Hougoumont
The Hougoumont was a three- masted sailing ship called a Blackwall frigate . This ship carried out the last transport of convicts to the convict colony of Australia . The ship cast off from London , England on October 12, 1867 . After 89 days at sea, she arrived on January 9, 1868 with 279 convicts and 108 passengers in Fremantle , Western Australia .
The Hougoumont was built in 1852 in Moulmein , in what was then Burma . The ship's name goes back to the Château d'Hougoumont , a strategically important place during the battle of Waterloo . At the time of the transport, the ship belonged to the Scottish shipowner Duncan Dunbar , who carried out about a third of all convict transports to Australia from 1840 to 1868. A total of 37 convicts were transported to Western Australia.
On the last convict transport to Australia, a convict died at sea. While there had been high death rates in the early days of convict transports, such as on the ships of the Second Fleet , the mortality rate on this ship was not different from the other voyages of that time.
The 280 convicts included a total of 62 Irish , including 17 military personnel. They were political prisoners. These Irish, called Fenians , were declared opponents of English rule over Ireland . They had been sentenced to sentences for the Fenian Rebellion of March 5, 1867 , which they served as convicts outside of England. In the course of their rebellion, the Fenians had published the Fenian Proclamation , which is rated in various sources as the historically first Irish Republic.
It was very unusual at the time to transport political prisoners on English ships, which led to public concern in Fremantle, Australia.
Since there were numerous educated people among the Fenians, several diaries and writings have been published about this voyage. The works of Denis Cashman , John Casey , Thomas McCarthy Fennell and John Boyle O'Reilly have been published . The manuscript The Wild Geese , which describes the voyage as a search for freedom by the Irish outside of English rule, has become famous. Only seven handwritten copies of this transcript were made. The subject matter of these manuscripts is based on the so-called Wild Geese . The Irish soldiers, known as wild geese, emigrated from Ireland to France after 1691. There they joined European armies and in some cases rose to high-ranking military positions. The transcript contains writings about the experiences, rules of conduct, poems and even a comedy. A copy of The Wild Goose is in the State Library of New South Wales .
With this ship ended an era of English colonialism with convicts building colonies. Since 1787 about 165,000 convicts had been transported to Australia. Among them were 10,000 convicts who came to Western Australia. About a fifth of all convicts were female. It is now believed that approximately one million citizens of England and two million citizens of Australia are descendants of convicts.
Individual evidence
- ^ John Dorney: Today in Irish History - The Fenian Rebellion, March 5, 1867 , March 5, 2011, on theirishstory.com. Retrieved June 25, 2016
- ↑ Fenian Proclamation of 1867 , July 17, 2008, at www.wsm.ie. Retrieved June 25, 2016
- ↑ The Fenian Proclomation , of 16 May 1867 on trove.nla.gov.au. Retrieved June 25, 2016
- ↑ Tom Lawrie: On this day: Australia's last convict ship docks ( Memento of the original from June 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on australiangeographic.com.au, dated December 11, 2011. Retrieved June 25, 2016
- ^ Hougoumont - arrived in WA in 1868 , on members.iinet.au. Retrieved June 25, 2016
