Shipwrecks, Monsters, and Mysteries of the Great Lakes by Ed Butts

Author:Ed Butts [Butts, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77049-259-2
Publisher: Tundra
Published: 2011-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

On the evening of July 4, 1946, the residents of Port Clinton, Ohio, on the south shore of Lake Erie, witnessed a blazing display that had nothing to do with that community’s Fourth of July celebrations. Out on the lake, an ancient sailing ship that had run aground more than a year earlier was on fire. Many of the people watching the spectacle of a once-proud tall ship in flames perhaps considered it a fitting end to a derelict wreck. The United States Coast Guard had condemned the hulk as a hazard to navigation. Just who started the fire that ended the vessel’s long history would never be known. It was a mysterious funeral fire for a ship that had once been a prison, and had become a legendary symbol of human cruelty.

The strange story of the Success began thousands of miles from Lake Erie, in Natmaw, Burma. According to legend, she was built there by the British for the East Indian trade in 1790. The Success was 135 feet long, 30 feet in the beam, and weighed over 600 tons. She was solidly constructed of Burmese teak, and was fitted out as a barkentine, a three-masted sailing ship with square sails on the foremast, and fore-and-aft sails on the other masts.

For the next twelve years, according to the legend, the Success plied the seas of the Orient, visiting ports-of-call that were the settings for tales of romantic adventure. She carried such exotic cargoes as ivory, spices, silks, jewels, rare woods, and Chinese tea. Occasionally she made the long voyage to London, England. It was during a visit to London in 1802, the story goes on to say, that the career of the Success was dramatically changed.

At that time, criminal law in England was extremely harsh. Hanging was the most common punishment – for offenses that would be considered trivial today. And even when many of these minor crimes were removed from the list of capital offenses, they were still punishable by long prison terms. Soon England’s jails and prisons were overflowing. To relieve itself of the ever-growing prison population, the British government began shipping convicts to penal colonies in Australia. This practice also provided labor that could be used to exploit Australia’s natural resources, as there were not many colonists who were willing to travel to a place as far away from England as Australia.

Several ships were converted into convict transports for the “felon fleet.” The legend of the Success relates that she was one of those ships. For the prisoners locked in the hold of a convict ship for the long voyage to Australia, life was hell. The air below deck was foul with the odors of unwashed clothing and bodies, human waste, and bilge water. Many of the prisoners were seasick, and that added to the revolting smells. The food was vile, and after a few weeks at sea, the drinking water became scummy. Prisoners who were rebellious or who broke rules were subjected to whippings and other tortures.

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