| Voyage of the Hougoumont and Life at Fremantle. The Story of an Irish Rebel. By Thomas McCarthy Fennell. Reviewed by Sir William Heseltine. Royal Western Australian Historical Society April 2002 This diary of the voyage brings to 3 the available accounts of the voyage by Irish prisoners on board the Hougoumont, the last of the transports to bring convicts to Western Australia. Her complement of 280 convicts included 62 Irish Fenians, 16 of them former soldiers in the British army, who had been convicted of treason or lesser offences in connection with the 1867 rising against the British authorities. Some 100 or so of those charged with these offences had been convicted, some few were hanged, others had had their death sentences commuted, and others were sentenced to various terms of penal servitude. The voyage is thus well documented already. In addition, the most famous of this group of Irish patriots, or traitors, John Boyle O’Reilly, gave a first hand account of the voyage to his biographer, James Jeffrey Roche, and himself left a fictionalised account in his novel, Moondyne Joe. Students of Western Australian history will nevertheless be grateful for the appearance of another account by one of the Fenian prisoners of life onboard the Hougoumont Since the voyage is already quite well documented, the greater interest of this volume lies in the reminiscences, which fill the second part of the volume, of life in Fremantle Prison in the late 1860s and early 70s, seen from the vantage point of the prisoners. The book provides many interesting sidelights on the harsh regime imposed by the Hamptons, father and son, during the father’s time as Governor, from 1862 – 1868. It would have been a little time before the more humane views of their successors began to be felt at Fremantle Gaol. The work was written some 30 years after Fennell’s pardon and release in 1871. Like many of the Fenians, forbidden to return home to Ireland, he lived the remainder of his life in the USA. His memory for dates and details is not precise, (indeed virtually no dates are given), but the account provides an impressionistic account of the voyage, and confirmation of the fact that during the passage, the Fenians, led by John Boyle O’Reilly, discussed the possibility of mutiny. Given the failure rate for those uprisings that took place in Ireland itself at this period, it was probably as well for all those concerned that the idea got no further than surreptitious plotting. Fennell’s principal objects of hatred on the voyage were the warders and the ship’s surgeon superintendant, Dr. William Smith, RN. His contempt for these two classes continued at Fremantle, and he added to his pantheon of hate the prison schoolteacher. As I had both a warder and the schoolteacher of the period as two great grandfathers, it is hard to take a totally objective view of his strictures. My grandfather, the son of the warder, was one of the gentlest of men, and it is hard to imagine that his father, who I never knew, could have been quite so sadistic as those the author portrays. One must acknowledge however that the system inevitably brutalised both prisoners and those who had the supervision of them. The editors acknowledge that other accounts of both transport voyages and life in Western Australia’s gaol system, could be less oppressive than Fennel recalls it as having been. The editors have made a brave attempt to decipher accurately a doubtless difficult Victorian ms, (though a few fairly obvious errors struck me as I read the book). Martin Cusack, editor of another Hougoumont diary, justifies the high flown style as reflecting the writing style of his day, (the editors even go so far as to suggest a Dickensian flavour!). However, so high flown does it become from time to time that the meaning itself becomes obscure. The book, published and printed privately by a descendant of the transportee, is also physically difficult to read because of an overly hard binding. The editors acknowledge that other accounts suggest that both transport voyages and life in Western Australia’s gaol system were less oppressive than Fennel recalls them as having been. |
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