![]() Hougoumont in 1885 during the construction of the Forth Bridge in Scotland. | |
History | |
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Name | Hougoumont |
Namesake | Château d'Hougomont |
Owner | Duncan Dunbar (junior) |
Launched | 1852 |
General characteristics | |
Tons burthen | 875 bm |
Length | 165 ft 6 in (50.4 m) feet |
Beam | 34 ft (10 m) |
Depth of hold | 23 ft (7 m) |
Hougoumont was the last convict ship to transport convicts to Australia.
A three-masted full-rigged ship of the type commonly known as a Blackwall Frigate, Hougoumont was constructed at Moulmein, Burma in 1852. The ship's original owner was Duncan Dunbar, a highly successful ship owner who entered the convict transport trade in the 1840s, providing nearly a third of the ships that transported convicts to Western Australia.
The nineteenth century author W. Clark Russell claimed to have served on the Hougoumont for three years.
Hougoumont was chartered by the French as a troop carrier during the Crimean War, during which time it was renamed Baraguey d'Hilliers after the French general Achille Baraguey d'Hilliers, as its original name was connected with the Battle of Waterloo and would have been offensive to the French. After the Crimean War ended in 1856, it was renamed Hougoumont.
In the 1860s, the Emigration Commission accepted a tender for Hougoumont to carry government-assisted emigrants to Australia. In September 1863, ten men and five women were removed from the ship to the St Georges infirmary, Wapping, diagnosed with "Insanity". Several were later transferred to the Colney Hatch Asylum.
On 9 June 1866 the vessel began a voyage from Plymouth to Port Adelaide, carrying 335 emigrants. It arrived on 16 September.
Hougoumont's most famous voyage occurred in 1867, after it was chartered to transport convicts to Western Australia. By this time, it was owned by Luscombe of London. A number of convicts boarded the ship at Sheerness, Kent, on 30 September. It then sailed along the south coast of England to Portland, where more convicts were boarded. It departed Portsmouth on 12 October 1867 with 280 convicts and 108 passengers on board. Most of the passengers were pensioner guards and their families. The ship's captain was William Cozens and the surgeon-superintendent was Dr William Smith. After a largely uneventful voyage of 89 days, during which time one convict died, Hougoumont docked at Fremantle, Western Australia on 10 January 1868.
Amongst the convicts were 62 Fenian political prisoners, transported for their part in the Fenian Rising of 1867. About 17 of these were military Fenians. The transportation of political prisoners contravened the agreement between the United Kingdom and Western Australia, and news of their impending arrival caused panic in Western Australia. The fact that military Fenians were transported was also highly unusual, given the British Government's previous firm policy not to transport military prisoners.
The presence of Fenians amongst the convicts meant that there were many more literate convicts on board than was usual for such a voyage. Consequently, a number of journals of the voyage are extant: that of Denis Cashman has been known of for many years, and that of John Casey and the memoirs of Thomas McCarthy Fennell have recently[ when? ] been discovered and published. Numerous letters survive, and many articles about the voyage were later written by Fenians who went on to become journalists, such as John Boyle O'Reilly. Also, during the voyage a number of the Fenians entertained themselves by producing seven editions of a shipboard newspaper entitled The Wild Goose , which survive in the State Library of New South Wales.
Little is known of Hougoumont's later service, but there are records of emigrants arriving in Melbourne on board Hougoumont in 1869. The ship was still listed in Lloyd's Register in 1883, but is not in the 1889/90 volume.
In the 1880s Hougoumont was used as a storage vessel during the building of the Forth Bridge. [1] It was used as a hospital ship in the Firth of Forth in the mid-1880s for smallpox sufferers, with numerous records in the National Records of Scotland listing it as such as place of death.
Many pictures purporting to be "the" Hougoumont are in fact of a later steel four-masted barque also named Hougomont, 2428 tons, built at Greenock in 1897, and hulked at Stenhouse Bay in South Australia in 1932. [2]
Convicts transported on board Hougoumont include:
For other convict ship voyages to Western Australia:
The Catalpa rescue was the escape, on 17–19 April 1876, of six Irish Fenian prisoners from the Convict Establishment, a British penal colony in Western Australia. They were taken on the convict ship Hougoumont to Fremantle, Western Australia, arriving 9 January 1868. In 1869, pardons had been issued to many of the imprisoned Fenians. Another round of pardons was issued in 1871, after which only a small group of "military" Fenians remained in Western Australia's penal system.
