''Success'' was an Australian prison ship, built in 1840 at Natmoo,

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

, for Cockerell & Co. of

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

. Between the 1890s and the 1930s, she was converted into a floating museum displaying relics of the

convict A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". Convicts are often also known as "prisoners" or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", while a common label for former convict ...

era and purporting to represent the horrors of

penal transportation Penal transportation or transportation was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their ...

in Great Britain and the United States of America. After extensive world tours she was destroyed in 1946 by fire while berthed in

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...

near

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Origins

''Success'' was formerly a merchant ship of 621

ton Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses. Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean * the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds ...

s, 117 feet 3 inches x 26 feet 8 inches x 22 feet 5 inches depth of hold, built in Natmoo, Tenasserim,

, in 1840. After initially trading around the Indian subcontinent, she was sold to London owners and made three voyages with emigrants to Australia during the 1840s. On one of these voyages, following the intervention of

Caroline Chisholm Caroline Chisholm (born Caroline Jones; 30 May 1808 – 25 March 1877) was a 19th-century English humanitarian known mostly for her support of immigrant female and family welfare in Australia. She is commemorated on 16 May in the calendar of ...

, ''Success'' sailed into Sydney town just the week before Christmas 1849 with families who had survived the Great Famine. On 31 May 1852, ''Success'' arrived at

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

and the crew deserted to the gold-fields, this being the height of the

Victorian gold rush The Victorian gold rush was a period in the history of Victoria, Australia approximately between 1851 and the late 1860s. It led to a period of extreme prosperity for the Australian colony, and an influx of population growth and financial capita ...

. Due to an increase in crime, prisons were overflowing and the Government of Victoria purchased large sailing ships to be employed as

prison hulk A prison ship, often more accurately described as a prison hulk, is a current or former seagoing vessel that has been modified to become a place of substantive detention for convicts, prisoners of war or civilian internees. While many natio ...

s. These included ''Success'', ''Deborah'', ''Sacramento'' and ''President''. In 1857 prisoners from ''Success'' murdered the Superintendent of Prisons John Price, the inspiration for the character Maurice Frere in

Marcus Clarke Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke (24 April 1846 – 2 August 1881) was an English-born Australian novelist, journalist, poet, editor, librarian, and playwright. He is best known for his 1874 novel ''For the Term of His Natural Life'', about the co ...

's novel ''

For the Term of His Natural Life ''For the Term of His Natural Life'' is a story written by Marcus Clarke and published in '' The Australian Journal'' between 1870 and 1872 (as ''His Natural Life''). It was published as a novel in 1874 and is the best known novelisation of life ...

''. In 1854 the ship was converted from a convict hulk into a stores vessel and anchored on the

Yarra River The Yarra River or historically, the Yarra Yarra River, (Kulin languages: ''Berrern'', ''Birr-arrung'', ''Bay-ray-rung'', ''Birarang'', ''Birrarung'', and ''Wongete'') is a perennial river in south-central Victoria, Australia. The lower stre ...

, where she remained for the next 36 years.

Museum ship

In 1890, ''Success'' was purchased by a group of entrepreneurs to be refitted as a museum ship to travel the world advertising the perceived horrors of the convict era. Although never a convict ship, ''Success'' was billed as one, her earlier history being amalgamated with those other ships of the same name including , which had been used in the original European settlement of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. She was incorrectly promoted as the oldest ship afloat, ahead of the 1797 . A former prisoner, bushranger

Harry Power Henry Johnson (18 May 1819 – November 1891), better known by his alias Harry Power, was an Irish-born convict who became a bushranger in Australia. From 1869 to 1870, he was accompanied by a young Ned Kelly, who went on to become Australia's b ...

, was employed as a guide for her first commercial season in Sydney Harbour in 1891. The display was not a commercial success, and her owners promptly abandoned their business venture and scuttled the ship in

Kerosene Bay Balls Head Bay, formerly known as Oyster Cove, Wollstonecraft Bay, Sugarworks Bay, Powder Works Bay and Kerosene Bay, is a bay located to the west of the Waverton Peninsula, west of Balls Head and to the east of Berry Island, on the north of Sydn ...

. The following year the sunken ''Success'' was sold to a second group of entrepreneurs and refloated. After a thorough refit she was taken on tour to Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, and back to Sydney, then headed for England, arriving at

Dungeness Dungeness () is a headland on the coast of Kent, England, formed largely of a shingle beach in the form of a cuspate foreland. It shelters a large area of low-lying land, Romney Marsh. Dungeness spans Dungeness Nuclear Power Station, the hamlet ...

on 12 September 1894. In 1912 she crossed the Atlantic and was exhibited as a convict museum along the eastern seaboard of the United States of America and later in ports on the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

. On April 22, 1915 the ship was docked in San Francisco CA for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. While there a short film made by the Keystone Film Company called “

Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco ''Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco'' is a 1915 American short comedy-documentary film both starring and directed by Roscoe Arbuckle and Mabel Normand. Production background Producer Mack Sennett brought Arbuckle and No ...

.” This film can be found in the Library of Congress collection. In this film the two stars go on board and the mayor of San Francisco James “Sunny Jim” Rolph, Jr. gives an extended tour of the ship. In 1917 she was briefly returned to commercial service as a cargo carrier. She sank after being holed by ice in January or February, 1918. She is listed as sunk by ice at

Carrollton, Kentucky Carrollton is a home rule-class city in—and the county seat of— Carroll County, Kentucky, United States, at the confluence of the Ohio and Kentucky rivers. The population was 3,938 at the 2010 census. Geography Carrollton is located in nor ...

in January–February, 1918, in the March, 1918 issue of The American Marine Engineer magazine, Wrecksite lists 4 January 1919, at

Wheeling, West Virginia Wheeling is a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. Located almost entirely in Ohio County, of which it is the county seat, it lies along the Ohio River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and also contains a tiny portion extending ...

. Refloated in 1918 she resumed her museum ship role. In 1933 was featured at the Chicago World Fair. However, despite ongoing repairs ''Success'' was becoming rapidly unseaworthy. She was towed to Sandusky, Ohio, on Lake Erie, Ohio, to be dismantled and sold as scrap. A strong storm sank her at her moorings at Sandusky. A salvage operator named Walter Kolbe acquired the rights to her and in the summer of 1945 he had ''Success'' towed to nearby Port Clinton. Unable to enter the shallow port, she grounded just east of Port Clinton. On 4 July 1946 a fire broke out aboard ''Success'', and in the course of the afternoon she burned to the waterline. Hundreds watched the blaze from the shoreline. The fire is generally attributed to unknown vandals. Remains of the ship remain in 16 feet of water just east of Port Clinton harbor. The

South Australian Maritime Museum The South Australian Maritime Museum is a state government museum, part of the History Trust of South Australia. The Museum opened in 1986 in a collection of historic buildings in the heart of Port Adelaide, South Australia's first heritage prec ...

holds a 1:60 full-hull model of ''Success''.

References

External links

{{commons category, Success (ship, 1840)
The History of the Convict Ship "Success"
at

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

Success (prison ship)
at

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...

Rich Norgard's page about the Success.Rich Norgard's blog about the Success.Success
Article on the Success in Modern Mechanix (1930)
Ship Wrecks and Maritime Tales of the Lake Erie Coastal Trail
Ship Wrecks and Maritime Tales of the Lake Erie Coastal Trail Maritime history of Australia Victorian-era ships of Australia Defunct museums in Ohio 1840 ships Merchant ships of Australia Ships built in Myanmar Museum ships Prison museums in North America

Origins

Museum ship

References

Further reading

External links