Six Wild Geese from Australia

This is a tale of the 19th century; of Ireland, Australia, and the United States of America; of Fenians and travel; of English prisons and the Australian Outback; and of the Great Rescue of Six Fenian political prisoners from the Fremantle Convict Establishment in South West Australia. Our protagonist, John Boyle O'Reilly, was born into a schoolmaster's family in Drogheda, Ireland just before The Great Famine. This was the man who masterminded the Catalpa Rescue - the escape, on 17-19 April 1876, of six Irish Fenian prisoners from what was then the British penal colony of Western Australia on a whaling ship acquired by O'Reilly and his associates for the purpose in New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA. This book tells his story with, along the way, fascinating glimpses of 19th century English prisons, American firefighting in the 19th century, a convict ship, and, O yes The Great Famine in Ireland.