OLD CONVICT DAYS.

Shannon News, 4 December 1923, Page 4

OLD CONVICT DAYS.

EXPERIENCES OF ESCAPEES.

! The death has just been'recorded of ' a man named Harley, who in 1876 took Apart in the, rescue of six Fenians from ' Australia. The six' men in question i (reports the Melbourne Age) were all ex-soldiers, and were transported to Western Australia in 1867, the last instance of the. use of Australia (Which has already protested very strongly on the subject) as a receptacle for deported convicts. The rescue was a deeply-thought-out and elaborate affair. It involved the chartering of a whaler, the Catalpa, which sailed from .San Francisco in March, 1875, as if on an ordinary whaling trip, and, 'in faci pursued that industry for some six months with profit. To disarm suspicion there was only one Irishman on board, Duggan, the ship's carpenter. Meanwhile two separate) parties of Fenians had gone to Australia, one from England and the other, and more important one, from America. The Catalpa picked up the second party, which was under the command of Johnßresin, who had been one of the chiefs agents in securing the rescue from Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, in 1867, of James Stephens, the Fenian chief. On arrival at Rockingham., in Western Australia, the party got in touch with the prisoners and the men from England. Carriages took the prisoners to the beach at Fremantle, where the whaler's boat was Waiting, and after an exciting "race with a police boat the Catalpa was reached. The whaler was pursued by a Government vessel, but only overtaken on the high sea, when the skipper of the Catalpa hoisted the Stars and. Stripes . An amusing exchange of bluff took place between the whaler and the gunboat, but the latter vessel could do no more, and returned to. Fremantle. The Catalpa reached New York with the six Fenians in August, 1876,. having taken four nonths on the journey home.