John Devoy's Catalpa Expedition
eBook - ePub

John Devoy's Catalpa Expedition

Philip Fennell, Marie King

Share book
  1. 225 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

John Devoy's Catalpa Expedition

Philip Fennell, Marie King

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

The story of John Devoy’s 1876 Catalpa rescue is a tale of heroism, creativity, and the triumph of independent spirit in pursuit of freedom. The daily log on board the whaling ship Catalpa begins with the typical recount of a crew intact and a spirit unfettered, but such quiet words deceive the truth of the audacious enterprise that came to be known as one of the most important rescues in Irish American history. John Devoy’s men rescued six Irish political prisoners from the Australian coast, allowing millions of fellow Irishmen and American-Fenians, many of whom secretly financed the dangerous plot, to draw courage from the newly exiled prisoners.

Philip Fennell and Marie King tell the story from John Devoy’s own records and the ship's logbooks. John Devoy's Catalpa Expedition includes an introduction by Terry Golway and the personal diaries, letters, and reports from John Devoy and his men.

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is John Devoy's Catalpa Expedition an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access John Devoy's Catalpa Expedition by Philip Fennell, Marie King in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Geschichte & Irische Geschichte. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
NYU Press
Year
2006
ISBN
9780814727836
1. The daily log entry recorded information from noon to noon. The date of the entry was the date at the end of the period. In this entry, there was nothing recorded (the voyage had not commenced) for the first part of the 24-hour period that started at noon on April 28. Not until the following morning (29th) does the entry start. Any events recorded for the afternoon of the 29th appear in the next day’s entry, dated April 30, and so on and so forth. The chief mate was responsible to the owners for keeping the log. Captain George S. Anthony, Logbook of Bark Catalpa of New Bedford, Mass., April 29,1875 to August 23,1876. The Kendall Institute, New Bedford Whaling Museum: microform, Log #557; #283/397-488; R. H. Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast and Twenty-four Years After, 61st printing (New York: Collier, 1937), 16.
2. “Crew List,” [New Bedford] Evening Standard, April 29, 1875.
3. The ship had returned to the United States from Surinam in 1874. “Marine Intelligence,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), August 21, 1874, 8.
4. “The Escaped Fenians,” New-York Daily Tribune, August 21, 1876, 5.
5. Elmo Hohman, The American Whaleman: A Study of Life and Labor in the Whaling Industry (Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, 1972), 302.
6. Edouard A. Stackpole, The Sea-Hunters: The New England Whaleman during Two Centuries, 1635–1835 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, [1953]), 454.
7. Leonard Bolles Ellis, History of New Bedford and Its Vicinity, 1602–1892 (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason, 1892), 320–21.
8. The warships Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah were built or refitted near Liverpool during the Civil War. Despite the protests of the United States, the British allowed them to be delivered to the Confederacy, where they proceeded to do considerable damage to U.S. commercial shipping, particularly whalers. In 1872, the British finally settled U.S. claims in the amount of $15.5 million. Granville Allen Mawer, Ahab’s Trade: The Saga of South Seas Whaling (St. Leonards, N.S.W.: Allen and Unwin, 1999), 267, 272; Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 726–29; Story of Yankee Whaling (New York: American Heritage Publishing, 1959), 83–84.
9. “Polar Sea Perils,” NYT, November 14, 1871, 2; Albert Cook Church, Whale Ships and Whaling (New York: Norton, 1960), 18.
10. Sperm whaling cruises were longer than others. Mawer, xiv; Hohman, 84–85.
11. Ellis, 376–84.
