The Best Australian Sea Stories

by Jim Haynes

  The men are all well, and the horses are all well except for one animal, which is under the care of that Veterinary Surgeon Lieutenant Melhuish. We only hope things will be as well by that time you may hear from us again. And so we start for blue water as willing a lot of soldiers as ever left any country. By that time we come back the South African question must be settled one way or the other. Whether we have any share in that settling is in the hands of Providence.

  Daily routine

  Our day commences at six o’clock; when the trumpeters are hustled out of their bunks and blinking sleepily, they tramp up to the deck and blow the reveille. Our trumpeters were by no means champions at first and every day they are taken to the extreme end of the ship for instruction, where they bray away to their hearts’ content, and they are rapidly improving.

  At the sound of the reveille the troops come gaping and stretching up from their quarters. The hose is played across the deck and all fans are supposed to go under it daily, but with a lot of influenza on board, the rule is not strictly enforced. At 6:30 the men are dressed and ready for work and the bugle goes for ‘stables’. All fans set briskly to work taking it down the rails between the horses, sweeping out the stalls, clearing up the deck, and throwing the litter overboard.

  The forage is got up from below and apportioned out, and carried to the tubs where it is mixed. As the men go past with their bundles of forage on their backs the horses lean out of the stalls and grab at the bags with their teeth. As feed time gets near and the feed is mixed into huge pubs, the horses keep up a constant volley of applause, pawing at the floor with their front feet and taking their feed boxes in their teeth and rattling them.

  The feed boxes are hung at the rail in front of them, and if a horse picks up the box in his teeth and lets it drop again it makes a great rattle, and they learn this trick very soon. Also they have a marvellous faculty for estimating time. They know the time for feed as well as the men. At any other time a man can walk up and down the row of stalls without attracting any attention; but at feed time every head is thrust out, all sorts of clutches are made at clothing, and a regular pandemonium is started by the animals trampling the floor, rattling their boxes, and biting each other.

  After breakfast comes the first parade, and it really is wonderful to see the eagerness with which the backward men are trying to learn their work. All sorts of parades are going on at once all over the ship and are as keenly done as if under the eye of a general. Major Lee and Col. Williams have a steady morning’s work inspecting and checking stores, inspecting kits, dealing with defaulters and generally managing the economy of the expedition.

  Major Fiaschi has charge of the sick, and, as we have an epidemic of influenza on board, there are always four or five men with lung or throat troubles that require watching. At any spare moment that the medical men have they read up surgery, practice flag signalling, or, when a horse dies, they practice sutures and operations on his interior under the tuition of Major Fiaschi.

  After parades and ship inspection there are more stables, and horses are fed. Fifteen men are detailed each day as pickets. They are divided into three watches of five men each. The first five have four hours watch, then they are relieved by the second five for four hours and they are relieved by the third five. Then the first lot come on again and so on until 24 hours is completed. These men have to keep constant supervision over the horses; but all hands turn out to clean stables and feed horses.

  After lunch we seize a half-hour in which the lecture to officers is delivered, either on military law, outpost duty, cavalry tactics or surgical treatment. Then comes another parade, which may take the form of cleaning and drying troops quarters and ventilating bedding or volley firing over the stern, or revolver practice at bottles in the water. This takes us to tea and after tea the concertinas are got out and the men sit in hatchway and sing.

  Such is our daily routine and through it all the Kent is plugging away steadily over the blue waters. At times the management of the horses is extremely difficult. Some of the animals were stalled on a hatchway three feet above the deck and looked down on all the horses stabled on the level deck below them. On one occasion a ferocious animal had all the other horses on the hatch in a state of ferment, trampling on the floor, plunging backwards and forwards, rushing against the bar in front of them and generally proposing to wreck the whole outfit. The fittings creaked and crackled, and if these had carried away, the horses on the hatch would have plunged in among the others on the deck and carried the lot overboard. They knocked out a long bar that was nailed on the floor as a foot grip and plunged and kicked at it. But willing hands invariably restored order.

