Following his rescue from Australia in 1869, John Boyle O’ Reilly made good on his promise to do everything in his power to help his fellow Fenians escape the same British hell hole they had occupied together since 1868. The mission, extremely dangerous to say the least, was to rescue six Fenians from a British prison in Fremantle, Western Australia and bring them safely to America. Tasked with the leadership of this monumental undertaking was an Irish expatriate, John Devoy, once a fervent recruiter of Fenians from within the British army. He had recruited John Boyle O’Reilly into the Fenian movement in Dublin. Pardoned after serving five years of a fifteen year sentence in a British jail, the twenty-nine year old Devoy traveled to America in 1871. He became a reporter with the New York Herald, where he continued to champion Fenian causes. In July 1874, a Clan na Gael convention in Baltimore named Devoy to oversee the rescue of the prisoners in Western Australia.

The beginning phase of the mission saw John Devoy travel to New Bedford in search of a ship and crew. Upon his arrival in New Bedford, and with an introductory letter in hand from John Boyle O’Reilly, Devoy contacted a former whaler, Henry Hathaway. Hathaway then introduced Devoy to John Richardson, a whaling agent and Fenian sympathizer who nominated his son-in-law, George S. Anthony , to command the rescue vessel. The plan was explained to Captain Anthony, under the guise of a whaling voyage he was to sail to a given point off the coast of Western Australia on a certain date, take on several passengers, then return to America. Within a twenty-four period, Captain Anthony made his decision and accepted the command and the mission. The Fenians had a Captain, now they had to get a ship.

Scouring the wharfs of Boston, George Anthony and his father-in-law purchased a three-master barque named the Catalpa. The cost was $5,200, and that money was to be reimbursed by Clan na Gael. The crew, recruited by Captain Anthony was comprised mainly of Pacific island natives and Africans. The Catalpa set sail from New Bedford, April 29.1875.

Some of the equipment on board was not the best. For instance, a reading taken by the good captain on the ship’s chronometer, a time keeping instrument used for navigation purposes, placed the ship in the middle of New York state. Needless to say, the instrument was retired and he relied on his own skills as a navigator.

Meanwhile, Irish agents had been dispatched from America to Sydney, Australia. They appropriated additional monies from local Fenian supporters and made their way to Fremantle, Western Australia, to coordinate the land part of the rescue. The agents reached Fremantle in November. One of the agents, John Breslin who used the alias, James Collins and posed as a wealthy American mining speculator, endeared himself to the governor, who arranged a tour for “Collins” of the same facility where the Fenians were held. Important intelligence was gathered by the agents which helped them plot their course of action. In the meantime, the Catalpa had docked at Fayal Island in the Azores, where she off loaded 210 barrels of sperm oil for transport back to New Bedford. The profits from the oil helped defray the cost of the mission.

After she had refurbished, the Catalpa set sail for the Indian Ocean and Western Australia. In February of 1876, during her voyage to Bunbury, they met the trader Ocean Beauty out of Liverpool, England and bound for New Zealand. Captain Anthony went aboard and much to his surprise the captain of the Ocean Beauty was the same captain who had once been the master of the Hougoumont ( the convict ship that transported the Fenians to Fremantle in 1868) When Anthony explained he was thinking of whaling off the Western Australian coast, the Ocean Beauty’s master provided him with copies of valuable navigational charts of the waters.

On March 29, 1876, the Catalpa berthed at Bunbury, and Captain Anthony sailed north to Fremantle on the coastal steamer the Georgette with the Fenian agent John Breslin. Breslin’s and Thomas Desmond’s tale of how they successfully posed as businessmen in Fremantle, so as to gain people’s confidence and establish lines of communication, is yet another fascinating sub-plot to the main story. Finally it was arranged for contacts to be made with the eight Fenian prisoners who were to be in work parties outside the Prison. They were told by the contacts when the escape was to take place (unfortunately, two of the prisoners missed out on the escape because they were confined for insubordination). The six prisoners ( photographs below ) who eventually would be successful in the venture were, from left to right, Robert Cranston from County Tyrone, Michael Harrington from County Cork, Thomas Darragh from County Wicklow, Martin Hogan from County Limerick, James Wilson from County Down and Thomas Hassett from County Cork. All six men had very impressive military records while in the British Army. Each individual was cited in dispatches on more than one occasion for gallantry in the field. And all they wanted was for the thief, England, to return the land they stole to its rightful owner, the Irish.