Posted by Jim on August 30, 2017
[“At no point in Unionist history has courageous political leadership been shown; instead, encouragement of insurrection and sedition.”]
Brian Feeney. Irish News. Belfast. Wednesday, August 30, 2017.
ANOTHER summer is over: another Unionist defeat. This time it’s bonfires. Statues and emblems will follow close behind.
Not at all you say. There will be plenty of bonfires next summer and statues and emblems will remain in place.
True, but that’s not the point. It’s part of a long slow inexorable process with many stops and starts.
The process is two-fold. First, Unionists are being compelled to obey the law and , secondly, they’re being compelled to recognize the existence of an Irish Ireland in the north.
Both changes are being achieved by legal means, unusual in The North.
Take the first point. Every place has its origin- myth, often invented to bolster self-confidence and esteem, rarely based on fact.
For example, heroic French resistance in the last war, though historical research indicates now the phrase ‘French resistance’ is an oxymoron.
There’s the origin -myth of modern Britain based on the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ and the D Day landings, even though they were a sideshow. The Red Army won the war while the Americans concentrated on the Pacific.
The Unionist origin -myth is based on a much more dishonorable claim. The origin of The North, given to Unionists in 1921[ by the 1920 Government of Ireland Act] was based on lawlessness, sedition and defiance of the British government.
As a result, their belief developed that they could do anything they liked and get away with it.
That was reinforced in 1974 when Unionists – political, paramilitary and civilian – defied the British government successfully once again.
Unionists passed laws that suited them, and openly disobeyed any laws they didn’t like, but the game’s up.
They tried a repeat unsuccessfully in 1985 with the Anglo-Irish Agreement and got nowhere.
They’re still at it. They profess loyalty to Britain but still, after 20 years, refuse to accept the Parades Commission and its rulings.
The difference is that without their own Administration they no longer control the legislation nor, more importantly, the courts, the police and the councils.
As usual, buoyed up by their origin -myth, they have been defying a whole range of laws with bonfires but they are literally hoisted by their own petard.
The bigger the bonfire the more likely Unionists are to be stopped legally. Belfast councillors led the way and next year all across The North dangerous intimidating towering bonfires will be blocked.
Oh yes, of course there will be some, but they will be the exception. It’s the beginning of the end.
On the second point, statues and emblems, Sinn Féin have craftily proposed erecting Nationalist versions rather than demolishing Unionist ones.
Across The North, councils have the power to do it – and they will. Exclusively “Unionist space “ will vanish. Unionists no longer own The North nor have the power to exclude any vestige of Irishness.
In all this, Unionist politicians have consistently played their graceless, cowardly role.
They’ve played on the gullibility of the wilder elements of their supporters as they always did, but at the same time stabbing them in the back.
Unionists publicly supported dangerous toxic bonfires but secretly voted against them, then denied they had.
At no point in Unionist history has courageous political leadership been shown; instead, encouragement of insurrection and sedition.
Before this year the worst recent example was during the infamous ‘fleg’ [flag] protests in 2013.
The terms of trade in politics have changed and Unionist politicians know it, but they won’t tell their supporters, and still use them in their traditional role as cannon fodder.
Voices like Rev Harold Good’s appealing for generosity and the need to discuss the future of Unionism and a Unionist society now faced with rapid demographic change, at best fall on deaf ears, at worst are received with vituperation.
Sammy Wilson’s latest appeal for direct rule, in itself no surprise from perhaps the most thoughtless Unionist MP, speaks volumes.
At bottom, it’s an appeal to restore some system of administration here which doesn’t involve sharing power with Nationalists.
Individual DUP [Democratic Unionist Party] members find it distasteful to have to share power with Sinn Féin but that party represents the overwhelming majority of northern Nationalists.
The reluctance to share power on equal terms with their fellow citizens is nothing new for Unionists.
They wouldn’t [even] share power with the SDLP [Social Democratic snf Labor Party] who were harmless.
