Letter by Fred Hussey

Fred Hussey was first mate on the Gazelle, the ship which John Boyle O'Reilly escaped Western Australia in 1869. This set the scene for the later rescue of six Irish political convicts from Fremantle in 1876 onboard the Catalpa.

The Fenian movement or Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret political society resisting British rule in Ireland in the 1860s. Several Fenians who had infiltrated the British military services were discovered, arrested and sentenced to transportation to Australia. In 1868 the convict ship Hougoumont arrived at Fremantle carrying 280 convicts, including 62 Fenians. Of this number 17 had been serving in the British Army and were classified as ‘military’, one of them was John Boyle O’Reilly. This was the last convict transport ship to arrive in Australia.

O’Reilly was born in Dowth, County Meath, in 1844. At the age of 15 he was working for The Manchester Guardian newspaper in England before enlisting with the British Army in Dublin in 1863, where he was covertly recruited to join the Fenians. When a plan to stage an uprising was discovered the military Fenians were tried and convicted. O’Reilly was initially sentenced to death for treason, but his young age (21 on sentencing) was taken into account, and this was commuted to transportation for life. Transported aboard the Hougoumont in 1868, O’Reilly was only held at Fremantle Prison for one month before it was decided to transfer him to roadbuilding works in a camp at what is now Gelorup, south of Bunbury. He was granted the position of party constable in the work party, a position of privilege and great trust helping to muster the convicts and to carry communications between the work party Warder and the Convict depot.

The Catholic priest responsible for the Bunbury district was the Irish-born Father Patrick McCabe, who often inspected the convict work parties. O’Reilly and McCabe became friends, with Father McCabe worrying about O’Reilly’s mental state. McCabe enlisted another Irishman, local farmer and Justice of the Peace, James Maguire, and they planned O’Reilly’s escape, organising passage for him on an American whaling ship, the Vigilant. On the appointed day in February 1869, O’Reilly absconded from the work party, met up with Maguire and other locals, and rowed out into Geographe Bay. However, the Vigilant failed to sight them and sailed away. The party then rowed back to shore at Buffalo Beach, north of Bunbury.

By this time the police and Aboriginal trackers were chasing O’Reilly. He was forced to hide in the sand dunes in the scorching summer sun with little fresh water for weeks while McCabe and Maguire organised another rescue. Eventually McCabe secured passage aboard another whaler, the Gazelle, paying £10 (approx. $ 1900 in 2023) to carry O’Reilly to safety. On 2 March 1869 he again rowed out into the waters of Geographe Bay, was picked up by the whaler and sailed away to eventual freedom. O’Reilly reached America and settled in Boston, becoming the editor and co-owner of Catholic newspaper The Pilot, and eventually one of the most influential Irish Americans of his day.