by Terry Smyth
In 1863, Darling was appointed Governor of Victoria, one of the highest paid governorships in the empire, and wasted no time proving to Whitehall that it was not money well spent. By 1865, his heavy-handed meddling in political affairs – a governor was expected to be an independent arbiter in local politics – has created constitutional chaos, earned him the rebuke of the British Government, and will eventually lead to him being declared temperamentally unfit for office and recalled to London.
It’s widely believed that the Governor is merely a mouthpiece for his Minister for Justice, Archibald Michie, and his Attorney-General, George Higinbotham, both of whom are known to be sympathetic to rebel causes.
English-born Michie was a lawyer and journalist before entering politics. When practising law in London, he was an associate of the radical philosopher John Stuart Mill, who abhorred slavery but supported secession. Mill believed the right to secede ‘is merely saying that the question of government ought to be decided by the governed’.4
Michie, a gifted and persuasive orator, was one of the barristers who in 1855 successfully defended the Eureka Stockade rebels.
Higinbotham, a Dubliner, and grandson of a former US consul in that city, is, like Michie, a lawyer and journalist turned politician. A past editor of Melbourne’s Argus – a newspaper with unabashed Confederate sympathies – he is a fierce advocate for self-government; for freedom from interference by centralised powers.
These are Governor Darling’s chief advisors, and their advice, in the case of the Shenandoah, is to deny the US consul’s request that the ship be seized as a pirate.
And so, the sightseers keep coming. ‘All day long and until far into the evening,’ Cornelius Hunt writes, ‘all eager to say that they had visited the famous “rebel pirate”.’5
When many visitors ask whether or not the rebels rescue the crews from captured vessels before burning or scuttling the ships, Hunt is taken aback, shocked that anyone could consider Southerners capable of such barbarism. ‘But not withstanding this hard character they were ready to ascribe to us, they vied with each other in showing us every courtesy in their power, and the ladies in particular were well pleased when they could secure the attendance of a grey uniform to escort them on their tour of inspection.’6
The Captain is rushing to keep a 12.30pm appointment. In company with ship’s officers Grimball, Scales and Lining, he is riding to Toorak, about 10 miles (16km) from the city, for a meeting with Governor Darling. Dressed to impress, in full dress uniform with caps and swords, they arrive at the Governor’s mansion at 12.30 precisely, only to find that Darling is not there.
To Captain Waddell, a stickler for punctuality, this is unforgivable; a gross insult to himself and his men. Declaring it unbecoming of Southern officers and gentlemen to sit cooling their heels in the waiting room of a tardy bureaucrat, he leaves his card and they ride off. A few minutes into the journey, they pass the Governor in his carriage, returning to his residence. Waddell stubbornly refuses to turn back, and rides back to the city with his compatriots.
Come the weekend, the Confederates are under siege by curious Victorians. On Saturday, the Hobson’s Bay Railway brings 5,000 visitors to Sandridge, and more than 7,000 on Sunday. The three steamers that ferry visitors to and from the ship on Sunday are overcrowded, and the Shenandoah is so packed with people that the last couple of boatloads on Sunday are unable to get on board.
One boatload of visitors gets a taste of what the Shenandoah’s victims experience. A small yacht, with two men and a woman aboard, is rounding the raider’s stern, about to tie on, when a strong wind gust catches the yacht and it capsizes. A nearby boat rescues the trio; the men choose to come aboard the Shenandoah regardless, and inspect the vessel dripping wet. The woman refuses to join them, however, and, in high dudgeon, demands that her rescuers take herself, her injured pride and her sodden crinoline back to shore.
On one of the many small craft bumping alongside is an old man, so desperate to come aboard that he climbs the spar of his yacht, leaps into the mizzen chains and scrambles up onto the deck. The officer of the deck is so taken aback by the impudence of this uninvited guest that he can’t decide whether to welcome him aboard or throw him over the side.
The old man announces himself as ‘the only genuine Confederate in the country’.7
As such, he says, he is entitled to the hospitality of any vessel that flies the Stars and Bars. The officer, doubting his sanity but admiring his audacity, allows him to stay.