Posted by Jim on August 29, 2017
WTC related death
Retired Firefighter Michael O’Hanlon
Engine Company 68
Wake:
Thursday, August 31st from 2pm-4pm and 7pm-9pm
Yorktown Heights Funeral Home
945 E Main Street
Shrub Oak, NY 10588
914-962-0700
Funeral:
Friday, September 1st at 10am
Church of the Assumption
920 1st Street
Peekskill, NY 10566
914-737-2071
All Off-Duty Members should attend in Class A Uniform.
Fraternally,
Gerard Fitzgerald, President
Robert Eustace, Recording Secretary
Posted by Jim on August 28, 2017
A member of the notorious loyalist killer group, the Glennanne Gang, has told how he believes its leader personally killed more than 100 people and dismissed suggestions that a public inquiry would exposed the truth. In a rare interview from his home in South Africa, John Weir insists that a truth commission is the only way that victims will get closure.
Connla Young. Irish News. Belfast. Monday, august 28, 2017
A FORMER RUC officer and member of the notorious Glenanne gang has claimed the British government was aware of the group’s activities at the very highest level.
John Weir, who held the rank of sergeant, was speaking just weeks after a High Court judge ruled that the PSNI unlawfully frustrated any chance of an effective investigation into suspected state collusion with the sectarian killer gang.
Made up of members of the RUC, UDR and UVF, it operated across the Mid-Ulster area in the mid 1970s.
Based out of a farm owned by former RUC officer, James Mitchell in Glenanne in south Armagh, the gang is believed to have carried out around 120 murders, the majority of which were innocent Catholics.
Now one of its most prominent members, former sergeant John Weir, has said that the establishment of a truth commission and amnesty may be the only way some of the darkest secrets of the Troubles will ever be revealed.
Originally from Co Monaghan, he was a member of the RUC’s Special Patrol Group in Armagh when he became involved in the activities of the Glenanne Gang.
The former policeman gave evidence to the 2003 Barron Report – which examined the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings that claimed the lives of 33 people and an unborn child.
He and another former colleague William ‘Billy’ McCaughey were convicted of taking part in the murder of father-of-seven William Strathearn (39) at his home in Cullybackey, Co Antrim, in April 1977.
The former Derry GAA player and shopkeeper had opened his front door at 2am after the gunmen said they needed aspirin for a sick child.
Convicted in 1980 he was released from prison in 1993 and later went to live in Nigeria.
Now living in South Africa, the former policeman last said that senior officials in Downing Street would have been aware of the group’s activities.
“Of course they would,” he said in an interview with the Irish News.
“How would they not be?
“Right, for example, the army commanders……do you mean to say that those men were not actually feeding information.
“Even they were feeding information direct to government.
“Obviously some of it was going through their senior officers but not all.
“Some of those men, they themselves were connected to parliament.
“And I know that and I also know that they know that even the very bottom of army intelligence, which I don’t think in a way were that capable a lot of them, but they knew all about Glenanne.”
After last month’s court ruling relatives of people killed by the gang demanded an independent inquiry be set up.
However, the 66-year-old believes that only a truth commission can provide answers to bereaved relatives.
He added that all families who lost relatives during the Troubles should benefit from similar court rulings.
“I would support independent enquiries into anything but I think independent enquiries, most of them have not produced anything,” he said.
“The first thing they have to do is do away with any threat of prosecution for those years,” he said.
“It is a waste of time anyhow because with the GFA (Good Friday Agreement) nobody is going to do any time anyhow.
“So why not just basically have an amnesty for those years – for absolutely everybody right across the divide.
“Before that would be brought in, or in conjunction with tha, t then a commission would set up where all sides, loyalists, republicans and of course security services, security forces, everybody is going to come out and tell the truth.”
Mr Weir believes any process to examine the past must go right to the top.
“I don’t think an independent inquiry gets anywhere, we have had the HET, we’ve got independent inquiries, have they ever come out above a certain level – it stops,” he said.
“You talk about Glenanne Gang, I know that’s a name, but where does it stop.
“It stops with the likes of us, it doesn’t go (up).
“Nobody talks about the MI5 boys and all the intelligence people.
“They were all visiting Glenanne, nobody talks about that.
“Glenanne (James Mitchell’s farm) was watched, every movement from there was watched and that’s when I was in that area, I know that, every car that went in and out of the place, they had the number of the cars.