12. “A Review of the Panic,” NYT, August 22, 1873, 1; Encyclopedia Britannica, 1993, 29, 242–44; Morison, 745–47; Sean Dennis Cashman, America in the Gilded Age, 3rd edition (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 107–11.
13. Charles L. Anthony, Genealogy of the Anthony Family from 1495 to 1904 (Sterling, IL: Charles L. Anthony, 1904), 23–24, 110.
14. Charles L. Anthony, 117.
15. Vital Records of New Bedford, Massachusetts to the Year 1850. Volume—Births (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1932).
16. “Disaster to the Schooner Henry Curtis and Loss of the Captain and Cook,” [New Bedford] Republican Standard, March 25, 1852.
17. Charles L. Anthony, 117.
18. Z.W. Pease, The Catalpa Expedition (New Bedford, MA: George S. Anthony, 1897), 72.
19. Charles L. Anthony, 117–18.
20. Pease, Catalpa, 72. The manufacturer was the Morse Twist Drill and Machine Company, which was established in New Bedford in 1864. By the 1870s it was a successful provider of precision tools. Zephaniah W. Pease, ed., History of New Bedford (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1918), 1, 253–54.
21. “The captain, in the first place, is lord paramount. He stands no watch, comes and goes when he pleases, and is accountable to no one, and must be obeyed in everything, without a question, even from his chief officer.” Dana, 16.
22. Mawer, 111.
23. Pease, Catalpa, 76. (Zephaniah W. Pease (1861–1933) was a well-known journalist and writer in New Bedford. He was associated with the [New Bedford] Morning Mercury for over fifty years and also served as the collector of the Port of New Bedford in the 1890s. “Z. W. Pease Dead,” NYT, June 25, 1933, 22.)
24. “List of Persons Composing the Crew,” Catalpa Log.
25. An Atlantic archipelago located approximately eight hundred miles east of Portugal, of which it is part. “Azores,” Britannica, 1, 757.
26. Anthony apparently was handicapped throughout the voyage by defective chronometers. The one he left New Bedford with was consistently off and a replacement he obtained at Flores was not much better. Pease, Catalpa, 83, 88, 90. (The device is used to determine longitude.) Only one reference to this matter is found in the log. On January 13, it is simply noted that one chronometer had stopped. Catalpa Log.
27. Captains followed their prey’s well-known migratory patterns. Patricia C. McKissack and Fredrick L. McKissack, Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African-American Whalers (New York: Scholastic Press, 1999), 100.
28. Stackpole, 27–29, 48.
29. Story of Yankee Whaling, 38.
30. Catalpa Log, May 6, 13, June 13, August 25, 27, September 19, 1875.
31. Ibid., July 15, 1875.
32. Ibid., August 22, 1875.
33. Mawer, 99–100.
34. Cape Verde lies 385 miles off the west coast of Africa. It consists of ten islands and belonged to Portugal. Britannica, 2, 826–27.
35. Catalpa Log.
36. This was considered one of the industry’s most intractable problems. Mawer, 129. “Three out of every ten men deserted on average.” Hohman, 69.
37. The “Whaleman’s Shipping Paper,” signed by crew members, was a legal contract that a captain could cite when requesting the assistance of the authorities. Hohman, 67. (The standard “Whaleman’s Shipping Paper” of the period, the agreement among owner, master, seamen, and mariners, also prohibited liquor on board, except for medicinal purposes. All parties to the contract had pledged to abide by this and drunkenness was also prohibited.)
38. Catalpa Log, October 16, 1875.
39. Report of the Eighth Annual Convention, “V.C.” [Clan-na-Gael], Cleveland, Ohio, September 4–8, 1877, 55, “The Fenian Brotherhood Records and O’Donovan Rossa Personal Papers,” The American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.
40. This occurred somewhere between Fayal and Tenerife. Pease, Catalpa, 93–95.
41. The local American consul would become responsible for the welfare of discarded crew members. Frequently, the foreign port assessed the ship a fee for all discharged crew members, thereby discouraging the practice. Hohman, 111.
