Anthony wasted no time heading the boat out to sea to rendezvous with his ship.   

    However, it would not be smooth sailing getting back to the Catalpa. The seas had turned rough while he had been waiting on shore. To make matters worse, the whaleboat sat low in the water, weighed down by so many extra bodies. The boat crew battled the wind and waves all that day but made slow progress. But towards sunset, Captain Anthony spotted the Catalpa off in the distance. Then disaster struck. The mast snapped under the strain of the taut canvas and nearly flung everyone into the ocean. But for the quick actions of the man at the tiller, the brazen escape may well have failed there and then. Once night had descended and the ship was lost to sight, they had no choice but to spend an uncomfortable night in the cramped boat being buffeted about by the ocean swells. The next morning, the mast was repaired, and they were once again on their way. They soon sighted the Catalpa again and set a course to join her. Captain Anthony also spotted billowing black smoke, heralding the government steamer Georgette, on a course to intercept the whaler. Captain Anthony had the sail taken in and the mast lowered. The steamer passed within one kilometre of the whaleboat but failed to see it in the choppy sea conditions.

    “The Rescued Six.” By Charles Herbert Moore – https://archive.org/details/catalpaexpeditio01peas, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33130178

       When the Georgette came alongside the Catalpa, the Superintendent of the Water Police enquired if there were any escaped prisoners on board. On being told there were none, the police officer asked if he could come aboard so he could see for himself. The first mate forbade him permission, reminding the Superintendent that the Catalpa was an American-flagged ship in international waters and was therefore not subject to British authority. Not wishing to spark an international incident, the Georgette broke off after 10 minutes and continued its fruitless search for the missing prisoners.

       As the Georgette steamed off, Captain Anthony had the mast and sail reset, and his oarsmen pulled for all they were worth. When the first mate sighted the whaleboat in the distance, he ordered the Catalpa’s helmsman to head towards them to close the gap. Hidden from sight by the bulk of the ship, Captain Anthony was unaware that a police cutter was also making for the ship.

       The whaleboat reached the Catalpa first and was hooked up to the davits, and within minutes, they were underway again and heading north. It was a close-run race. But, in the end, the police could do nothing but watch on as several of the Irish convicts jeered at them from the safety of the American ship’s deck. The police cutter’s commander gracefully accepted defeat with a snappy salute before returning to Fremantle empty-handed.    However, the Western Australian Governor was less sanguine about losing six prisoners so easily. He ordered the Georgette to go back out, find the ship and return the six prisoners to gaol. This time, she would carry a large complement of armed police and prison guards as well as a field artillery piece mounted on the foredeck. The next morning, the Georgette intercepted the Catalpa in international waters for the second time. This time, the Catalpa was heading south past Fremantle on her way towards the Southern Ocean to start her long voyage home.

    Mural commemorating the Catalpa rescue in Fremantle, WA. Photo CJ Ison.

       At 8 a.m., the Georgette pulled a little ahead of the Catalpa and fired a shot across her bows, signalling for the whaling ship to stop. Captain Anthony ignored the order and continued on his course until the Georgette’s gun crew had reloaded their piece. Only then did he put a speaking trumpet to his mouth and ask what they wanted.

       The Georgette’s Commanding Officer asked if there were any escaped prisoners onboard. This time, he warned Captain Anthony that the colonial secretary had been in contact with the American Government and had been authorised to use force to stop the ship. He also threatened to bring down the Catalpa’s masts with artillery fire should they not heave to. Breslin and Anthony agreed to call the bluff, thinking it unlikely that they had got permission to board, even with the magic of telegraphic communications. Anthony pointed to the Stars and Stripes fluttering in the wind and cautioned that an attack on his ship would be an attack on the United States.

       No one on the steamer wished to trigger a diplomatic row, so after shadowing the Catalpa for another half an hour or so, the Georgette veered off and returned to port empty-handed. Breslin would later write that the British left without even bidding them a hearty bon voyage.

       The Catalpa arrived in New York on 19 August after a four-month voyage via Cape Horn. The rescuers were feted as heroes, and the six Irish prisoners settled into their new lives as free men. This was arguably one of the best planned and executed escapes during Australia’s convict era. It was also the last.

    A more detailed account of the rescue can be found in Bolters: An Unruly Bunch of Malcontents.

    Sun sets over Flinders and Stanley Islands in Bathurst Bay with a fishing boat in the forground at Cape Melville on Cape York Peninsular, Far North Queensland. Photo Chris Ison / Wildshot Images.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2025.

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  • Sydney’s First Convict Escape by Sea – 1790

    One of the first concerted efforts to escape from Sydney that did not involve trying to stow away on a homeward-bound ship took place in the latter part of 1790. Convicts, John Turwood, George Lee, George Connaway, John Watson, and John Strutton stole a boat and headed out to sea.

