The Voyage of the Catalpa: A Perilous Journey and Six Irish Rebels' Escape to Freedom by Peter Stevens

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Previous owner has signed front endpage, now covered with blank ex libris bookplate sticker. Dust jacket has some light creasing at edges and spine.

Setting out from New Bedford, Massachusetts, on April 29 1875, the American whaling barque Catalpa undertook a secret year-long mission to liberate a group of Irishmen known as The Fremantle Six from an Australian prison.

The six men had been soldiers in the British army when they took the secret Fenian Oath and pledged themselves to fight for Irish independence and armed insurrection against the British military. Arrested in 1866 and tried for treason against the Crown, they were sentenced to imprisonment and slow death in a hellish foreign land.

After eight years languishing in Fremantle Gaol and aided by a worldwide network of Irish nationalists and undercover agents the Fremantle Six escaped to the Australian coast where the Catalpa was waiting to escort them to freedom.

But their trials were only just beginning. The obstacles they overcame, from armed British vessels to the full fury of the sea, made their escape the stuff of international headlines and legend. (book flap)