The Convict Hulk Success

An eBay item I bid on but did not win was a pamphlet advertising the tour of the Success, which was billed as “the last of England’s infamous felon fleet.” As is often the case, a little digging reveals an interesting story!

Captain James Cook was the first Englishman to suggest colonization of the newly discovered land of Australia, in 1770. In May of 1787, this idea came to fruition, although in a way that Cook may not have intended: two warships, six transport ships, and three supply ships set sail for Australia for the purpose of establishing a penal colony. The six transport ships carried 568 male convicts and 191 female convicts, along with their military escort of 191 Marines and 19 Officers. The fleet arrived in Botany Bay in January of the following year, eventually moving on to Port Jackson and establishing the colony there.

Thus began a period of some 60 years of transporting convicts to Australia, until 1850. During that period, more than 162,000 convicts were relocated to the continent. As can be imagined, this required a flotilla of ships, numbering over 800, however, the ship Success was not one of them!


The Success was built in 1840 in Burma for the East Indian trading firm of Cockerell and Co., for the purpose of trade between the Orient and England. She had a length of 135 feet, a beam of 30 feet, and weighed 622 tons net. After some voyages for that purpose, her owners turned her to the task of carrying families emigrating to Australia, which she began doing in 1843. After her third such voyage in 1852, she was abandoned by her crew, who succumbed to “gold fever” and left sailing to try their hands in the gold fields of Victoria.

The ship was then sold to the Victorian government, which wanted to use the Success as a “prison hulk,” or a floating prison. This was the ship’s fate from 1860 until 1869; first as a women’s prison, and later as sleeping quarters for a boys’ reformatory, until the Australian government discontinued the use of vessels for detention, due to the inhumanity of the practice. After a stint as a warehouse for storing powder and ammunition, the Success was sold to a UK company, after which her whereabouts are uncertain for a period of time.

In 1891, the ship was made into a floating “convict ship” museum, with a wax museum and exhibits depicting the terrible conditions of the convict transports, along with exhibits of torture devices, presumably for the purpose of increasing attendance. A man named Harry Power was the tour guide on these port-to-port stops; this is notable because Mr. Power was a resident on the Success as a convicted felon at one point! His career as tour guide was ill-fated, however, as he drowned on a fishing trip later that year.

The Success did not fare any better, as she was not successful as a maritime museum, and was scuttled at her moorings in 1892. She was sold to a new owner and refloated the following year, again working as the museum ship, touring the Australia ports. In 1895, she went abroad, touring Great Britain ports to great crowds until 1910, when she was sold to American Captain D. H. Smith.

On April 10, 1912, she sailed from Liverpool toward the U.S.—the same day that the Titanic left her port on her final voyage. Tens of millions of visitors toured the Success from 1912 until the early 1940s, including her last tour on the Great Lakes beginning in 1923 (she was featured at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933).

Unfortunately, many of the exhibits and pamphlets and postcards used to promote the museum were based on exaggerations and sometimes outright falsehoods. One particularly durable inaccuracy was the claim that the Success was a convict transport ship, when, in fact, she never served in that capacity. Another was the exploitation of the “Kelly Gang,” who were notorious Australian outlaws, but had no connection to the ship other than the fact that one of the gang’s father emigrated on the ship. In other editions of the pamphlets, the gang’s ringleader was supposedly the one who arrived on the Success, and manufactured arguments and trials were also published. The amount and persuasiveness of the inaccuracies were so great that in 1934, the Commonwealth of Australia instructed its own Attorney General to investigate the claims and set the record straight. A great website about the ship that contains the Australian A.G. report is http://www.ohioshipwrecks.org/ShipwreckDetail.php?AR=1&Wreck=15.