James Wilson or Séamas Mac Liammóir, was an Irish Fenian and soldier of India. In 1867 he was transported as a convict to Western Australia and later escaped during the Catalpa rescue.
John Boyle O'Reilly was an Irish poet, journalist, author and activist. As a youth in Ireland, he was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or Fenians, for which he was transported to Western Australia. After escaping to the United States, he became a prominent spokesperson for the Irish community and culture through his editorship of the Boston newspaper The Pilot, his prolific writing and his lecture tours.
The convict era of Western Australia was the period during which Western Australia was a penal colony of the British Empire. Although it received small numbers of juvenile offenders from 1842, it was not formally constituted as a penal colony until 1849. Between 1850 and 1868, 9,721 convicts were transported to Western Australia on 43 convict ship voyages. Transportation ceased in 1868, but it was many years until the colony ceased to have any convicts in its care.
Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia.
Thomas McCarthy Fennell was a Fenian political prisoner transported as a convict to Western Australia.
Caduceus (1854–1874) was a 1106 ton merchant ship, built in 1854 at Union Dock, Limehouse, London by shipwrights Fletcher Son & Fearnall, which also transported settlers to New Zealand and Australia.
Edwin Fox is one of the world's oldest surviving merchant sailing ships. The Edwin Fox is also the only surviving ship that transported convicts to Australia. She is unique in that she is the "only intact hull of a wooden deep water sailing ship built to British specifications surviving in the world outside the Falkland Islands". Edwin Fox carried settlers to both Australia and New Zealand and carried troops in the Crimean War. The ship is dry-docked at The Edwin Fox Maritime Centre at Picton in New Zealand.
Moondyne is an 1879 novel by John Boyle O'Reilly. It is loosely based on the life of the Western Australian convict escapee and bushranger Moondyne Joe. It is believed to be the first ever fictional novel set in Western Australia. In 1913, Melbourne film director W. J. Lincoln made a silent film of the same name.
A convict ship was any ship engaged on a voyage to carry convicted felons under sentence of penal transportation from their place of conviction to their place of exile.
The Wild Goose: A Collection of Ocean Waifs was a hand-written newspaper created in late 1867 by Fenian prisoners aboard Hougoumont, the last ship to transport convicts to Australia.
Denis Bambrick Cashman was an Irish political prisoner and diarist who was transported to Western Australia due to Fenianism and wrote of his experiences in a diary.
The word Fenian served as an umbrella term for the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and their affiliate in the United States, the Fenian Brotherhood, secret political organisations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. In 1867 they sought to coordinate raids into Canada from the United States with a rising in Ireland. In the 1916 Easter Rising and the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence, the IRB led the republican struggle.
Joseph Denis Nunan was an Irish born patriot and builder transported to Fremantle for wounding a policeman. He became an architect and building contractor involved in significant buildings in Perth, Fremantle and York. He never gave up his Fenian beliefs and died before he could return to Ireland.
Hougomont was the name of a four-masted steel barque built in Greenock, Scotland in 1897 by Scotts Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. In 1924 she was purchased by Gustav Erikson's shipping company in Mariehamn, Åland, Finland. She was used for transport and schooling ship for young sailors until 1932 when a squall completely broke her rig on the Southern Ocean and she was sunk as breakwater near the town of Stenhouse Bay in South Australia. ' Hougomont had a crew of 24 men. The name "Hougomont" is derived from Château d'Hougoumont where the Battle of Waterloo was fought. While seaworthy she sailed to Peru, Florida, Canada, Australia, England, Ireland, and Sweden among other destinations. She had two sister ships, Nivelle and Archibald Russell.
Cornelius O'Mahony was a Gaelic scholar, teacher, Fenian and staunch supporter of Irish independence. He was tried and convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to prison, only to be later transported to Australia.
Hugh Francis Brophy was a leading Fenian and staunch supporter of Irish independence. He was convicted for his part in a plot to overthrow British rule in Ireland and establish a republic, and was sentenced to penal servitude. This sentence was later commuted to transportation to Australia.
Waterloo was a merchant ship built at Bristol, England in 1815. On her first voyage she suffered a short-lived mutiny. She then made one voyage under charter to the British East India Company (EIC). She made four voyages transporting convicts from England to Australia, and two voyages from Ireland to Australia. On her seventh convict voyage Waterloo wrecked on 28 August 1842 in Table Bay with great loss of life.
Norfolk Island twice served as a penal colony, from March 1788 to February 1814, and from 1825 to 1853. During both periods the government in the Colony of New South Wales transferred convicts that had been brought to Australia on to the island.