  Crossing the Bight

  Crossing to Albany we encountered very heavy weather and lost one horse. We met a very heavy sea and if the vessel had been driven along at full speed the decks would have been swept. As it was, Captain Priske reduced to two knots an hour and for hours we just kept steerage way on. Only one horse succumbed, but many of the others were so weary and shaken with the wind, cold and wet that they were not fit to stand much of a strain, and there was still at least an 18-day journey before us.

  Some excitement was caused after our departure by the discovery of a stowaway under the soldiers’ bunks. He was a youth of about fourteen, by trade a confectioner’s apprentice, and according to his story had stowed away to get a passage to join his mother in Africa. The stowaway was hauled before the captain and his fate decided on. The captain was for putting him ashore at Albany, but more humane counsels prevailed. In the long run a subscription list was got up for him and he is to be taken to the war. He has apparently been on a ship before, and is at present quite at home peeling potatoes and doing generally useful work.

  A lot of the bush-bred soldiers became very seasick, but none of the officers suffered and the vessel behaved with exemplary steadiness.

  None of our men were allowed ashore at Albany. In fact all through the voyage they have been kept under very strict discipline and made to work hard. The result is that there were no complaints at all except that the shipboard tea was not to the liking of some of the men who had never been to sea before. They were used to Billy tea and the ship tea didn’t seem to give them any taste.

  Across the Indian Ocean

  Leaving Albany the pilot took the Kent through the channel very slowly, while the troops bound for the war all stood on the deck watching and listening to the leadsmen’s cry. Slowly the vessel slipped through and, at last, with a sigh of relief, we dropped the pilot and were away at full speed into the open sea. Leaving the lights of Albany blazing behind us under a faint moonlight, we settled down for the long 20 days steaming across to Africa.

  Luckily it was a fine calm day when we worked our way round the dreaded Leeuwin, The Cape of Storms, but still there was a long rolling swell on and now and again the Kent rolled her gunwales down to it, while the horses slipped and slid backwards and forwards in their stalls. At one moment they were sliding downwards with their fore feet braced in front of them, and the next moment they swung back onto their haunches and had much to do to avoid sitting on their tails; and this is one of the steadiest sea boats that ever floated.

  About sundown we saw the last of Australia for some time and headed away across the open sea, under a glorious moonlight night.

  We had a taste of severe weather during the voyage. Rain all day long fell. Decks were wet and steaming, wet fodder lying about, horses with their heads hanging down and the water running off their ears. Men in greatcoats dodging about among them here and there disconsolately. Parades were held below decks and officers practised signalling or read medical works.

  On other days the Kent kept plugging away steadily over the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, as puny and insignificant in that waste of water as an ant travelling over the Old Man Plain. We hadn’t seen a bird or a beast, or a fish, or a whale, or a ship, or any moving thing for 20 days, but just the great stretch of sea and the long rolling swell of the wa
ves. It is a lonely ocean; there is very little shipping traffic in those latitudes.

  We forged along through the water on our lonely way. The daily routine became quite second nature to us and any one of us could tell at any moment what any other was doing. Reveille, stables, sick parade, feed horses, dismiss, breakfast, prepare for parade, parade— even the horses knew the bugle calls.

  On 27 November, just as we were getting to the end of our journey, fate turned against us and sent a heavy headwind and a nasty sea. Spray began to come for’ard and we had to slow down to a couple of knots an hour. The seas were very heavy. At about three o’clock next day we came into the shallow waters of the Agulhas Bank, and at once the sea went down and we resumed full speed ahead.

  After 30 days of weary steaming we at last sighted the South African coast. We saw a line of low scrub-covered hills, without any sign of habitation. At the edge of the sea were sand hills, snowy white, with streaks of white sand running back among the low timber—a barren uninviting coast. There was no sign of life anywhere, no houses, nor any traces of a settlement. The great African continent lay sleeping in the sun as peacefully as if war had never been heard of.

