Next morning, at the telegraph office before it closed, Breslin received the delightful confirmation. ‘I shall certainly sail today. Suppose you will leave for York Monday morning, Goodbye.’ Since Desmond was supposed to be largely unknown to Breslin, Breslin did not risk another telegram to him. He sent John King to Perth on horseback to let Desmond know that the Catalpa was definitely sailing. Breslin was also able to get a verbal message to Wilson. Strolling on the wharf, where Wilson was working late on Easter Saturday, Breslin mouthed a single word: ‘Monday.’
Easter dinner on Sunday at the Emerald Isle proved hard to digest as Mr Maloney made pleasant but unknowing table talk. Harder to digest still when, during the afternoon, Breslin saw Desmond ride into town from Perth not with his earlier splendid team but with a poorly assorted pair of nags. His fine chestnut pair had been rented to someone else. When Breslin went to hire his own team, which he already had on reserve, he suffered a similar inconvenience. Albert’s Livery had hired the better horse of the pair out to Superintendent John Stone of the water police. It had been an emergency—Stone’s brother-in-law was in a critical condition in Perth hospital. The Easter Monday Regatta on the Swan River at Perth had just about cleaned Albert out of horses. So the idea of a dashing conveyance of the prisoners to Rockingham Beach looked less and less likely.
30
PERTH REGATTA DAY
So come all ye screw warders and gaolers,
Remember Perth Regatta Day;
Take care of the rest of your Fenians
Or the Yankees will steal them away.
Traditional song
At noon on Easter Day the Catalpa lay offshore 30 miles south-west of Rottnest lighthouse. The lighthouse itself stood 12 miles offshore from Fremantle, and the approach of vessels could be signalled to town. Anthony, preparing to go to Rockingham in his whaleboat, cautioned Smith to keep well to the south of this light, and at least 12 miles off the mainland. If the water police or a gunboat hailed Catalpa, Sam Smith was to tell them Anthony had gone to fetch a new anchor. If Anthony failed to return to Catalpa with the prisoners, Smith should take the ship on a conventional whaling voyage, and earn back its cost.
Anthony’s whaleboat was now dropped over the side. As rations, the captain had aboard a bag of bread, two kegs of water and boiled ham. His crew hoisted the leg-of-mutton sail, and the whaleboat soon made the southern end of Garden Island off Rockingham. Once there, to lessen visibility, the sail was furled. They surfed breakers into the smooth waters of the sound off Rockingham. With a telescope Anthony spotted his markers ashore, and the crew landed at 8.30 on a temperate evening, ate a meal of biscuit and cold ham, drank some rum, and then stretched out in the smooth grass of the dunes.
In the prison at Fremantle, Superintendent Doonan had ordered a special Easter meal for prisoners: boiled mutton, cabbage, potatoes and carrots. Treacle was served with plum duff, and native fruits rounded out the penal banquet. Afterwards, James Wilson sat down to play cards with the others and passed round the information about the next day. The unwitting prisoner who went uninformed was James Keilley, former soldier of the 53rd Regiment of Foot, life prisoner, whom—as Breslin knew by now—the others intended to exclude from escape. This decision was only in part due to Keilley’s being strongly suspected of having, in desperation and while serving his sentence in Dartmoor and Millbank, offered information to the authorities. In Millbank, he had tried to kill himself ‘by suspending himself by a coir rope from his gas pipe—believed to be a genuine attempt.’ In the personal and other description of 280 prisoners received per ship Hougoumont, it was noticed Keilley had scars on both wrists, an indication of a further attempt at suicide. This was the level of despair which had driven Keilley to his banal and totally unrewarded treacheries. Married with two children, he had been only twenty-one years old when sentenced in June 1866, and therefore still barely thirty at Easter, 1876.
But it was not only the 10-year-old fallibilities of Keilley which excluded him from this escape. Early in 1876, Keilley had been assigned as servant to Acting Comptroller General Fauntleroy. He had become so friendly with the Fauntleroy family that he was permitted to remain at the residence up to nine o’clock at night, and sometimes later. It was Keilley’s tendency to be cosy and appeasing with Fauntleroy which led to a vote to exclude him, and to Breslin’s agreement with that vote.