Invitations to dinners and balls are thrust at the officers from all directions, and each is given a free return pass from Sandridge to Melbourne on the Hobson’s Bay railway for as long they’re in port.
Hunt writes: ‘Whenever and wherever an officer appeared on shore, he was forthwith surrounded by a little conclave of sympathetic admirers, and had we accepted a tithe of the invitations we received to indulge in spiritous comforts, we should all of us, from the Captain down to the toughest old shellback in the forecastle, have been shockingly inebriated during the whole period of our sojourn.’8
Melbourne’s pro-Northern newspaper, The Age, is less than impressed by the carnival atmosphere, and considers the Shenandoah ‘a marauding craft’ and her officers and crew ‘a gang of respectable pirates’. The editorial sneers, ‘The appearance in these waters of a Confederate cruiser has created no small commotion. There is some fear lest the habitual idol-worshippers, who are always ready to fall on their knees, should commit some extravagance which would compromise the whole community. We fully expect to hear of a proposal for a testimonial or a public dinner to the officers.’9 When Melbourne’s afternoon paper, the Herald, echoes The Age’s view, The Bendigo Advertiser wades in:
We observe that the Herald endorses the remarks of the Age in reference to the Shenandoah. So far as condemning the fussy and forward conduct of those who are so anxious to lionise the officers and crew of this vessel, we quite endorse the opinions of our contemporaries. But the cause of the Confederates has won the sympathy of most generous minds, and an expression of this sympathy in a becoming way is not at all improper. We are amused at the remarks of the two journals in reference to the Shenandoah’s being merely a buccaneer, because its mission is to injure and cripple the commerce of the United States. We beg to ask these detractors what else is the Federal navy doing when it is blockading Charleston and the ports of the Southern States?
The termination of the career of the Alabama is sufficient to answer to this, and some of the officers of that vessel are aboard the Shenandoah. We are inclined to ascribe this deprecation of the Shenandoah and the Confederate cause to the very sorry motive – a desire to please the Americans in Melbourne, the chief of whom are Northerners, and of course very bitter against the South.10
And as if to snub the nose at the anti-Confederate press and those who share such sentiments, an invitation is extended to the officers of the Shenandoah to attend a banquet in their honour at the exclusive Melbourne Club. Boasting a membership that reads like Who’s Who in Australia, the gentlemen’s club, according to some, is a bastion of the great and the good. Others regard it as a sanctuary for stuffed shirts in overstuffed club chairs.
Captain Waddell and five of his officers not on duty meet at Scott’s Hotel, and, punctual as ever, arrive at the club at 7pm on the dot. Waddell writes, ‘The doors of the Melbourne Club were hospitably opened to the officers of the Shenandoah. They were royally entertained and received by a society composed to a considerable extent of government officials, including judges of the courts.
‘The entertainment was a courtesy which the club always extends to strangers, and the presence of the company was an expression of sympathy for a gallant people engaged in resisting a wicked aggression.’
He adds, ‘Although there was a general sympathy in the community for the Confederate cause as kindly exhibited in many ways in the hospitalities shown to the officers of the Shenandoah, it was equally true there were sympathies warmly disposed towards the
Federals.’11
At least two prominent Melbourne families have direct American connections, on both sides of the conflict.
The Irvine family are related to John Mitchell, an Irish rebel transported to Van Diemen’s Land after the 1848 uprising. Mitchell escaped to the United States and settled in Richmond, Virginia. His three sons are serving in the Confederate Army. Mitchell’s nephew, William Hill Irvine, just seven years old in 1865, will grown up to be premier and chief justice of Victoria.
Thomas Lalor, one of the four brothers of Eureka Rebellion leader Peter Lalor, fought for the Union with the 6th Wisconsin Infantry – most of the family migrated to America in the 1840s – and was killed at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864. Two other Lalor brothers are believed to have fought in the war – on opposing sides – although that claim is not verified.