  We were soon nearing the anchorage off Port Elizabeth and coasting down the South African shore, a coast exceedingly like the shore at Bondi, except that there are no houses. Our feeling of monotony changed to one of great expectancy, and by midnight we were at anchor.

  Next morning at grey dawn we steamed into Port Elizabeth.

  ‘There’s Another Blessed Horse Fell Down’

  Banjo Paterson

  When you’re lying in your hammock, sleeping soft and sleeping sound,

  Without a care or trouble on your mind,

  And there’s nothing to disturb you but the engines going round,

  And you’re dreaming of the girl you left behind;

  In the middle of your joys you’ll be wakened by a noise,

  And a clatter on the deck above your crown,

  And you’ll hear the corporal shout as he turns the picket out,

  ‘There’s another blessed horse fell down.’

  You can see ’em in the morning, when you’re cleaning out the stall,

  A-leaning on the railings nearly dead,

  And you reckon by the evening they’ll be pretty sure to fall,

  And you curse them as you tumble into bed.

  Oh, you’ll hear it pretty soon, ‘Pass the word for Denny Moon,

  There’s a horse here throwing handsprings like a clown;’

  And it’s ‘Shove the others back or he’ll cripple half the pack,

  There’s another blessed horse fell down.’

  And when the war is over and the fighting all is done,

  And you’re all at home with medals on your chest,

  And you’ve learnt to sleep so soundly that the firing of a gun

  At your bedside wouldn’t rob you of your rest;

  As you lie in slumber deep, if your wife walks in her sleep,

  And tumbles down the stairs and breaks her crown,

  Oh, it won’t awaken you, for you’ll say, ‘It’s nothing new,

  It’s another blessed horse fell down.’

  Out of Ireland have we come,

  Great hatred, little room,

  Maimed us at the start.

  I carry from my mother’s womb A fanatic heart.

  W.B. Yeats

  Hurrah for Old Ireland:

  The Catalpa rescue

  JIM HAYNES

  THE IRISH REPUBLICAN BROTHERHOOD was formed in 1858 by James Stephens, who had led an ill-fated uprising against British rule in 1848 and then fled to Paris, returning to Ireland in 1856 to start the Irish People newspaper, which first rolled off the presses in 1863.

  His partner in planning the 1848 uprising was John O’Mahony, who fled to the US and started the Fenian Brotherhood there.

  The Irish Republican Brotherhood grew in Ireland during the 1860s. Money was sent from the US and the movement had a cache of weapons and 50,000 willing recruits.

  A planned uprising in 1865 was called off, while another insurrection in 1867 was poorly organised and ended in a series of skirmishes. In September 1865, the Irish People was shut down by the government and Stephens and others were arrested and sent to prison. Stephens subsequently escaped and fled to the US.

  Anyone suspected of being involved with the Brotherhood was arrested and some units of the British Army based in Ireland, believed to be sympathetic to the cause, were moved out of Ireland.

  In 1866 the British government suspended habeas corpus in Ireland. This meant prisoners could be held without being brought to trial and hundreds of men were arrested. Civilians were treated as political prisoners, and men from the army were treated as traitors. The letter ‘D’, for deserter, was branded on their chests.

  These ‘traitors’, or ‘Irish patriots’, became known as ‘Fenians’ and the British government transported most of them to Australia. The Perth settlement was the last in Australia to receive convicts, having asked for them to be sent when the colony was struggling for manpower in the late 1840s.

  There were 62 Irish political prisoners among the 280 convicts on board the last convict ship to ever sail to Australia, the Hougoumont. Also on board, acting as an assistant warder of convicts, was Scotland Yard detective and British spy Thomas Rowe.

  Many of the Irish political prisoners were well educated; some were schoolteachers and journalists. John Boyle O’Reilly was born in 1844, in the great potato famine. He was the son of a schoolteacher and began work on the local paper at age fourteen. He moved to Lancashire and worked on the local newspaper in Preston and joined the Lancashire militia and the 11th Lancashire Volunteer Rifles. He then returned to Dublin and joined the 10th Hussars in 1863. Sometime in 1864 or 1865 he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

  O’Reilly was arrested in 1866 for recruiting fellow soldiers to join the Fenians. He was court-martialled and sentenced to hang, but the death sentence was commuted to 20 years transportation to Fremantle.

