There is now being exhibited along the Atlantic coast the oldest and
strangest craft afloat in the world to-day. This is the old British
convict ship “Success,” now the only survivor of the “Ocean Hells,” as
the ships of England’s fleet of felon transports were called in the
first half of the last century.
Built in 1790, at Moulmain, by the old pagoda “looking eastwards to the
sea,” the “Success” is now 123 years old. No ship of anything like her
great age to-day is seaworthy, yet this old hulk under her own sail
has succeeded in crossing the Atlantic, her time of 96 days, however,
creating no new record.
Massively built throughout of solid Burman teak, the “Success” was
first launched as an armed East India merchantsman with beautiful brass
guns bristling from her sides and fitted handsomely for the reception
of princes, nabobs and the wealthy traders of the Orient, whose goods,
spices, aromatic teas, ivories, jewels and other costly luxuries she
carried over the seven seas to the ends of the earth. Her tonnage is
589, and she is 135 feet long and 29 feet beam. Her solid sides are 2
feet 6 inches thick at the bilge, and her keelson is a solid teak baulk
of tremendous thickness, with sister keelsons little less massive.
Her square cut stern 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.
Yet pains were taken to make her trim and smart, and fit to hold
a leading place among her sister ships of the Anglo-Indian fleet.
Remnants of great gilded scrolls upon a rich blue ground have been
brought to light, on scratching away the super-imposed coating.
The quarter galleries, too, were originally decorated with massive
and artistic carvings. Escutcheons can easily be traced at regular
intervals from stem to stern, and the fo’c’sle head, raised high aloft
forward, bears at its extremity a symbol of innocence and beautiful
womanhood in the original figurehead of exquisite design—a strangely
inappropriate emblem in the days when crime-stained convicts in
clanking chains put to flight all thoughts of innocence and beauty.
Broken only by an occasional conflict with a pirate craft, the
“Success” had an honored life on the ocean until 1802, when she was
first chartered by the British Government to transport to Australia
the overflow of the home jails, the unfortunate wretches who at that
time were sentenced to from seven years to the term of natural life for
offenses that would now be considered trivial and petty, warranting at
most but a small fine.
Some of the greatest writers of the 19th century devoted their pens
to horror-compelling descriptions of the voyages of the felon-fleet,
of which the “Success” was in her day the commodore or principal
devil-ship. “The Convict Ship” described by Clark Russell in his novel
of that title is in every detail an exact picture of the “Success” as
she is to-day, unchanged after all her years, nothing being omitted
but her human freight and their suffering from the cruelties and
barbarities perpetuated upon them. In “Moondyne,” too, John Boyle
O’Reilly described at first hand the “Hugomont,” a sister ship to this
ocean hell, with a faithfulness which anyone on visiting her must
realize.
The human cargoes on these convict ships died off like rotten sheep.
Here is an extract from an official record of the maiden trip of the
“Success” as a convict ship. Dr. White, the colonial surgeon, reported:—
“... of 939 males,” he says, in 1802, “sent out by the
last ships, ‘Success,’ ‘Scarborough’ and ‘Neptune,’ 251
died on board, and 50 have died since landing, the number
of sick this day is 450, and many who are reckoned as not
sick have barely strength to attend to themselves.”
In a further portion of his report, describing his first boarding
of the “Success,” Dr. White said that he found dead bodies still in
irons—nearly all convicts made the full voyage, often lasting nine
months, heavily ironed—below amongst the crowds of the living. Here is
his own words:—
“A greater number of them were lying some half, and
others quite naked, without bed or bedding, unable to
turn or help themselves. The smell was so offensive I
could hardly bear it. Some of these unhappy people died
after the ship came into the harbor before they could be
taken on shore. Part of these had been thrown into the
harbor and their dead bodies cast upon the shore, and
were seen lying naked upon the rocks. The misery I saw
amongst them is inexpressible.”
Engaged in this hideous trade, the “Success” continued to serve until
1851, in which year she was permanently stationed as a receiving prison
in Hobson’s Bay, Australia.