During the period of 1925-1943, while the Success toured the Great Lakes ports, a schoolteacher named Harry Van Stack was a frequent lecturer on the ship’s history and on the role of convict ships. By 1933, the Success had found a permanent home in Cleveland. When Mr. Van Stack relocated to Sandusky, he worked to have the ship towed there, as she had experienced a period of neglect and was showing her age. In 1945, her final owner, Walter Kolbe, had her towed to Port Clinton, where she was to be restored and permanently docked near the Erie Islands. However, this journey was the last for the Success. She ran aground near Port Clinton while under tow, and after the autumn storms in Lake Erie and the winter ice, she was not in good shape. On July 4, 1946, vandals burned the ship to the waterline while berthed at the Lake Erie Pier.


Mr. Van Stack’s final legacy regarding the Success was a generous and lasting one. He donated his entire collection of documents to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio. The collection includes early English penal documents, correspondence, news clippings, advertisements, brochures, postcards, and posters relating to the Success. The bulk of the material dates from 1925 to 1943, although some documents date to 1779. Additional documents are located in the National Library of Australia.

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USS DOVER

I LOVE e-Bay! Really! I mean, how else could someone in Tennessee find, and purchase, a pitcher that had been aboard the USS Dover, a gunboat used in the 1940s? The pitcher measures about 5 inches tall, and is 3 inches in diameter at its base. The words “U. S. DOVER 1942” are embossed on its front, and it has a number of tiny little holes rusted through on its face and where the bottom meets the front side (it wouldn’t hold any liquid anymore!).



Of course, this all just piqued my interest about where all this little pitcher might have been, so I started digging. Turns out, the Dover didn’t start out with that name (not too unusual for ships). She was actually built in 1894 by the Newport News Shipbuilding Company, in Newport News, Virginia, and was commissioned on May 13, 1897 as the USS Wilmington, Gunboat No. 8.

The Wilmington measured 251’ 10” in length, she had a beam of 40’ 2”, a displacement of 1,571 tons, and a draft of 9’. She was equipped with eight four-inch gun mounts and four “three-pounders” (guns that were capable of firing three-pound shells). As her name befits, she was of the Wilmington class, although I was unable to find any information about this class. She was the 8th boat built by the shipbuilding company.

Post card showing USS Wilmington (PG-8), date and place unknown. Courtesy Darryl Baker.

She saw her first action during the Spanish-American War, in July of 1898, off the coast of Cuba. Just days into action, her crew learned of a communications cable connecting Santa Cruz del sur, Cuba with Jucaro on the Cuban island Isla de la Juventud to the west, and proceeding to that location, used a grappling hook to find and cut the cable.

Following the war, the Wilmington saw service in the South Atlantic Squadron, where she sailed to ports such as San Juan, Puerto Rico; Port-of-Spain, Trinidad; Venezuela; Georgetown, British Guiana; and Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana. In March 1899, she sailed up the Amazon River during the rainy season, arriving in Iquitos, Peru in April, where her crew was presented with three monkeys and a tiger cat by the Peruvians.

Leaving Peru, she sailed south to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. During this run, she had trouble with the propeller shaft, which ultimately resulted in a drydock stay in Buenos Aires for some months.

After the shaft was repaired, she commenced on a tour of the Far East, culminating in her decommissioning in the Philippines on June 30, 1904. She was recommissioned two years later, and served off the China coast and other Asian ports of call until the start of World War I. Her duties during the war were concentrated on patrol duty in the Philippine Islands and China. After the war, she continued to tour in Asia until 1922, when she returned to Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s Navy Yard.

In July 1923, she joined the US Navy Reserve Force, 9th Naval District for the states of Ohio and Kentucky. She was stationed in Toledo and used as a training ship on Lake Erie, becoming inactive in the fall of that year, and later serving as a training ship for reservists.



USS Wilmington (PG-8) circa the 1930s or 1940s, steaming on the Great Lakes. Courtesy the Historical Collections of the Great Lakes.

On January 27, 1941, the ship was renamed Dover in preparation for her entry into World War II. In late 1942, she sailed to Quebec, where she was fitted with a 5-inch gun. She operated for some time in the northeast, then sailed to the gulf coast in January 1943. She was reassigned to the 8th Naval District in New Orleans, and served as an armed guard training ship throughout the remainder of the war.