“So what I’d say – why didn’t anybody make any effort to stop it?
“Everything stops at the people who were operating rather than see where it was really coming from and why it was allowed to go on.
“If they knew this was going on why did they allow it to continue?”
He said the truth behind many events that took place during the Troubles are already known.
“Everybody knows who did what and who’s behind what,” he said.
“But at this present time it all stops with….. a few rotten apples at the bottom of the barrel.
“But it goes much, much higher than that.
“If people have nothing to hide, let them bring the truth out.
“And when I’m talking about governments, I mean the Irish government as well as the British government.”
He believes authorities will resist the idea of a truth commission.
“They are not going to do that, and that’s why everybody is avoiding it, and that’s why nobody wants a truth commission, and that’s why the truth always stops at a few dirty apples as they call them, along the line no matter what the investigation is about.
“They never come out and tell the truth – and truth is MI5 and Special Branch run the civil war for x number of years.
“Surely everybody nowadays can see that.
“And they killed their own as well, you know.
“It’s not as if it’s all a one sided thing – there’s a much killing done on both sides with the backing of the authorities.
“Both sides have suffered but its just one side, the unionist side, the loyalist side that is a bit reluctant to come out and make a big fuss about it because they feel they are closer to the security set up at the time.”
Weir also claimed that the majority of paramilitaries during the mid-1970s were working for state agencies.
“It’s a bit complex in that way,” he said.
“But I would say 80 percent high ranking loyalists worked for MI5 or for Special Branch or for somebody else.”
“And I would say 50 percent on the republican side were doing it.”
He said searches were often “stopped by Special Branch”.
“Army commanders, nobody (was) happy at the time, they thought their hands were tied,” he said.
He also said that loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces shared close ties.
“It was all very, very plain at the time and you had loyalists, on the loyalist side UDA, UVF, they were ether in the UDR or their brothers were in the RUC or UDR so they were all very, very closely knit so it was understandable they were all working together,” he said.
“It was all worked to bring about what you have now, a type of peace where you have got the two extremes sort of in power.
The former sergeant said that high ranking RUC officers knew of his involvement with the Glenanne gang and repeated previous claims that senior officers including Chief Superintendent Harry Breen were aware of the collusion.
Mr Breen was shot dead along with his colleague Superintendent Bob Buchanan outside the village of Jonesborough, Co Armagh, as they made their way back from a meeting with Gardai in Dundalk.
In 2013 the Smithwick Report found that there was collusion between the IRA and Gardai in the killing of the two officers.
Weir also said that a former head of Special Branch, Assistant Chief Constable Brian Fitzsimmons, who was based in Newry at the time, was also aware of the activities of the Glenanne Gang.
Mr Fitzsimmons was killed with 28 other people when the military Chinook he was travelling in crashed in at the Mull of Kintyre in June 1994.
Weir said that while serving in Newtownhamilton in Co Armagh he was approached by people who were aware of his activities and suggested targets to him.
He claims he was even asked to join the British army at the time.
“To be quite honest I thought I was untouchable,” he said.
“I thought that if anyone bothered with me or what I was doing that it would just destroy everybody so actually I didn’t think anybody could touch me.”
Weir said that during his time in the Glenanne Gang he was also tipped off by RUC colleagues about police surveillance that had been placed on him
He said regrets about the past don’t dominate his life.
“Often people will say they have regrets, just saying you have or you haven’t regrets, it’s much bigger than just saying that off the cuff because everybody who ended up in the situation and for many reasons has regrets.
“Regrets that you went through all this but on the other hand I do understand it.
“It’s not as if I’m running about in a state of depression every day, ‘I shouldn’t have done this, I shouldn’t have done that’- because that is not the case.”
He also poured cold water on jail house conversions experienced by many who took part in the conflict.
“You see at that time I seen all these people, even some of them now, they turn religious and they come out and condemn themselves but I don’t really put a whole lot of weight on that because you see at that time what people did they were not forced into it, they were not actually forced into it, that’s on all sides,” he said.
