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Easter Monday will mark the 143rd Anniversary of the Freemantle Mission. After the collapse of the Fennian Rebellion, leaders of the Fennians were sent to Australia, sentenced to hard labor. They managed to smuggle out a letter describing the conditions of their imprisonment. The Irish in America began collecting money and secretly purchased a whaling ship, the Catalpa, and sailed it around the world on a real whaling cruise. The Catalpa touched in at Freemantle, and Fennian agents from San Francisco, already in Australia, hired wagons and teams and broke the prisoners out. They were taken off the beach with whaling boats. The British sent out a steamboat which fired on the Catalpa. but the captain, George Anthony (a distant relative of mine) ran up the Stars and Stripes and sailed away.
Today there is a monument at Freemantle, at the spot where the Fennians were taken off -- it depicts Wild Geese taking wing.
Today there is a monument at Freemantle, at the spot where the Fennians were taken off -- it depicts Wild Geese taking wing.
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