USS Wilmington (PG-8) circa 1942 as the USS Dover (IX-30). Courtesy E. C. Lowrance, Jr.

On December 20, 1945, she was decommissioned, and was sold for scrap on December 30, 1946.

In March 1950, a small news article appeared in the Camden (New Jersey) Courier-Post:



U.S. Census records show that Mr. Warrington was a member of the USS Wilmington’s crew in 1900; he was most likely on the ship during the entire South American tour, from 1897 through 1901. Mr. Warrington was born in 1870, and was a career Navy man, with a final rank of Chief Master at Arms.

He returned to Camden in 1920, and lived with his mother until she passed away, Although he had married in 1916, his wife apparently died shortly after, as he was listed as a widower in the 1920 census. Mr. Warrington was buried at the Beverly National Cemetery on March 27, 1950.

So somewhere belowdecks in the photo above, my pitcher was sitting on a table in the mess hall, perhaps having just been in the hands of Chief Master at Arms Warrington!

The Schooner Fame

I recently visited the lovely harbor town Salem, Massachusetts, and during my stay, went sailing on the two-masted schooner Fame. The current ship is a replica of an 1812-era schooner that was converted from a fishing boat to one whose purpose was to capture booty from the British merchant ships – a privateer!

What distinguishes a “schooner” from other types of ships? For a ship to be classified as a schooner, it must have at least two masts (the Thomas W. Lawson had seven!), the fore mast must be shorter than the aft mast, the main sail is rigged to the aft mast, and both sails are both fore- and aft-rigged, so that they run parallel with the line of the keel.

A design originating in the early 1700’s, the first schooners were built in nearby Gloucester (just 30 miles to the east of Salem). The design promoted speed and maneuverability. Besides privateering, other activities for which the schooner’s sleek design was well-suited were transporting slaves for trade, ocean fishing, and blockade running.

A “privateer” is a privately owned merchant, or commercial, ship that is converted by a government for the purpose of engaging in naval warfare. Before national navies existed, or were large enough to be effective, privateers fulfilled that function. For the United States, the War of 1812 with Great Britain coincided with the vast manufacture of schooners, thus that time period made great use of schooners in the war effort.

The Fame was one such ship. Soon after her construction, she was purchased by a consortium of twenty-five Salem mariners, for the purpose of engaging in privateering. The sailors refitted her with two small cannon and selected a Mr. William Webb, a veteran sailor, as their captain. When their privateering commision arrived from the U.S. Government on July 1, 1812, they set sail, with the goal of capturing British ships and their cargoes.

The first destination were the small ports along the coasts of Maine and New Brunswick. British ships typically loaded raw materials such as lumber, destined for the Royal Navy. And this proved to be a good choice, as they discovered two ships there: the Concord and the Elbe, both of which surrendered without the Fame crew firing a single shot! After the cargo of masts, spars, staves, lumber, and tar was sold at auction, the profit gained the owners nearly ten times the cost of the Fame.

Because this conquest was made so early in the war, many consider the Fame to be the first successful privateering ship in the War of 1812. The ship would continue its work until 1814, with eleven more sorties resulting in 20 captures, until she wrecked in the Bay of Fundy.

On the day that I sailed, the seas were calm – too calm. We had to run the motor to get us out into the bay, and only then were we able to hoist the sails. The Fame is an interactive ship – you can participate in sailing as much or as little as you choose. Of course, I’m all over everything: peppering the crew with questions and trying my hand at everything they’ll let me do.



Sailor Bernie and I had the task of raising the fore-side of both the fore- and aft-sails. Bernie handed me the thick rope and told me to “just pull ‘er up!” It was easy at first, but as the canvas unfurled, it was heavier and heavier, and for the last few pulls, I simply reached up on the rope as far as I could, and put all my weight into it to pull the sail up.

There were two small boys on board, and they had great fun helping Captain Jeremy steer, using the large, wooden rudder. Once we were well into Salem Harbor, Bernie loaded up a charge of black powder and fired the tiny cannon mounted to the port side.