Cells, strong and gloomy, were constructed on the ’tween and lower
decks, and in these the most desperate criminals that England and
Australia could produce were “accommodated.” The lower deck was devoted
to the very worst type of convicts, and only prisoners of the better
class confined in the ’tween deck cells. “Refractory” prisoners were
immured throughout the long days and nights in the noisome dungeons in
the dark depths of the lower hold, and were never allowed on shore on
any pretext. Their only exercise and opportunity of enjoying a breath
of fresh air was restricted to one hour in every twenty-four, when
they were marched from stem to stern upon deck. The exceptionally high
bulkwarks prevented them seeing aught but the strip of blue Australia
sky directly overhead; the white-winged gulls, as they glided over
the vessel, seemed to mock the prisoners in their heavy chains. From
long confinement in the dark cells the eyesight of the convicts was
generally ruined.
The corner cells on either side of the lower deck are the dreaded
“Black Holes,” in which prisoners who had been guilty of some breach of
discipline or fractious conduct were punished by solitary confinement
lasting from one to one hundred days. These small and tapering
torture-chambers measure only two feet eight inches across. The doors
fit as tight as valves and close with a “swish,” excluding all air
except what can filter through the perforated iron plate that was
placed over the bars above the door, in order to make the hole as dark
and oppressive as possible. A stout iron ring is fastened knee high in
the shelving back of the cell, and through this ring the right wrist
of the prisoner was passed, and then handcuffed to the left hand; the
consequence was that he was thus prevented from standing upright or
lying down, but was obliged to stoop or lean against the shelving side
of the vessel as it rolled to and fro on the restless waters of the
bay. Starved, beaten and abused as they were, the wonder is that so
many of even the prisoners were able to endure punishment as they did.
In 1857 the disclosures that had been made of the brutal and inhuman
treatment meted out to prisoners created a fierce outcry in Australia,
amounting almost to revolt against the English Government, and resulted
in the abandonment of the hulk system. For some years later—from 1860
to 1868 the “Success” was used as a women’s prison; then she became
successively a reformatory ship and ammunition store, and later all the
prison hulks were ordered to be sold on the express condition that they
were to be broken up, and their associations lost to the recollection
of the residents of Melbourne. By a clerical error, however, that
condition did not appear upon the terms of sale of the “Success.” Hence
she became the only British convict ship afloat. It was not until
1890, however, that she appeared before the public as an exhibition
ship. In 1892 a gang of Sydney, N. S. W., residents stealthily boarded
her to revenge themselves for the outrage on their pride caused by
the exhibition of their ancestors, and all the figures were mutilated
beyond repair. The figures were replaced, but in order to make their
work more certain she was again attacked, scuttled and sunk in Sydney
Harbor, but after the lapse of some years and at enormous expense her
owners raised her, and since then she has been on exhibition not only
in the Antipodean colonies, but has circumnavigated Great Britain and
Ireland twice, and been shown five times in London. Her visitors have
numbered over 15,000,000 people, and have included the King of England,
the Prince of Wales, the Prince and Princess Henry of Battenburg,
and other members of the royal family, the German Emperor, Captain
Dreyfus of Devil’s Island, Lord Charles Beresford, the late Mr. W. E.
Gladstone, and other “notabilities.”
In 1912 she attempted what was perhaps the greatest feat in all her
remarkable career—that was, to make the passage across the Atlantic
under her own sail, unaccompanied by tug or steamer. The shipping world
was aghast when the voyage was projected. “Impossible,” said every man
that ever sailed the seas in ships, “that this century and a quarter
old hulk could brave the spring hurricanes of the western Ocean!”
Lloyds refused her insurance, the British Government refused her
clearance and sea-captain after sea-captain refused her command, but
finally a stout old skipper, Captain John Scott, and a gallant crew of
adventurous souls under the command of Captain D. H. Smith, the owner,
hoisted sail and took her out of Glasson Dock on the very day that the
ill-fated “Titanic” sailed from the port of Southhampton. For 96 days
she battled bravely, her staunch old hull defying the crashing gales
and mountainous seas and at length made port in Boston Harbor with a
crew, worn out and half starved but bravely triumphant, to the applause
of press and public, who likened the splendid feat to the epoch-making
voyage of Christopher Columbus.
Since then the “Success” has exhibited in Boston, Providence, New York,
Asbury Park, Philadelphia and is now being shown in southern seaports.