In 1865, Eureka leader Peter Lalor, once a wanted man with a £400 price on his head, is a respected parliamentarian and a member of the Melbourne Club. It’s not known whether or not he attended the dinner for the Shenandoah officers. Having lost a brother to rebel gunfire just a few months earlier, it’s doubtful, although all members of parliament are said to have been present.
In the club’s elegant dining room, the Confederates are seated in pride of place at the president’s table, flanked by about 60 members and guests. The Confederates banquet being the most exciting thing to happen at the staid old institution since 1839 – when two members came to blows over a card game – more than 100 local notables applied to attend, but the organisers have weeded out those deemed not quite notable enough.
Among the most notable of the notables is Sir Redmond Barry, first chief justice of Victoria and secretary of the club. His Honour is also a notorious rake in the habit of scandalising polite society by promenading with his mistress and their illegitimate children. Famously, he was the judge at the 1855 Eureka rebels’ trials. Infamously, in 1880, he will send to the gallows an outlaw who, in the year of the Shenandoah, is still a boy with a sash awarded for bravery.
The plates are laden with fine fare, and the wine flows like water, but all are on their best behaviour, if more than a little mellow, by the time the club president, wealthy merchant and politician James Graham, rises to propose two toasts: firstly, to the Queen; then to the Shenandoah and her officers, followed by a hearty ‘three cheers’. The rebels’ hosts gleefully inform them that cheering is strictly against club rules and that this is the first time official dispensation has been given to allow it. Such a privilege!
Captain Waddell, seated at the president’s right hand, rises to respond but is quietly told the club rules prohibit speechifying of any kind. The three cheers were a special treat, but even a polite ‘Thank you’ is out of the question.
The formalities over, all retire to the smoking and billiard rooms for port, cigars and good-natured banter. Lieutenant John Mason is deep in conversation with a Doctor Barker, who kindly offers to pick him up the next morning at Scott’s Hotel in his dogcart and drive him to the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum, at Kew, to look at the inmates. The doctor invites Captain Waddell and Smith Lee, too, and both accept.
Mason is fascinated by Doctor Barker’s theories on hanging. Barker claims the conventional method of adjusting the rope, whereby the knot is placed behind the ear, is not as effective as placing the knot behind the neck. He tells Mason he has tested his theory by experimenting on condemned criminals in England, and that his method invariably snaps the neck, causing instantaneous death, whereas the traditional method often leaves the subject choking at the end of a rope for up to 10 minutes. Such is Melburnian small talk in 1865.
At the end of the evening, the Confederates bid a fond farewell to their hosts and, having missed that last train back to the port, beg the Captain’s permission to spend the night in town. The Captain takes his leave of the junior officers, who, after a few more drinks at pubs along the way, and a good time had by all, turn in at the Albion Hotel.
Next morning, Mason and Smith Lee return to Scott’s Hotel to meet Dr Barker and Captain Waddell. The doctor is right on time, but the otherwise obsessively punctual captain fails to mate-rialise. After waiting a while, the others leave without him.
Lunch with the hanging doctor and his family is the prelude to a pleasant drive to the asylum, about three miles (5km) out of town. There, they are surprised to find not a large foreboding institution but separate stone cottages with flower and vegetable gardens tended by patients, under the watchful eyes of attendants. Why, it could almost be a plantation in the South, had the field hands not been picking flowers instead of picking cotton.
The asylum houses some 960 patients, including intellectually disabled children. The visitors are introduced to the star attraction of what is effectively a human zoo – an old woman who believes she is the Empress of Victoria.
Annie Baxter Dawbin, a guest at Dr Barker’s for lunch with the Confederates, notes in her diary, ‘Mrs Barker came here in the morning and asked me to go to her house to lunch, as some of the officers of the Shenandoah were to be there. Accordingly, I went at one o’clock and met Messrs Lee [nephew of the Confederate Commander-in-Chief Robert E. Lee] and Mason, Captain Brewer, Police Magistrate of Ginchen Bay, and Captain Murchison. The two officers were very gentlemanly Southerners, nice-looking, and quite charming in their manners.