On Easter morning, Anthony and his crew woke in the sand dunes of Rockingham to see activity on a nearby jetty belonging to the Rockingham Jarrah Timber Company. A gang of five men were already working there, stacking a pile of timber. Anthony, with his temperamental audacity, walked up and began chatting with one of them, William Bell. He told the story of being on his way to Fremantle to fetch an anchor, but Bell shook his head. He knew what the truth was: they were deserters from a ship. Anthony slid over this accusation. What worried him was that the stacked sawn timber was to be collected by Georgette, apparently due into Rockingham that morning.
A more neurotic man than Anthony might have concluded the enterprise was so cursed by cumulative difficulties that his responsibility to his own boat crew would justify him in setting out to sea at once.
In the prison, reveille sounded at 5.00 a.m., followed by breakfast, parade inspection and then the assignment of prisoners to jobs. In dawn light the Georgette steamer stood at Victoria Quay, making lazy smoke, due to leave on her mail run. Before 5.30, the IRB man McCarthy, with a bundle tied to the end of a stick, could have been seen leaving town on the Bunbury road. Inside the bundle was a set of heavy-duty wire cutters. North of Fremantle, on the road to Perth, Walsh was similarly on the move. The two IRB men, after fulfilling their service for the escape party, were to take cover at their hotel and brazen it out. There was not room for them on Catalpa.
At the Emerald Isle, after the restlessness of the night, Breslin had knocked on Desmond’s door, on King’s and Brennan’s, and roused them. Breslin knew that this was a day when all the past fatuities of the Fenian impulse could be redeemed by one splendid act of rescue. His party ate an early breakfast downstairs. Breslin then went down to the stable yards and was astonished to find a first-class matched pair standing in the yard, harnessed to a light, four-wheeled wagonette. He talked the sleepy stable hand into renting them to him, and by 7.30 was riding south along the road to Rockingham. Brennan had already loaded the luggage of the entire rescue party—Breslin, Desmond, King, himself—into a two-wheeler, and it was racing ahead of Breslin. McCarthy and Walsh had already returned to town from having cut telegraph wires. They had met nobody—this was after all Easter Monday, a holiday, and many were in Perth for that day’s regatta.
Breslin took the Rockingham road at a casual pace in his fine wagonette. Desmond caught up with him in the inferior vehicle brought from Perth, and once on the edge of the bush they parked on the side of the road. Three six-shooters, three caps, three pairs of pants and half the ammunition were placed in each trap.
In Fremantle gaol, the prisoners Robert Cranston and Thomas Hassett were allowed out of the gate during the time the stores office was closed for the accountant’s breakfast—apparently they were routinely permitted out at this time. They were, they told the gatekeeper Warder Lindsey, detailed to dig potatoes in the clerk of works’ garden. Robert Cranston himself did not go there. Instead, he strolled down to the south jetty, where a party of convicts were quarrying and dressing stone for building up the dock. His message to Warder Booler was that the superintendent had asked for two constables, Harrington and Hogan, to accompany him to the governor’s Fremantle residence in Hampton Road to move furniture. Booler, a believer in universal brotherhood, and therefore not cut out for his job, was impressed that Cranston was twirling a large key in his hand, and let the three Fenian prisoners head off in the direction of the prison. Edging past the wall, they came upon Tom Hassett and Thomas Darragh, who had left the stables, already digging potatoes in the clerk of works’ garden. Darragh and Hassett shouldered their shovels and casually joined the
others. Drawing level with the Fauntleroy house, the group saw Martin Hogan at work painting the walls. Hogan picked up his paint pail and joined the party.
In the shade of the tall trees, on the road to Rockingham where Breslin and Desmond waited, it was a splendid autumn morning, and Breslin watched white cockatoos scud chattering across a brilliant sky. Three convicts came in sight—Wilson, so often the contact during this process, Cranston, and the oldest soldier, Michael Harrington, moving freely. Breslin thought they seemed dangerously exhilarated. As he launched himself into the bed of Desmond’s wagon, Harrington yelled, ‘Ireland Forever!’ Breslin believed the cry a little premature. With three aboard, Desmond’s wagon now headed off towards Rockingham, and Breslin could see the three men stripping off the hated penal cloth and hurling it into the bushes. The second squad of escapees, Darragh, Hassett and Hogan, were within sight, waving their arms and shouting too loudly. Breslin’s horses were startled by the yelling, and Darragh grabbed their bridles to soothe them. ‘Let go! He’ll kick your head off!’ Breslin shouted.
