A Vessel With a History.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue III, 28 November 1891, Page 3

A Vessel With a History.

» The hulk Success, which recently •arrived in Port Jackson, in tow from Melbourne, is a vessel with a history. She was one of the pioneer traders to Melbourne, and somewhere about 1853 was purchased by the Victorian Government, dismantled, and converted into a floating depot for longsentence criminals. In this capacity she served for years, and many were the bloodcurdling scenes enacted on board. Little change has been made in her from the old time. She is a prison ship which could be put in " commission " tomorrow, so tar as strength and cell accommodation is concerned. Her main and lower deck shows the prisons, with their bolts and bars and heavy doors, their narrow cells, their "tiger dens" their iron gratings, their collection of leg-irons and other paraphernalia of a convict ship. In some of the cells are to be seen the bolts in the walls or ship's timber, to which refractory prisoners were chained, and the dark hole on the lower dock, where there is not room for a man when chained to the bolt to either stand up or lie down. It was from the Success that a number of convicts, led by " Captain Melville," as ho was called attempted to escape. They dashed out the brains of one of the warders in the boat, but immediately afterwords a fusilade from the warders on board, struck one of them to the hep,rfc, and fatally wounded another. Bat, so the story goes, Melville Escaped his just punishment. He "was sentenced to death, it is true, for his part in the affair, but got off on a technical point, only to commit suicide in the Melbourne Gaol. The Success is the property of a Melbourne syndicate, Mr J. H. Chambers bping the manager, and she has been oaken round specially for exhibition. The ship, to say the least, is a wonderful old vessel, for though over 100 years old —having been built at Mouhnein, British Burmah, in 1790 —her frmbers are still in a good state of preservation. She is built of teak, and her main mast and ship's bell are said to be those put in the vessel when she was launched. The following notice is conspicuously displayed on board the vessel : — 41 Piston hulk Success, East India trader, 100 years old, built of solid teak 1 , G3 dismal prison cells, with casts (in wax) of the prisoners in original clothes and manacles." It is the intention of the owners to send the vessel to England. ■he will make the voyage under sail, • aptain I>. Jenkins in command, j