Terrence James Victorino

Catalpa rescue Terrence James Victorino

Publisher Marketing: Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Catalpa rescue was the escape, in 1876, of six Irish Fenian prisoners from what was then the British penal colony of Western Australia. From 1865 to 1867, British authorities rounded up supporters of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an Irish independence movement, and transported sixty-two of them to the penal colony of Western Australia. Among them was John Boyle O'Reilly, later to become the editor of the Boston newspaper The Pilot. They were sent on the convict ship Hougoumont and landed at Fremantle, in January 1868, after which they were moved to the Convict Establishment (now Fremantle Prison). Two years later in 1869, O'Reilly escaped on the whaling ship Gazelle with the aid of third mate whaler Henry Hathaway and ended up in Boston, where he became editor of The Pilot. In 1871, another Fenian, John Devoy, was granted amnesty in England, among others, on condition that he settle outside Ireland, and he sailed to New York City. He also became a newspaperman, for the New York Herald. He joined the Clan na Gael, an organization that supported armed insurrection in Ireland.