Posted by Jim on August 27, 2017
Fr. Patrick McCafferty. Letters to the Editor. Belfast Telegraph. Saturday, August 26, 2017
In the community I serve as pastor, Corpus Christi Parish in west Belfast, the summer months of July and August mark the anniversaries of two profoundly traumatic events, 46 and 45 years ago respectively, that continue to cause pain, in 2017.
On August 9, 1971, Fr. Hugh Mullan was shot and killed as he ministered to wounded and dying parishioners. That same day, Frank Quinn, Noel Phillips, Joan Connolly, Danny Teggart, Joseph Murphy, Eddie Doherty, John Laverty, Joseph Corr, Paddy McCarthy and John McKerr were also shot dead. Eleven months later, on July 7, 1972, Fr Noel Fitzpatrick, also a curate in Corpus Christi, was killed in the exact same circumstances. Three teenage parishioners – Margaret Gargan (13), John Dougal (16) and David McCafferty (15), along with 39-year-old Paddy Butler – died with him.
The Parish of Corpus Christi comprises the main areas of Ballymurphy, New Barnsley, Springhill and Moyard. The parish is unique, in the north of Ireland’s history of violence, in that two of its priests, within 11 months of each other, were killed in the exercise of their priestly ministries.
During the darkest of days, F.r Mullan and Fr. Fitzpatrick were faithful to their priesthood and to God’s people. Without hesitation, they went into the midst of the gravest danger, to bring Christ in his sacraments, to dying men, women and children; to whisper into their parishioners’ ears the Gospel words of comfort and hope, as their lives ebbed away on streets close to their own front doors.
The men and women, boys and the young girl killed, in what have become known as the Ballymurphy and Springhill massacres, were innocent people shot dead by the British Army. The trauma and suffering of their families, for close to 50 years now, has been deepened and exacerbated by refusals to acknowledge the grave wrong, perpetrated against innocent civilians and an entire community, in the summer months of 1971 and 1972.
The early 1970s were years of atrocious suffering for everyone in Northern Ireland. Hundreds of people lost their lives – soldiers, police, civilians and paramilitaries. Thousands of people were plunged into grief. There still exists an ocean of deep sorrow in the hearts of the surviving relatives of those murdered and slain, during those terror-filled days.
To this day, the relatives of the victims of the Ballymurphy and Springhill massacres seek justice for their murdered relatives. Added to their demands for vindication, are the appeals, also, of the families of those innocents murdered at Kingsmill (January 1976) and Teebane (January 17, 1992), for honest admittance of the sheer magnitude of the unjustifiable evil that was visited upon them, in those and so many other atrocities.
The God who is loved and worshipped by Christians, Catholic and Protestant, in the north of Ireland, is the God of justice, who hears the victims’ cries and who champions their cause against the cruel and violent. This is the true God whom Fr Mullan and Fr Fitzpatrick served and preached, along with countless other Catholic priests and Protestant ministers, during the Troubles.
The self-sacrifice of two priests during the worst violence of the Troubles is worthy of note. Their fidelity is a light in the darkness of those times and their courageous witness is worthy of remembrance as our entire community continues to seek healing of the deep wounds that still cause pain in many hearts today.
Posted by Jim on August 26, 2017
The most successful prison break in Australian history was an
international rescue effort that took years to organise, and which
finally freed six Irish republicans from a British jail in Fremantle.
By Gilbert King (for smithsonian.com)
The plot they hatched was as audacious as it was impossible–a
19th-century raid as elaborate and preposterous as any Ocean’s Eleven
script. It was driven by two men–a guilt-ridden Irish Catholic
nationalist, who’d been convicted and jailed for treason in England
before being exiled to America, and a Yankee whaling captain–a
Protestant from New Bedford, Massachusetts–with no attachment to the
former’s cause, but a firm belief that it was “the right thing to do.”
Along with a third man–an Irish secret agent posing as an American
millionaire–they devised a plan to sail halfway around the world to
Fremantle, Australia, with a heavily armed crew to rescue a half-dozen
condemned Irishmen from one of the most remote and impregnable prison
fortresses ever built.
