Interview with Tom Stephens - The Ferrolana

We all know about the Batavia, Catalpa and the Krait; among other vessels that made it to Western Australia one way or another. But do you know about the Ferrolana?

Well, it’s our latest local dramatic ship-board story to emerge, recorded in the long lost diary of Franciso de Asis Marsá I Amigo, which has been recently translated and it is to be launched by Abbey Press at New Norcia’s Library Day on Friday 17 October 2025.

The diary details the dramatic arrival of Ferrolana in Fremantle on 29 December 1849, just 20 years after the foundation of the Swan River Settlement, with a very large Benedictine missionary party on board heading for New Norcia.

Local newspaper reports from the time relay the alarm in the Fremantle community and beyond when the Spanish warship Ferrolana anchored in Gage Road and fired! Twenty-one shots in all.

Fremantle’s Round House had no chance of returning fire, reciprocal ceremonial or otherwise; having neither sufficient cannon nor gunpowder.

Alarm was somewhat diminished as locals soon learned the ship was not firing on the settlement nor off-loading a rumoured one-hundred “papist-priests”. Nonetheless, forty Benedictines soon landed, led by Bishop José Maria Serra OSB, the co-founder with Rosendo Salvado of the New Norcia Mission.

As the group disembarked hurried arrangements were made to house most of the group. The missionaries took their belonging to a house (Lots 66 and 67) on Henry Street in Fremantle, bought by Perth’s Catholic Bishop Brady in 1847 as home and convent for the Mercy Sisters. The nuns had vacated earlier in 1849; and so the Benedictine missionary party settled there for a brief time, with Patrick Marmion’s sheep on the adjacent block (current site of The Orient Hotel on High St) as their nearest neighbours.

For those with an interest “in all things Freo”, the translated Diary – together with a companion work (Not by Bread Alone: the Life of Jerome Rodoreda) – will both be launched at this year’s New Norcia Library Day on 17 October.

What happens to the disembarking passengers of Ferrolana in the immediate years that follow is a significant story of interest to the Western Australian community but also to those far beyond.

Tom Stephens, a former state Labor member for Pilbara, married to a great-great granddaughter of Jerome Rodoreda, one of those who arrived in Fremantle aboard Ferrolana in 1849, has had much to do in exploring the story.

Coincidentally, Jerome’s grandson Loy Rodoreda became a Labor Member of Parliament for Roebourne/Pilbara from 1933 to 1958.

Tom and his wife Anne are “life” Friends of New Norcia and Tom has drawn on decades of research into the history of the Ferrolana story to write up a very comprehensive introduction which is included in the published The Marsa Diary.

Our Editor, Michael Barker, was pleased to sit down with Tom Stephens recently in the West End of Fremantle, quite close to the Round House, to make the podcast you will find below all about The Marsa Diary and Ferrolana. You won’t be disappointed as Tom unfolds the story.

By the way, if you would like to be at the launch of the books in New Norcia, you can purchase your tickets here.

By Michael Barker, Editor, Fremantle Shipping News

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