The Catalpa Escape Podcast Series – Episode 3

The Catalpa Escape was the escape, on 17 April 1876, of six Irish ‘military’ Fenians from the ‘Convict Establishment’, now Fremantle Prison, in the then British colony of Western Australia.

A number of Fenians were initially transported on the convict ship Hougoumont to Fremantle, arriving on 9 January 1868. In 1869 and 1871, pardons had been issued to many of the imprisoned Fenians. But not to the ‘military’ Fenians who remained in Western Australia’s penal system.

In 1874, one of these ‘military’ Fenians, James Wilson, secretly sent a letter to New York City journalist John Devoy, who worked to organise a rescue. Using donations collected by Devoy from Irish-Americans, a merchant ship, Catalpa, was purchased and crewed and sailed into international waters off Rockingham, Western Australia.

On 17 April 1876 at 8:30 am, Wilson and five other Fenians working outside the prison walls – Thomas Darragh, Martin Hogan, Michael Harrington, Thomas Hassett, and Robert Cranston – boarded a whaleboat and soon after were were taken aboard the Catalpa, and made their escape to New York.

In the Catalpa Escape Podcast Series, leading up to 17 April 2026 and the 150th anniversary of the Catalpa Escape, Fremantle writer and Catalpa historian Margo O’Byrne tells Fremantle Shipping News Editor Michael Barker just how the Fenians came to be in Fremantle, how the plot to free them was hatched in the USA, and how it was dramatically carried out.

Enjoy the story!