42. Pease described another problem Anthony encountered at Fayal. Apparently, the Catalpa had caught a large quantity of albacores right before entering port. The customs authorities insisted that duty be paid on the fish or that they be disposed of. Anthony got rid of the lot. No mention of this is made in the ship’s log. Pease, Catalpa, 88–89.
43. Pease, Catalpa, 89; Catalpa Log.
44. The Canary Islands are an Atlantic Ocean archipelago, belonging to Spain, about sixty miles west of the African coast. Tenerife is the largest of the islands. “Canary Islands,” Britannica, 2, 793.
45.Catalpa Log, November 21–26, 1875.
46. Pease, Catalpa, 96–97.
47. Catalpa Log, December 20, 1875, February 6, 1876.
48. The captain of the 1867–68 Hougoumont voyage was William Cozens. However, Lloyd’s Register lists a Pearce as the captain of the Ocean Beauty during this encounter with the Catalpa. A W. C. Cuzens is listed as master of the Peep O’Day. Lloyd’s Register of British and Foreign Shipping, July 1, 1875–June 30, 1876 (London: Wyman and Sons, 1875); Catalpa Log, February 16, 1876. Pease described the encounter between Anthony and Cozens in chapter 15 of his book. Pease, Catalpa, 103–6.
49. Most accounts give sixty-two as the number of Fenians aboard; some, however, give sixty-three.
50. Robert Hughes, “The Real Australia,” Time, September 11, 2000, 99.
51. Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding (New York: Knopf, 1987), 143, 573–77; convict transportation stopped in New South Wales in 1840 and Tasmania in 1853. Hughes, 588–90.
52. Keith Amos, The Fenians in Australia, 1865–1880 (Kensington, N.S.W.: New South Wales University Press, 1988), 123; John Boyle O’Reilly, Moondyne Joe: A Story from the Underworld (New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1879) 13; C. M. H. Clark, ed., Select Documents in Australian History, 1851–1900 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1969), 282; Britannica, 14, 406, 485.
53. J. S. Battye, Western Australia: A History from Its Discovery to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth (Nedlands, W.A.: University of Western Australia Press [facsimile edition], 1978), 255–56.
54. Ibid., appendix 4.
55. James Reynolds (1831–1897) was born in County Cavan and sent to America by his father in the 1840s. He established himself in New Haven, CT, as a glass founder. Because of his willingness to take a significant financial risk in the rescue venture, he was known as “Catalpa Jim” for many years after. “James Reynolds’ Monument Unveiled,” Gaelic American [hereafter GA], July 9, 1904, 1.
56. John Boyle O’Reilly (1844–1890) was born in County Meath. He became a trooper in the British army’s Tenth Hussars and joined the Fenian movement. Eventually betrayed, he was court-martialed and sent to Australia on the last prison ship Hougoumont in 1867. He escaped from Australia in 1869 aboard a New Bedford whaler, the Gazelle, and made his way to the United States. William O’Brien and Desmond Ryan, eds., Devoy’s Post Bag, 1871–1928, 1 (Dublin: C. J. Fallon, 1948), 14–15.
57. The Catalpa, named for a type of American tree, was built in Medford, MA, in 1844. It was registered in New Bedford in 1852 to Mandell/Robinson/I. Howland and Co. Specifications: 90′ × 25′ × 12.2′; 202.05 tons (new measurement). It also served as a merchant vessel. Ship Registers of New Bedford, Massachusetts, 3 (Boston: National Archive Project, 1940); Pease, Catalpa, 77; Catalpa File Notes, New Bedford Whaling Museum library, October 2001.
58. Thomas Darragh, Thomas Henry Hassett, Michael Harrington, James Wilson, Robert Cranston, Martin Hogan, and James Keilley. Keilley had been transported in 1867 to Australia at the same time as the other prisoners aboard the convict ship Hougoumont. However, his peers believed he had tried to curry favor with the Crown prosecutor during his trial. This was never forgotten, and he would not be included in the escape plans. John Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel (New York: Chas. D. Young, 1929), 257; Amos, 230–31.
59. Charles McCarthy, Thomas Chambers, and John Patrick O’ Brien. These three military Fenians were released in 1878. O’ Brien and Ryan, 1, 304.
60. Isaac Butt (1813–1879) was a lawyer, member of Parliament, defe...

Table of contents