Breslin reined in the team, they settled into a trot, and the three prisoners ran behind, tumbling aboard laughing, grabbing at the pile of civilian clothes and changing immediately. According to the Perth Inquirer, it was between the cemetery and the piggery, characteristic edge-of-town facilities, that the escapees jumped aboard their carriages and jettisoned their prison weeds. At the scatter of huts at Ten Mile Well, Breslin slowed the wagonette and the Fenian escapees composed themselves. They rolled through town, as far as they knew, undetected.
At nine o’clock, John King, the Sydneysider whose job was to be rearguard, went out to mount his horse like a man going on an excursion. He rode north up High Street, seemingly on his way to Perth, then turned sharply round by the prison and headed south through Fremantle’s back streets. He had in his pocket a large piece of cake he had seen in the dining-room after breakfast, and which he had commandeered in case of coming need. When, without meeting anyone, he caught up with Desmond, Breslin and their parties near the Rockingham Hotel, he was able to tell them that there was no sign that the escape had been noticed.
Brennan, with the luggage, was the first to park his buggy on the edge of Rockingham Beach and see Anthony’s crew. Of the party of timber workers at the wharf, only Bell was still present. Behind, as the two wagons were still rolling through Rockingham, each prisoner sat with his hand on the pistol in his pocket. Tom Somers, proprietor of the hotel, asked whether Georgette had left Fremantle yet. Still at the wharf when we left town, said Breslin.
The last few miles were particularly sandy and, after the rain, boggy. On either side of the track grew huge eucalypts and hardwoods of the kind amongst which the prisoners had spent much of their eight Western Australian years, and which they hoped never to see again. At last, near the dunes, the forest gave way to low brush. On the beach, observed by Bell, Anthony began to get the whaleboat ready for departure. Anthony later said that he could see Georgette’s smoke approaching from the north of Garden Island even before the two traps with the prisoners aboard came raging down the last of the track. The men jumped down, slapped the rumps of Breslin’s horses, and they galloped madly off, tangling their traces in the undergrowth, coming to rest and grazing. On seeing the Fenian prisoners run towards them, some of the whaleboat crew drew sheath knives. Others grabbed their oars, suspecting the newly arrived party were customs and excise men. As Anthony reassured his people, the Fenians were trying to push the boat out, managing to get it beam on to the waves. Though he had with him now men hysterical from their two hours of freedom, Anthony’s authoritative voice penetrated hysteria well. He ordered everyone to board in orderly manner, and to give the rowers room, the passengers were to hunch down in the bottom.
The boat crew now pushed the load of convicts and rescuers out into the surf, vaulted aboard themselves, and began rowing. From his position in the stern, Anthony watched Bell mount one of the horses and whip it into a gallop. Anthony told his chronicler, Pease, that the boat was only half a mile offshore when the police arrived, but surely it was further, since the escape party had the better part of two hours start. Through a telescope, Breslin saw a knot of uniformed police armed with carbines on the beach. They had a number of native trackers, wearing short coats of kangaroo skin bolted at the waist. Despite this sight, Breslin seemed to think the escape was now secure. He called for order, took from his pocket a sheet of paper and a wrapping of sealskin and read aloud the contents. ‘This is to certify that I have this day released from the clemency of Her Most Gracious Majesty, Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, etc., etc., six Irishmen, condemned … for having been guilty of the atrocious and unpardonable crimes known to the unenlightened portion of mankind as ‘love of liberty’ and ‘hatred of tyranny.’ For this act of ‘Irish assurance’ my birth and my blood being my full and sufficient warranty.’ He finished his proclamation with some poor verse.
I’ve the honour and pleasure to bid you good-day.
From all future acquaintance, excuse me, I pray.
Breslin re-wrapped the letter in its sealskin, hacked off a small piece of one of the thwarts of the boat with a hatchet which lay in the stern and bound the packet to it. Finally he produced a small red sail, wedged it in a cleft in the bit of board, and set the whole apparatus afloat. This was a show of unusual bravado for the reserved New York journalist, who did not understand that once they passed the tip of Garden Island, sea, wind and tide would turn against them.