I helped again when it was time to lower the sails; this was much easier, although you had to keep control of the rope as it slithered through your hands. Once the sails were down, I was assigned the task of flaking the rope out and coiling it up tidily for the next voyage. Just remember: “coil with the sun,” or clockwise. If you don’t, you’ll have a gnarly mess!

The replica Fame can be visited between Memorial Day through Halloween. She’s located on the Pickering Wharf Marina in downtown Salem. Be sure to ask the crew to show you the photo album of her construction. Local spruce and white oak was used, and construction continued year-round from February 2002 to July 4, 2003. She is not only an historic ship, but a beautiful one as well!

Peter Lehmann of the Barossa

I have a bottle of wine on my desk. It’s a slim bottle – only 375 ml (about 12 ½ ounces), and it’s a delightfully transparent golden color. I won it by bidding twice what it’s worth at a silent auction during my (Layman) family reunion last month.

Why did I bid twice its worth? One, because I’m such a wine neophyte that I had no idea of its worth, or even the type of wine it is; two, because the money went to a good cause: the reunion “kitty;” and three, because it was made by a vineyard called “Peter Lehmann of the Barossa.” Doesn’t that sound romantic?

It was easy to research the vineyard; a simple visit to its website told me that the vineyard is located in the beautiful Barossa Valley in South Australia. The Barossa Valley is unique in that it has never suffered an outbreak of phylloxera, which are insects that destroyed many European vineyards in the late 19th century. My wine is a 2007 Botrytis Semillon – a white wine grape that was planted by the area’s first settlers, giving it not only a long heritage in the Barossa Valley, but because the area escaped the phylloxera devastation, also making these vines some of the oldest in the world. The tasting notes proclaim it to be “luscious magic in the glass.”

This is all fascinating, if you’re interested in wine, but as I read more of the material on the site, I found that Peter Lehmann, who was born in the Barossa in 1930 (“the son of a Lutheran pastor”), founded the winery in 1979 to protect the growers of grapes from financial ruin due to the overproduction of grapes. At the time, Peter was a buyer for a multinational winemaker, and when he was ordered to “go back on his word to the growers that he would buy their crop,” he refused, and formed his own company to buy from the growers. Peter says “they were mates” and “he was not prepared to stand by and watch them go broke.”

The website says “Peter Lehmann is indeed a legend in the Australian wine industry and he is known, with affection and respect, as the ‘Baron of the Barossa’.” So I raise my glass of magic to you, Peter Lehmann, and dream about the possibility that we are related, by some magic connection to the Olde Country.

Greg Mortenson

Last night, I shook the hand of a man who's been nominated for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. His name is Greg Mortensen, and he's the author of the best-selling nonfiction book "Three Cups of Tea." Dr. Mortenson is a former mountaineer who has been building schools (primarily for girls) in Pakistan and Afghanistan for the last 10 years.

I read his book last summer and was very moved by Dr. Mortenson's courage and sacrifice. I said to myself "I'm going to make that man a quilt - he has nothing of his own, and he has given so much to the world." When I saw that he was coming to Knoxville to speak at a fundraiser for a nonprofit organization in Knoxville, I decided that I really would make a quilt for him.

I studied my store of patterns and finally decided on one called "Trip Around the World," to acknowledge his many visits to the area. I also decided to use batik fabrics, which originated in Indonesia, and today provide income to women in the islands as a cottage industry - a principle similar to that which Dr. Mortenson advocates.

After the presentation, people lined up for a book signing, including me, clutching my box containing the quilt. A half hour later, I finally reached the head of the line and told Dr. Mortenson that his book had inspired me to sew a quilt for him. He opened the box and I explained the significance of the pattern and the fabric. He then asked if I would mind if he took the quilt with him to Pakistan to give to the teachers of his schools? So it looks like my trip-around-the-world quilt will be making its own journey, on a mission for peace.

I've attached a photo of the quilt; I wish I had one of me with Dr. Mortenson, but it was getting late and the line was still long, so I didn't want to take up any more time.

It was quite a night!