| THE WEST AUSTRALIAN Voyage of the Hougoumont and Life at Fremantle by Thomas McCarthy Fennell edited by Philip Fennell and Marie King Published by Xlibris Reviewed by H.A. Willis When the Hougoumont arrived at Fremantle in January 1868 she landed the last 279 of the 9653 convicts Mother England had transported to Western Australia since 1850. Sixty-two of those on the Hougoumont were members of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, Fenians, men convicted of treason but generally considered to be political prisoners. One of them was Thomas McCarthy Fennell, who, during the attempted uprising of March 1867, participated in an attack on a Coastguard station to obtain arms. Wounded, he was captured, convicted of treason and sentenced to 10 years hard labour. In the face of public opinion, British Prime Minister Gladstone pardoned many of the "non-military" Fenians in 1870, and by May 1871 Thomas Fennell was on his way, via New Zealand, to the United States. There he was part of the group that organised the daring 1876 rescue and escape of six Fenians from Fremantle aboard the Catalpa. At some stage the old rebel (he died in 1914) sat down to write a memoir of his experiences as a convict. Until recently this 70,000-word manuscript remained in the possession of the Fennell family. Now donated to the National Library of Ireland, it has been edited and published by Philip Fennell (a great-grand-nephew) and his wife, Marie King. Two thirds of Fennell's manuscript is devoted to life and conditions during the voyage of the Hougoumont, with the remainder recounting the routine of existence within Fremantle gaol and as a member of a road gang outside Guildford. The narrative is interspersed with Fennell's extensive comments upon the convict system. Not surprisingly he didn't have much good to say about it. Those who administered and profited by it are recorded with an unremitting, unforgiving contempt - with colonists who exploited the cheap labour and treated convicts as their personal slaves being the most bitterly remembered. Fennell and his companions also had a low opinion of the common criminals with whom they were transported, segregating themselves in most activities during the voyage, but throughout his memoir he passionately insists on the opportunity to reform as a right of all convicts. As one of only three extant accounts written by prisoners on the Hougoumont, Fennell's manuscript is a valuable primary source for historians. Few documents confront the reader so directly with the experience of the transported convict. It was mostly a grim and hungry existence, although Fennell does relate a few unexpected pleasures. After months of enforced silence in dank and filthy English prisons, for example, there was the freedom of talking to friends during an evening stroll around the deck of the Hougoumont. But that pleasure soon faded as the regime of a starvation diet took hold. Fennell considered the wanton but quite deliberate meanness of prisoners' rations as one of the most wicked cruelties inflicted upon him. He was adamant that responsibility for such torture (which it was) should be clearly attributed to "the famous administration of premier Gladstone's from the sovereign down to the warder". All were "implicated in the slow murder". Writing his memoir some time after the events, Fennell occasionally gets a name or a date wrong. But scholars can take this into account and will surely decide that this defect is more than compensated for by Fennell's observations of some of the more esoteric aspects of convict life. How, for example, did prisoners condemned to wear tight fitting leg-irons get their trousers on and off? And what was the best way to arrange the cold and heavy chains in their bunks overnight? You can find out on page 219 of Thomas Fennell's memoir. Throughout this work the editors have wisely maintained all original spellings and sentence construction, even though some of the latter are quite long and convoluted. They have also provided 200 informative notes and annotations, which, sensibly and with a welcome regard for the reader, are placed on the same page as the item they address. With a useful introductory essay, the editorial annotations, a good selection of illustrations, a selection of Fenian poetry and a number of articles to provide context, Fennell and King have made a valuable contribution to Western Australian history. Published in the United States, their book does not yet have an Australian distributor and can only be ordered on the Net. September 2001 Choose one: Read the next review OR Return to Voyage of the Hougoumont page OR Go HOME |