  O’Reilly sailed on the Hougoumont, and he and another convict even produced a weekly shipboard newspaper on the voyage called The Wild Goose: A Collection of Ocean Waifs.

  The Hougoumont arrived in Western Australia in January 1868 and O’Reilly was sent with a convict work party to Bunbury.

  He spent the year at Bunbury planning his escape, with the help of local Irishmen and a priest, Father McCabe. In February 1869 O’Reilly escaped in a rowboat and rowed 12 miles up the coast to wait for an American whaling ship, the Vigilant, which Father McCabe had arranged to pick him up. All went well until the ship failed to pick him up after he had been rowed out to meet it. He spent days hiding in sand dunes being hunted by police and Aboriginal trackers, until a second whaling ship, the Gazelle, was organised to collect him.

  The plot thickened when a convict named James Bowman got wind of the plan and blackmailed the conspirators into allowing him to join O’Reilly on the Gazelle.

  Father McCabe had arranged for the Gazelle to take O’Reilly to Java, but bad weather forced the ship to Mauritius, which was a British colony in 1869. Police boarded the Gazelle and a magistrate demanded that the escaped convict be handed over. The captain hid O’Reilly and instead gave them Bowman, the other escaped convict on board.

  Realising that O’Reilly was in danger of being captured at the next port of call, St Helena, the Gazelle’s captain arranged to transfer him onto the American cargo ship Sapphire. The transfer was carried out at sea and O’Reilly sailed to Liverpool, where he was secretly transferred to another American ship, the Bombay. On 23 November 1869, O’Reilly landed at Philadelphia and was warmly greeted by members of the Irish community there.

  O’Reilly settled in Boston, where he worked on The Pilot, a newspaper aimed at the Irish-born population. He made lecture tours, wrote poetry and a novel, married a journalist named Mary Murphy and set about planning the escape of his fellow Fenians still in Fremantle Prison.


  British policy had softened by 1869, and most of the Irish civilian political prisoners at Fremantle had been freed. This reprieve did not apply, however, to military prisoners.

  In 1875, John Devoy came to O’Reilly with a plan to storm Fremantle Prison and rescue the remaining Fenians by force. Devoy had orchestrated the recruitment of Irish soldiers in British army units for James Stephens back in the 1860s, and been imprisoned and then exiled to the US.

  One of the Fremantle exiles, James Wilson, had written to John Devoy, in June 1874:

  . . . this is a voice from the tomb . . . we have been nearly nine years in this living tomb since our first arrest . . . it is impossible for mind or body to withstand the continual strain that is upon them. One or the other must give way.

  O’Reilly suggested a less drastic plan, similar to the one that had worked for him. However, instead of relying on the goodwill and honesty of ships’ captains, his idea was to raise funds and buy a ship for the sole purpose of rescuing the prisoners. That way they could choose a captain who could be trusted and the ship could easily pose as a legitimate vessel. A whaling ship was the obvious choice.

  Devoy and O’Reilly formed a committee to plan the whole venture and set about raising funds with the help of the American Irish Republican Brotherhood, Clan na Gael. There was no shortage of donations, which was just as well, as the plan required a large amount of money and manpower.

  Devoy knew a shipping agent, John Richardson, who helped them purchase a three-masted barque, the whaling ship Catalpa, at a cost of $5,200. The ship was bought in the name of one of the committee, James Reynolds. Richardson also put the committee in touch with his son-in-law, a whaling captain sympathetic to the Irish cause, named George Smith Anthony.

  The Catalpa was set up as an operational whaler and merchant ship and departed from New Bedford, near Boston, at the end of April 1875. Only Captain Anthony and one of the committee— Dennis Duggan, who was on board as the ship’s carpenter—knew the real purpose of the voyage.