       Turwood and his mates had endured unimaginable hardships since leaving England, for they had come out on the infamous Second Fleet. Unsanitary living conditions and malnutrition had taken their toll on the voyage out. One-quarter of the 1006 convicts who left England died before ever reaching New South Wales. Of those who were put ashore, nearly 500 were immediately hospitalised. Of those, 124 would soon be dead. By September 1790, Turwood and his mates had been in the penal settlement for just eight weeks, but they had no desire to remain any longer to see if their fortunes might improve.

       Strutton had tried to escape once already. He had been smuggled aboard the Neptune and hidden among the firewood shortly before she was to sail back to England. However, sentries found his hiding place, and he was taken off the ship. He was flogged for trying to abscond, but the punishment only made him more determined to try again.

    Map of Sydney Cove Port Jackson, April 1788. Published by R. Cribb, London, 1789 original attributed to Fowkes, Francis – National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.map-nk276

    Soon after sunset on the night of 26 September, the five convicts stole a small flat-bottomed punt at Rose Hill and rowed down the Parramatta River into Sydney Harbour. Crammed in the small boat with them was one week’s supply of food, some cooking pots and other utensils, a few spare clothes and some bedding. At Watson’s Bay, just inside Sydney Heads, they put ashore and found another, much larger boat. Though it did not look particularly sturdy, it did have a mast and sail. Despite its shortcomings, the runaways thought they would have a better chance of surviving the open ocean in the larger boat. They transferred their belongings and headed out through Sydney Heads. By the time the bolters were reported missing and the two boats stolen, they were well on their way.

       Turwood had told friends before he had set off that they were going to sail to Tahiti, a place elevated in his mind to a tropical paradise where they could live freely among the Islanders. Tales from sailors who had visited Tahiti and other Pacific Islands had returned to England with fanciful stories about their time spent there. However, just how he intended to accomplish the 6,000-kilometre voyage without a sextant, charts, a compass, or any other navigation aids is a mystery.

       John Turwood was serving a life sentence for highway robbery. George Lee and George Connaway had stolen a pair of bullocks valued at £20. They had been sentenced to death, but that was later commuted to transportation for life. Watson and Strutton were each serving seven-year terms for stealing. Though nothing in their convict records suggests any of them had a nautical background, at least one of them knew how to handle a small vessel under sail.

        After leaving Sydney Harbour, they set a course north, always remaining close to the coastline. When the sheltered waters of Port Stephens beckoned, they pulled in, and that’s where they stayed. After sailing 150 km, that was as close as they got to Tahiti. The local Aboriginal people, the Worimi, made them welcome and adopted them into their community. Over time, Turwood and the others learned to speak their language and were given Worimi names. They also seem to have undertaken formal initiation rituals, and at least a couple of the men took wives and began raising their own families. However, life was a constant struggle for the men, who were unaccustomed to the diet and customs of the Worimi people, especially in the beginning. Strutton died, although the circumstances and date of death were never recorded. Nonetheless, the other four lived there for five years and would have remained longer had a British warship not shown up.

       HMS Providence pulled into Port Stephens in mid-August 1795. She had just crossed the Pacific Ocean but had been unable to enter the Heads because of a strong westerly wind blowing off the land. Captain Broughton thought he would wait a few days in these sheltered waters before trying again. While there, he discovered Turwood and the other three white men living with the Aborigines. Broughton described them in his log as “miserable, half-starved objects, depending on the hospitality of the natives for their subsistence …” He offered to return them to Sydney, assuring them that they would likely not face punishment. Lee, Connaway and Watson immediately accepted the offer; however, Turwood was initially reluctant, but Broughton was eventually able to convince him to return as well. The arrival back in Sydney after a five-year absence was met with considerable surprise and of the runaway convicts in Sydney caused some consternation among the authorities, for they had long been given up for dead. But, true to Broughton’s word, they appear to have escaped punishment. Perhaps the Governor thought five years in the wilderness had been punishment enough.

    Families camped in the Port Stephens area, New South Wales, 1826 by Augustus Earle. Courtesy National Library of Australia.

       John Turwood and George Lee would flee from Sydney again in September 1797. They joined 13 other runaways who seized the small colonial cutter Cumberland near the mouth of the Hawkesbury River. After putting the captain and crew ashore, they headed out to sea. Neither the Cumberland nor the runaway convicts were ever seen again.

      © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2025.

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  • BOLTERS: An Unruly Bunch of Malcontents

    Convict crewed boats crossing the bar to unload ships at Norfolk Island. Courtesy National Library of Australia.