To succeed, the plan required precision timing, a months-long con and
more than a little luck. The slightest slip-up, they knew, could be
catastrophic for all involved. By the time the Fremantle Six sailed into
New York Harbor in August, 1876, more than a year had passed since the
plot had been put into action. Their mythic escape resonated around the
world and emboldened the Irish Republican Brotherhood for decades in its
struggle for independence from the British Empire.
The tale began with a letter sent in 1874 to John Devoy, a former senior
leader with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, known as the Fenians.
Devoy, who was born in County Kildare in 1842, had been recruiting
thousands of Irish-born soldiers who were serving in British regiments
in Ireland, where the Fenians hoped to turn the British army against
itself. By 1866, estimates put the number of Fenian recruits at
80,000–but informers alerted the British to an impending rebellion, and
Devoy was exposed, convicted of treason and sentenced to 15 years’ labor
on the Isle of Portland in England.
After serving nearly five years in prison, Devoy was exiled to America,
became a journalist for the New York Herald and soon became active with
clan na gael, the secret society of Fenians in the United States.
Devoy was in New York City in 1874 when he received a letter from an
inmate named James Wilson. “Remember this is a voice from the tomb,”
Wilson wrote, reminding Devoy that his old Irish recruits had been
rotting away in prison for the past eight years, and were now at
Fremantle, facing “the death of a felon in a British dungeon.”
Among the hundreds of Irish republican prisoners in Australia, Wilson
was one of seven high-profile Fenians who had been convicted of treason
and sentenced to death by hanging until Queen Victoria commuted their
sentences to a life of hard labor. After being branded with the letter
“D” for “deserter” on their chests, the Fenians were assigned
backbreaking work building roads and quarrying limestone beneath an
unforgiving sun. “Most of us are beginning to show symptom of disease,”
Wilson wrote. “In fact, we can’t expect to hold out much longer.”
Devoy was also feeling pressure from another Fenian–John Boyle O’Reilly,
who had arrived at Fremantle with Wilson and the others, only to be
transferred to Bunbury, another prison in Western Australia. O’Reilly
grew despondent there and attempted suicide by slitting his wrists, but
another convict saved him. A few months later, with help from a local
Catholic priest, O’Reilly escaped from Bunbury by rowing out to sea and
persuading an American whaling ship to take him on. He sailed to the
United States and eventually became a poet, journalist and editor of the
Catholic newspaper the Boston Pilot.
But it wasn’t long before O’Reilly began to feel pangs of guilt over his
fellow Fenians’ continued imprisonment in Fremantle. He implored his
fellow exile John Devoy to rally the clan na gael and mount a rescue
attempt.
It was all Devoy needed to hear. Escape was entirely possible, as
O’Reilly had proved. And he couldn’t ignore Wilson’s letter, imploring
him not to forget the other Fenians that he had recruited. “Most of the
evidence on which the men were convicted related to meetings with me,”
Devoy later wrote. “I felt that I, more than any other man then living,
ought to do my utmost for these Fenian soldiers.”
At a clan na gael meeting in New York, Devoy read Wilson’s “voice from
the tomb” letter aloud, with its conclusion, “We think if you forsake
us, then we are friendless indeed.”
Devoy put the letter down and in his most persuasive voice, shouted,
“These men are our brothers!” Thousands of dollars were quickly raised
to mount a rescue. The original plan was to charter a boat and sail for
Australia, where more than a dozen armed men would spring the Fenians
out of prison. But as the planning progressed, Devoy decided their odds
would be better using stealth rather than force.
He convinced George Smith Anthony, a Protestant sea captain with whaling
experience, that the rescue mission was one of universal freedom and
liberty. Before long, Anthony concluded that the imprisoned Fenians were
“not criminals,” and when Devoy offered the captain a “hefty cut” of any
whaling profits they would make, Anthony signed on. He was told to set
out to sea on the whaler Catalpa as if on a routine whaling voyage,
keeping the rescue plans a secret from his crew; Devoy had decided that
it was the only way to keep the British from discovering the mission.
Besides, they were going to need to return with a full load of whale oil
to recoup expenses. The cost of the mission was approaching $20,000 (it
would later reach $30,000), and one clan na gael member had already
mortgaged his house to finance the rescue.
