Donal O’Kelly
The 6th June 2026 marked 150 years since the sensational news broke in the international media that the American whaleship Catalpa from New Bedford Massachussetts had rescued six Fenian prisoners from the British penal establishment of Western Australia on Easter Monday, 18th April 1876, seven weeks earlier.
On Grattan Bridge in Dublin, as night fell on Saturday 10th June 1876 five hundred torch bearers led a celebratory demonstration with bands at the culmination of which effigies of British Prime Minister Disraeli and British Army Commander-in-Chief the Duke of Cambridge were set alight on rafts in the river. The Daily Express from its lofty height of civilisation described it as ‘Saturnalia’, presumably a tribute the organisers would cherish for many years.
Two weeks earlier in the House of Commons on 22nd May Disraeli had rejected a petition signed by 138 MPs calling for the humanitarian release of the remaining fifteen Fenian prisoners still undergoing penal servitude ten years after the supressed rebellion. This rebuff was greeted with fury in Ireland. After thirty years of grieving silence for many, An Gorta Mór was being discussed and stories were being told about what the British government did to the parents’ generation of the Grattan Bridge demonstrators, one in four of the population rendered absent by starvation or enforced displacement. The burning effigies of Disraeli and Cambridge on the river were maybe a signal of what an enduring catalyst the Catalpa rescue would be for the Easter Rising forty years later.
The centre of British imperial power was completely ignorant of the Catalpa rescue for seven weeks because the undersea telegraph cable had been severed in the Timor Sea forty-five miles from Port Darwin. This prevented the possibility of the Royal Navy intercepting Catalpa. It took five months to renew telegraphic communication.
The Foreign Office conducted an inquiry and reported the Catalpa could not possibly have done it being situated 1800 miles away (excellent work, Sherlock), and therefore there was no evidence of Fenian involvement. This illogical conclusion was prompted by the fact that such an admission would have left the Treasury liable for at least £30,000 compensation to the Eastern Extension Cable Company for lost revenue.
The smouldering embers of Disraeli and Cambridge slowly drifted down the Liffey towards the Ha’penny Bridge after sunset, and the seagulls and mullet wondered what all the sudden excitement was about. The Catalpa catalyst had ignited a dormant substance in the water, and more than a few people headed for home inspired and feeling strangely aflame.
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Some older Dublin artists who were among the hundreds involved will remember the River Parade of Innocence of 25th June 1990 calling for the immediate release of the Birmingham Six, who had spent seventeen years in British prisons after being brutalised and framed by the judiciary and police for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings.
The 25th June 1990 happened to be the night of the Ireland versus Romania match for quarter-final qualification in Italia 1990, when Packie Bonner saved a famous penalty. The match finished about an hour before the River Parade of Innocence commenced at 9pm. It also happened to be the pinnacle of Ireland’s presidency of the EU, and for three days Charlie Haughey strutted among the policy making elite of Europe at functions centred in Dublin Castle. The organisers of the River Parade of Innocence had managed against incredible odds to get a tiered seating bank erected on Wellington Quay near the Ha’penny Bridge for EU dignitaries to watch the spectacle unfolding on the water.
Beneath Grattan Bridge an ancient Egyptian raft was moored in the centre of the Liffey. Two seals had earlier in the day become fond of it, and had to be shooed off. The late Thom McGinty, aka The Diceman, a familiar figure to all Dubliners, stood stock still as Osiris wearing a colossal jackal headpiece at the prow of the raft, while Imogen Stuart as Isis was fire-breathing at the stern, according to the Egyptian legend of breathing life back into her dead lover. Behind them, six rowing boats dragged enormous photos of the Birmingham Six – blown-up representations of their police mugshots – so that they floated just under the surface of the water, the film of water animating the faces so that they seemed to move and possess emotion, making them seem like they were coming back from death to life.
The flotilla advanced east towards the Ha’penny Bridge, with the quays lined by thousands of people, including scores of costumed musicians and performers dancing in formation, led by twenty torch-bearers. The River Parade of innocence was devised and directed by film-maker Pat Murphy, and involved hundreds of artists, as well as the rowing clubs of North Wall and South Wall, bitter rivals for once collaborating in unison.
Maybe a fragmentary residue of Disraeli’s effigy was still mired in the river-bed mud as the EU hot-shots who had just signed the Dublin Convention requiring asylum-seekers to register an application for refugee status in their first EU state of entry, watched the mugshot images of the Birmingham Six prisoners mouthing their innocence from beneath the surface of the water as the goddess Isis fire-breathed them back to freedom after seventeen years of submergence in the British penal apparatus.
There were fifteen Fenian prisoners still in prison in 1876, counting the Catalpa Six among them. The Birmingham Six (released in March 1991), with the Guildford Four (released in October 1989), The Maguire Seven (cleared June 1991), and Judith Ward (released May 1992) made up the eighteen British Miscarriage of Justice cases many people campaigned on in the 1970s and 80s.
Last month fifteen Irish people were among the 450 volunteers in the Sumud Global Flotilla kidnapped in international waters and many brutally abused by Israeli security services. They highlighted the situation of 9,600 Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prison system, many of whom have not even faced trial, and have indeterminate sentences. It is worth remembering that Ireland was once seen by many ordinary people worldwide as Palestinians are seen by many ordinary people worldwide now – oppressed by generations of aggressive colonisation.
Maybe remembering rescues such as the Catalpa mission in 1876 can inspire the kind of resilient endurance that is invoked by the name ‘Sumud’ given to the most recent humanitarian flotilla to attempt to break the siege of Gaza.
For the Catalpa 150th anniversary Donal O’Kelly will present Catalpa, which won an Edinburgh Fringe First award thirty years ago, in the Civic Theatre Tallaght on 19th August, the date Catalpa arrived in New York after its rescue mission.
The following week, from 25th to 29th August he will present a new work, The Catalpalyst, in Dublin Municipal Theatre at Smock Alley, the opening night marking the 150th anniversary of the homecoming reception of Catalpa Captain George Anthony in Liberty Hall, New Bedford.
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