    More than 160,000 of Britain’s most unwanted souls were banished to Australia between 1788 and 1868.   These convicts ranged from petty thieves to hardened criminals.   Fraudsters, burglars and pickpockets rubbed shoulders with highway robbers, rapists and murderers in the fetid prison cells of transport ships bound for Australia.    Political prisoners, social reformers and ordinary men and women struggling to feed their families also found themselves trapped in a brutal judicial system determined to rid Britain of its undesirables.  

    The vast majority of these men and women made the best of the hand fate had dealt them.   They earned their freedom and took up land and farmed it, started businesses, married, raised children, and helped found the country we know today.   But this book is not about them.   Library shelves are lined with volumes praising the accomplishments of those worthy and not-so-worthy folk.   Rather, Bolters tells the stories of those unruly malcontents who stepped ashore and thought, “This place is not for me,” and began plotting their escape.  

    Those who tried to abscond and failed, or flout any of the many other rules and regulations governing their lives were often sent to places of “secondary transportation.”   These isolated penal settlements established at Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Moreton Bay and Macquarie Harbour were intentionally harsh.   They were places where floggings were frequent, work was backbreaking, living conditions were wretched and life expectancy was short.     Norfolk Island would later surpass them all for its brutality.  

    Hobart Town convict chain gang. Photo courtesy State Library of Victoria.

    Australia’s penal settlements were gaols without bars.   There was often very little to prevent anyone from taking their leave and hiding out in the bush.    But what could they do then?   The countryside was wildly unfamiliar, and the already dispossessed Aboriginal peoples were often hostile towards anyone encroaching further onto their land.   Despite this, there were several bolters who lived for many years in Aboriginal communities.   Alternatively, runaways could hole up on the outskirts of settlements, preying on whoever presented themselves as easy targets.   These “bushrangers” were the scourge of early administrators in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.   The authorities went to great lengths to hunt them down and bring them to justice, often at the end of a rope.   Eking out an existence on society’s fringes was not a viable long-term proposition.   Those truly serious about escaping had to look not towards the country’s interior, but out to sea.    Where townsfolk, farmhands, labourers and the like viewed the expansive ocean with justifiable trepidation, it was seen in a very different light by the many seamen and mariners in the convict ranks.

    A flogging as Illustrated in The Fell Tyrant published in 1836. Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

    Ships had brought them out to the colonies.   They could whisk them away.    Stowing away was the most frequent method of absconding, especially for those without seafaring skills.   A cat-and-mouse game soon developed, with stowaways finding ever more inventive places to hide while the authorities devised new ways of flushing them out.   Rarely did a ship leave Australia during the convict era without someone trying to stow away.

    For men of a more ruthless and violent temperament, seizing control of a ship and sailing to some far-flung port proved an irresistible temptation.    Ships transporting prisoners between settlements were always on alert for trouble, but that did not stop some desperate characters from trying their luck.  Captains of vessels, complacent of port regulations, risked their ships being taken by convicts ever vigilant for lapses in security.   A few enterprising convicts even built their own craft to make their escape.   Few of these endeavours ended well, for the distances to be traversed were vast and the ocean unforgiving to frail and unseaworthy watercraft.  

    Detail from an 1828 watercolour of Hobart by Augustus Earle showing the brig Cyprus (centre), which was seized by convicts en route to Macquarie Harbour. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

    Bolters tells the stories of many of those convicts who chanced their luck to regain their liberty.   The narratives draw heavily on the personal accounts left behind by those determined to escape and official reports written by the men whose job it was to stop them.    In 1791 William and Mary Bryant and a band of runaways made off with Governor Phillip’s cutter and sailed it to Timor in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia).   To this day it is still recognised as an outstanding feat of seamanship and survival.    It was unfortunate for them that their luck ran out shortly after.   However, Mary and a handful of others reached England and were later pardoned. They proved escape was possible, inspiring many others to follow their lead.    In 1803, William Buckley fled from a short-lived settlement on the shores of Port Phillip Bay.   He was taken in by the local Aboriginal people and remained with them for the next 32 years.   Macquarie Harbour saw many inmates try to escape that god-forsaken place.   No story is more chilling than that of the infamous cannibal Alexander Pearce and the men who fled into the wilderness with him.  

    Sketches of Alexander Pearce made shortly after he was hanged. Artist: Thomas Bock. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

    When a group of determined prisoners captured the Cyprus in 1829, few could have imagined that they would sail the vessel to Japan before scuttling it off the coast of China.  Several men made it back to England before being arrested. Then, five years later, the prisoners entrusted with completing the Frederick at Macquarie Harbour took off for South America rather than deliver her to Port Arthur as supposed.    The book ends with the liberation of six Irish rebels from Fremantle Prison by the American whaler Catalpa in 1876.   This was arguably the most carefully planned and executed escape during the convict era.   Along the way, the book delves into many lesser-known but no less desperate and dramatic attempts to flee Australian shores.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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