Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 223, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1912 — OLD CONVICT SHIP [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

OLD CONVICT SHIP

British Hulk Success Confine Prisoners. £ Crude Old Craft Wat Jail During Mad Rush That Followed the Dlsoovery of Australian Gold Fields —ls on Way to America. Boston/—The liner Laconia on her last arrival at the port of Boston reported exchanging wireless messages With the British convict hulk Success. This Indicates that what , has been termed "the mast remarkable ship that has visited England since the days of the slave trade” is bound for American ports, presumably Boston or New York, on an exhibition cruise similar to that made In British waters during the past sixteen years. The Success sailed from Australia on Its long exhibition cruise in 1895. She has dropped anchor at practically every port of England. The vessel Itself is a rare cariosity, with a strange, fiction-like history, and contains a collection of relics of the bushranging days of Australia. At each port attendants explain the exhibits and descriptive lectures are given on the various phases of convict life. The "history of the Success as a convict ship dates hack to the mad rush in search of wealth that followed the discovery of the Australian goldfields in 1851. Port Wllliamstown, nine miles distant from Melbourne, was filled with every variety of craft bearing immigrants. One day, looming above all otjier ships, came a quaint, old full-rigged vessel, with apple sides, broad bulging bows, standing high out of the water, and the name "Success” displayed the full width of her squarecut stern, over tho windows. And below the taffrall. She proved to be a "country-built” East Indiaman. She dropped anchor midst the army of white wings which ttyen dotted the harbor. In the confusion and excitement that resulted from the sudden Influx of Immigration, murder and crime ran riot. Robbery under arms was reported every few days, and It seemed

Impossible for the authorities to cope with the number of felons and miscreants who Infested the district. At last the suggestion was made that some of the vessels then lying at anchor in the bay, deserted by captains and crews, who had all joined In the headlong rush for the “diggings," should be utilized as prison hulks. Five full-rigged vessels, among them the Success, were selected. Of these "yellow frigates," as they were called, the Suocess was officially regarded as the flagship of the felon fleet. She was known as the awful "dark cell drill” ship, and between her decks were lodged a company of closecropped villains, the very scum of all the lawless men in that district The Success was a convict ship until 1857, when the terrible cruelties of the system aroused the English people to action. She was removed from Williamstpwn to Sandridge in 1857, and trbhi 1880 to 1868 was used as a “woman’s prison." The following year the ship was used as a sort of reformatory for boys. Late In 1890 the Success first appeared before the public as a ship on show. Her general structure Is well worthy of description. The ship’s external appearance Is particularly strlkingln these days of ocean greyhounds. Her square-cut stem and quarter galleries stamp her at once with the hall-mark of antiquity, and her bluff bow shows that she could never have distinguished herself for a high rate of speed. . Her tonnage may be taken at 580. She Is 135 feet In length, about 29 feet beam, copper fastened, and “trenailed” throughout. Her solid sides are two feet six Inches In thickness at the bilge, so that prisoners from within recoiled from the hopeless task of penetrating her walls.

Convict Ship Success.