Devoy also knew he needed help on the ground in Australia, so he
arranged for John James Breslin–a bushy-bearded Fenian secret agent–to
arrive in Fremantle in advance of the Catalpa and pose as an American
millionaire named James Collins, and learn what he could about the place
they called the “Convict Establishment.”
What Breslin soon saw with his own eyes was that the medieval-looking
Establishment was surrounded by unforgiving terrain. To the east there
was desert and bare stone as far as the eye could see. To the west, were
shark-infested waters. But Breslin also saw that security around the
Establishment was fairly lax, no doubt due to the daunting environment.
Pretending to be looking for investment opportunities, Breslin arranged
several visits to the Establishment, where he asked questions about
hiring cheap prison labor. On one such visit, he managed to convey a
message to the Fenians: a rescue was in the works; avoid trouble and the
possibility of solitary confinement so you don’t miss the opportunity;
there would be only one.
Nine months passed before the Catalpa made it to Bunbury. Captain
Anthony had run into all sorts of problems, from bad weather to faulty
navigational devices. A restocking trip to the Azores saw six crew
members desert, and Anthony had to replace them before continuing on. He
found the waters mostly fished out, so the whaling season was a
disaster. Very little money would be recouped on this trip, but
financial losses were the least of their worries.
Once Breslin met up with Captain Anthony, they made a plan. The Fenians
they had come for had been continually shifted in their assignments, and
for Breslin’s plan to work, all six needed to be outside the walls of
the Establishment. Anyone stuck inside at the planned time of escape
would be left behind. There was no way around it.
To complicate matters, two Irishmen turned up in Fremantle. Breslin
immediately suspected that they were British spies, but he recruited
them after learning that they had come in response to a letter the
Fenians had written home, asking for help. On the day of the escape,
they would cut the telegraph from Fremantle to Perth.
On Sunday, April 15, 1876, Breslin got a message to the Fenians: They
would make for the Catalpa the next morning. “We have money, arms, and
clothes,” he wrote. “Let no man’s heart fail him.”
Anthony ordered his ship to wait miles out at sea–outside Australian
waters. He would have a rowboat waiting 20 miles up the coast from the
prison. Breslin was to deliver the Fenians there, and the crew would row
them to the ship.
On Monday morning, April 16, the newly arrived Irishmen did their part
by severing the telegraph wire. Breslin got horses, wagons and guns to a
rendezvous point near the prison–and waited. He had no idea which
prisoners, if any, would make their way outside the walls that day.
But in the first stroke of good luck that morning, Breslin soon had his
answer.
Thomas Darragh was out digging potatoes, unsupervised.
Thomas Hassett and Robert Cranston talked their way outside the walls.
Martin Hogan was painting a superintendent’s house.
And Michael Harrington and James Wilson concocted a tale about being
needed for a job at the warden’s house.
Moments later, Breslin saw the six Fenians heading toward him. (It might
have been seven, but James Jeffrey Roche “was purposely left behind
because of an act of treachery which he had attempted against his
fellows ten long years before,” when he sought a lighter sentence in
exchange for cooperating with the British, Anthony later wrote. The deal
was ultimately rejected, but the Fenians held a grudge.) Once on the
carriages, the escapees made a frantic 20-mile horse-drawn dash for the
rowboat.
They hadn’t been gone for an hour before the guards became aware that
the Irishmen had escaped. Breslin and the Fenians made it to the shore
where Anthony was waiting with his crew and the boat. The Catalpa was
waiting far out at sea. They’d need to row for hours to reach it. They
were about half a mile from shore when Breslin spotted mounted police
arriving with a number of trackers. Not long after that, he saw a coast
guard cutter and a steamer that had been commandeered by the Royal Navy
to intercept the rowboat.