Doonan later reported that it was at 9.35 a.m. that the gatekeeper Lindsay told him Hogan was missing from the Comptroller General’s quarters. He immediately sent a warder to tell the police, and then searched out the other Fenians, but found six missing in all. The prison bell began to toll madly. There was a general muster of convicts, and the names of the missing six were verified. Doonan sent an officer to wire Perth immediately, since it was thought the Fenian convicts might have moved in that direction, but the operator, naturally, could not get through. From the verandah of the Port Hotel, McCarthy and Walsh observed the sudden galvanising of the forces of authority—water police summoned from their homes and rushing half-dressed to their headquarters near the pier, parties of blacktrackers heading up the Perth road and down the Rockingham track, and the militia and Pensioner Guards who happened to be in town, drummed and bugled into formation under one Major Charles Finnerty.
Doonan suspected the escapees might be hidden by a Pensioner Guard named Taafe, who had shown Fenian sympathy. The Taafe house was searched, but nothing found. Bell the timber worker came yelling into town on one of the escapees’ horses at one o’clock, having made the distance in an hour and forty minutes. About the same time, Water Police Superintendent Stone returned from visiting his injured brother in Perth. He tried to telegraph to call on the gunboat Conflict in Albany, but found the line dead. By the time the cut telegraph wires south of Fremantle were repaired, the Conflict had left Albany eastwards for Adelaide.
At the regatta in Perth, Breslin’s prospective father-in-law, Mr Charles Tondut, was winning in both the dinghy-pulling and the sailing races with his little yacht Frenchman. Here, on the banks of the Swan, Governor Robinson got the news of escape early in the afternoon. He left at once for Fremantle. By the time he arrived, Superintendent Stone of the water police had gone through copies of the telegrams transmitted in the last month, and from the volume of transmissions between Collins and Anthony, concluded the vessel involved was Catalpa. At once, a water police cutter, under the command of Coxswain Mills, was ordered to search the waters southwards between Rottnest and Garden Island, to intercept the whaleboat before it reached Catalpa, and arrest everybody.
The conversation that afternoon between Robinson and Stone about the powers they could exercise under international law was influenced by Robinson’s experience as governor of Prince Edward Island, at a time when questions of freedom of the seas was a fiercely debated matter between Britain and the United States. In his ultimate repo
rt to the Secretary of State in Downing Street, Robinson referred to the principles laid down by the leading maritime law authority, Lord Stowell: ‘All nations being equal, all have an equal right to an uninterrupted use of the unappropriated parts of the Ocean for their navigation … I decided that under the circumstances of the case it would be a violation of the principles of International Law to fire into her in the first instance, when beyond territorial waters, and directed the Superintendent of Police accordingly.’ But the pursuit of the whaleboat containing the absconders could legally be continued beyond territorial waters.
Within an hour of arriving in Fremantle, Robinson commissioned the Georgette, which had returned to Fremantle in mid-afternoon, as a warship in Her Majesty’s navy. Its master Captain Grady would now be subject to Water Police Superintendent Stone’s orders. Grady protested against his ship being impressed: it was not adequately coaled for a high-seas chase, he said, and his crew were not rested. Stone asked him, ‘Is a voyage to Rottnest Island such an ocean adventure?’ Twenty members of the drill company of the Pensioner Guards were gathered throughout the afternoon and ordered to go aboard Georgette under Major Finnerty. They would be accompanied by seven armed police. With its steam engines and its sails, Robinson believed, Georgette should be able with ease to run down Catalpa, since the westerlies blowing that afternoon and into the evening would keep the whaler pretty much in place, and also make the going difficult for the whaleboat.
Soon after the commissioning of Georgette, Coxswain Mills returned bearing the package launched by Breslin. Amongst the Irish population of Fremantle, there was already considerable joy. An Irishman wrote home. ‘I need hardly tell you that the Irish people here are in the very highest state of jubilation at the escape of the prisoners.’ James Keilley might not have felt the general Irish excitement. That bitter Monday afternoon, he was already constructing a face-saving myth that that morning the others had been unable to find him. But even as the Irish of Fremantle toasted the success of the escape, Robinson was drafting his own telegraph to go out over the repaired wires to all points of the Australian colonies. ‘Detain, by force if necessary, American whaling barque Catalpa, George Anthony, Master. Arrest said Anthony, his officers and crew, and any passengers who may be aboard.’
The Great Shame: And the Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking World Page 80