‘Dr Barker drove them to the Yarra Bend Asylum after lunch, but before doing so, he drove from the next street a Miss Clarke, who, when she got off the dogcart, never said a word of thanks to Mr Lee who had politely got down to help her from the vehicle. What must foreigners think of us English, when we behave so rudely?’12
After a fine day’s entertainment courtesy of the mentally ill, it’s back to Dr Barker’s for drinks, thence to Scott’s Hotel for more of the same. In the company of 20 or so well-wishers, the officers are treated to yet another banquet with drinks on the house, and are toasting the Confederacy when an uninvited guest joins them. The man, not identified in any of the officers’ journals, launches into a tirade of abuse, damning the rebels and the Southern cause, and, according to Cornelius Hunt, ‘making use of such language as gentlemen seldom submit to in silence’.13
Roused to defend the honour of the Confederacy, Assistant Surgeon McNulty springs to his feet and punches the man squarely between the eyes, felling him. With that, all hell breaks loose. Fists are flying, guns and knives are drawn, shots are fired, glasses, bottles and decanters are hurled amid a cacophony of shouts, curses and breaking glass.
No-one is seriously injured in the brawl, but Hunt tells us that, ‘for a few moments there was a scene of excitement and confusion as I have seldom witnessed; but the Shenandoah men were victorious, drove their antagonists from the field, and then marched off to the theatre in a body, to conclude the evening in a less exhilarating time’.14
The theatre Hunt refers to is the Theatre Royal, where McNulty tells us that ‘Barry Sullivan, then playing Othello, gave us an especial night, when, with true British gusto, the [playbills] read: “Under the distinguished patronage of the Confederate Steamship Shenandoah.”’15
It’s not known if any hint of irony influenced the choice of play, in which the lead character is played by a white actor in blackface. The celebrated English actor Barry Sullivan is touring Australia after performing in the same play, in Richmond, Virginia, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with John Wilkes Booth.
A member of a famous theatrical family, Booth is presently playing Romeo in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, at Ford’s Theater in Washington. Critics have praised his performance, with one describing it as ‘the most satisfactory of all renderings of that fine character, particularly in the death scene’.16
Booth, a Confederate sympathiser vehemently opposed to the abolition of slavery, will give the performance of his life at Ford’s Theater on Good Friday, 14 April 1865. During the play Our American Cousin, attended by Abraham and Mary Lincoln, Booth will slip into the presidential box and shoot Lincoln in the back of
the head. The assassin will escape and flee south until, after 12 days on the run, fate and a Yankee bullet catch up with him.
The Shenandoah will capture many whalers in her career, one such being the Euphrates, out of New Bedford, but the Euphrates’ sister ship, the Tigris, will not be one of them. And that’s a pity, because a shot across the bow of the Tigris would have exploded one of the most unlikely conspiracy theories of the war – that Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was not shot and killed on 26 April 1865, while on the run in northern Virginia, but escaped to Australia.
So that story goes, Booth inexplicably escaped capture and headed north to the Yankee heartland, rather than south to Dixie, and at New Bedford shipped aboard the Tigris. Presumably, he boarded under a false identity, since Yankees were hardly likely to welcome aboard the man who killed their President. Unless, of course, the Tigris was manned by Confederate agents cunningly disguised as New England Yankees, having mastered the tricky dialect.
The Tigris sailed to South Australia, where Booth was smuggled ashore under cover of darkness at a whaling station on Kangaroo Island. He settled in Hahndorf, a township of mostly German migrants, in the Adelaide Hills, under the name Jack Holmes, and lived happily ever after.
The only supposedly supporting evidence for this theory is that Booth’s mother’s maiden name was Holmes, and that his father’s second wife’s first name was Adelaide. Actually, Adelaide was his father’s first wife’s second middle name, not that it makes much difference.
At Melbourne’s Theatre Royal, after pushing through a large crowd that has gathered outside in hopes of catching a glimpse of the visiting celebrity rebels, the Shenandoah officers take their seats in the royal box, looking down upon a packed house staring back up at them, as Barry Sullivan frets and struts upon the stage.