The race was on. The men rowed desperately, with the authorities and the
British, armed with carbines, in hot pursuit. To spur on the men,
Breslin pulled from his pocket a copy of a letter he had just mailed to
the British Governor of Western Australia:
This is to certify that I have this day released from the clemency of
Her Most Gracious Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, etc., etc.,
six Irishmen, condemned to imprisonment for life by the enlightened and
magnanimous government of Great Britain for having been guilty of the
atrocious and unpardonable crimes known to the unenlightened portion of
mankind as “love of country” and “hatred of tyranny;” for this act of
“Irish assur- ance” my birth and blood being my full and sufficient
warrant. Allow me to add that in taking my leave now, I’ve only to say a
few cells I’ve emptied; I’ve the honor and pleasure to bid yon good-day,
from all future acquaintance, excuse me, I pray. In the service of my
country,
John J. Breslin.
The Fenians let out a cry and the crew kept rowing for the Catalpa,
which they could now see looming in the distance. But the steamer
Georgette was bearing down, and the wind was rising–the beginnings of a
gale. Darkness fell and waves came crashing down on the overloaded boat
as it was blown out to sea. Captain Anthony was the picture of
confidence, giving orders to bail, but even he doubted they’d make it
through the night.
By morning, the Georgette reappeared and went straight for the Catalpa.
The Georgette’s captain asked if he could come aboard the whaler.
Sam Smith, minding the Catalpa, replied: “Not by a damned sight.”
The Georgette, running low on fuel, then had to return to shore. Anthony
saw his chance, and the Fenians made a dash for the whaler, this time
with a cutter joining the race. They barely made it to Catalpa before
the British, and the ship got under way. Anthony quickly turned it away
from Australia, but the luck of the Irish seemed to run out. The wind
went dead, the Catalpa was becalmed, and by morning, the Georgette,
armed with a 12-pound cannon, pulled alongside. The Fenians, seeing the
armed militia aboard the British ship, grabbed rifles and revolvers and
prepared for battle.
Captain Anthony told the Fenians the choice was theirs–they could die on
his ship or back at Fremantle. Though they were outmanned and outgunned,
even the Catalpa’s crew stood with the Fenians and their captain,
grabbing harpoons for the fight.
The Georgette then fired across Catalpa’s bow. “Heave to,” came the
command from the British ship.
“What for?” Anthony shouted back.
“You have escaped prisoners aboard that ship.”
“You’re mistaken,” Anthony snapped. “There are no prisoners aboard this
ship. They’re all free men.”
The British gave Anthony 15 minutes to come to rest before they’d “blow
your masts out.”
The Catalpa was also perilously close to being nudged back into
Australian waters, with no wind to prevent that from happening. It was
then that Anthony gave his reply, pointing at the Stars and Stripes.
“This ship is sailing under the American flag and she is on the high
seas. If you fire on me, I warn you that you are firing on the American
flag.”
Suddenly, the wind kicked up. Anthony ordered up the mainsail and swung
the ship straight for the Georgette. The Catalpa’s “flying jibboom just
cleared the steamer’s rigging” as the ship with the Fenians aboard
headed out to sea. The Georgette followed for another hour or so, but it
was clear the British were reluctant to fire on an American ship sailing
in international waters.
Finally, the British commander peeled the steamer back toward the coast.
The Fenians were free.
The Catalpa arrived in New York four months later, as a cheering crowd
of thousands met the ship for a Fenian procession up Broadway. John
Devoy, John Breslin and George Anthony were hailed as heroes, and news
of the Fremantle Six prison break quickly spread around the world.
The British press, however, accused the United States government of
“fermenting terrorism,” citing Anthony’s refusing to turn over the
Fenians, and noted that the captain and his crew were only “laughing at
our scrupulous obedience to international law.” But eventually, the
British would say that Anthony had “done us a good turn; he has rid us
of an expensive nuisance. The United States are welcome to any number of
disloyal, turbulent, plotting conspirators, to all their silly
machinations.”
The Fremantle Six still carried the torment from their ordeals at the
Convict Establishment, and despite their escape, the men remained
broken, Devoy noted. He’d known them as soldiers, and he was not
prepared for the changes that ten years under the “iron discipline of
England’s prison system had wrought in some of them.”
Still, the Fenians had reinvigorated the spirits of their fellow Irish
nationalists at home and abroad, and the tale of their escape inspired
generations to come through both song and story:
So come you screw warders and jailers
Remember Perth regatta day
Take care of the rest of your Fenians
Or the Yankees will steal them away.