Success

The Last Convict Ship

Sally-Ann Ilcin

In April 1913, Houdini was challenged to escape from the Success, the “Last Convict Ship in
the World”. Described as an impenetrable hell, it was fitted with cells into which the shackled
Houdini was locked. Standing on the dock of New York harbour, hundreds of people gathered
in anticipation. Houdini was world renown for his great escapes, but what was a convict ship
doing in New York in the 20th Century?

1
Fig. 2

The tale of the Success being a convict ship
was as much an illusion as Harry Houdini‟s
act. She was built from teak in Burma in
1840 and was used as a passenger and
merchant vessel for 8 years on the East
Indian trade route to England. On her first
sailing to Australia in 1848 she landed in
Adelaide. According to the Adelaide Register
her passengers included “Dr M Blood, a
lady, 7 children, various other passengers
and 245 immigrants”. She continued in
this vein until 1852 when she arrived at
Geelong with 224 immigrants on board.
Due to the recent gold discoveries, her crew
abandoned her and went off to the gold
fields. Unable to find another crew, she was
For the following 16 years she would be
home to many different people including
the notorious bushranger Henry (Harry)
Power and the career criminal „Captain‟
Melville. In 1854 Power and Melville, along
with a former ship‟s captain, Billy Stevens,
attempted to escape by seizing the tow boat
left sitting in Hobson‟s Bay, just offshore
from Williamstown.1
At this time both the population and crime
rate in Victoria had surged thanks to all the
new arrivals to the diggings. The current
stockades were inadequate for housing
criminals and so the Government decided
to purchase suitable vessels to be used as
prison hulks until the permanent gaol at
Pentridge was completed. The Success was
used to house prisoners that were of
sufficiently “good” character to be allowed
to work onshore. Working parties would be
sent ashore at Gellibrand Point to work on
the sea walls and the railway.2
that would take them ashore for work. As
the water police closed in, Steven‟s smashed
in the skull of the unlucky warder who had
been taken hostage, Owen Owens, and
then leapt into the sea to his death. Power,
Melville and 5 others were arrested and,
convicted as accomplices, managed to

2
escape the hangman‟s noose.3 In 1877 due of his chains”.6 Furnished with a smattering
to ill health, Harry Power was released from of leg-irons, a whipping frame for
prison, and in 1891 became a guide on the punishment by a cat-o-nine-tails, and a
Success, telling lurid tales of life on the ship compulsory tin (or coffin) bath, she was
and the men he served time with. It was to ready for her debut in April 1890. The
be a short stint however as he died from guest list included the current Governor of
drowning a few months later near Swan the Melbourne Gaol, Colonel Bull, who no
Hill.4 doubt made comparisons with the current
„enlightened‟ view of penal servitude based
As the men were finally moved to on the Pentonville model.7
Pentridge, in 1869 the Success was
decommissioned for use as a prison and
was used instead as an explosives store. In
1884 she was moved to the then mouth of
the Yarra River (close to the current Coode
Island Dock), where she remained, until in
1890, some enterprising gentlemen saw the
commercial potential in the old girl. 5

Transportation to the Australian east coast

had ceased by 1853, so by the 1890s when a
group of businessmen were shown the
defunct prison hulk, a whole generation
had passed. Australia was fast approaching
the turn of a new century with a sense of Fig. 3 Success Interior
nationhood. It was more than 100 years Fig.4. Wax model
since the First Fleet had landed on these
shores and the population saw itself in
terms other than that of a penal settlement.
The group of gentlemen clearly thought
that the span of time was sufficient for
modern Australians to look back at their
beginnings. They created the “Convict
Ship Success Company Limited” and
transformed the derelict ship into a floating
museum. The ship was still replete with its
cells and thick oak doors, and was
described by a reporter as some cells having
only room for a hammock, whilst the
refractory and punishment cells required
the incarcerated to “recline against the
sloping side of the ship and ease the weight

3
In order to entice the crowds aboard, wax
dummies were installed to give a more
“authentic” experience of life aboard the
prison hulk. Sourced locally from
Kreitmayer‟s Waxworks in Bourke Street,
8
they were used to demonstrate the various
punishments that were meted out to the
“convicts”. For added flourish, a tableau
featuring the Kelly Gang, and a purported
suit of Ned Kelly‟s armour joined the
collection. This would give audiences
outside Melbourne a „flavour‟ of the type of
outlaw the ship had housed, even though
the Kelly Gang had never been incarcerated
on the ship.
Fig. 5. “Ned Kelly” Armour on the Success
c1914

4
Fig.6 Having been towed up the east coast to
Newcastle and Sydney, where she stayed for
some time, eventually the number of
visitors began to dwindle. The original
syndicate began having financial difficulties
and the Success was eventually sold to a new
group of middleclass professionals who set
up the “Prison Hulk Success Company
Limited”.9 With a new injection of much
needed funds she was made seaworthy and
sailed to Brisbane, Hobart and Adelaide
before eventually departing for Britain in
1895. Over the next 17 years the Success
toured the British ports bringing in an
average of £800 per week. Much of the
exhibits success must come down to Mr C J
Harvie, a member of the consortium who
purchased the ship. In a talk given to some
advertising men in Melbourne, he outlined
how he managed to persuade Prince Henry
of Battenberg, husband of Queen Victoria‟s
youngest daughter, into touring the ship so
that he could confidently advertise her as
“visited by Royalty”.10 Her time in British
waters had been very lucrative but after the
retirement of Mr Harvie as chief guide,
lecturer and promoter in 1908, things
started to decline once again.11

A report in The Mercury in 1912 says that

she was sold to an “American Syndicate”
who planned to sail her to America. To give
added spice to the story it is said that the
first crew engaged to sail her refused when
they heard of her “notorious history” and
that a second crew had to be found by
offering more money.12 Eventually arriving
in Boston, she made her first foray into the
American market, before heading south to
sail through the Panama Canal and back up
the west coast to San Francisco in time for
the World‟s Fair. Silent film stars Mabel

5
Normand and Roscoe „Fatty‟ Arbuckle “We must not be unjust to Harvie. No
visited the fair and were filmed being reasonable being expects a salesman to tell all
shown around the ship. You can see them the truth. Joseph Harvie adopted the practice
being suitably shocked and awed online via of most politicians, many teachers of religion,
the Internet Archive at and the majority of newspapers. Give the
people just as much truth as may be good for
https://archive.org/details/MabelAndFatty
them and lucrative to yourself”. 16
ViewingTheWorldsFairAtSanFrancisco191
513 The exposure in America of the Success led
to outrage in Australia by both the general
The promoters of the Success tailored her
public and the Government. The “Last
story to an American narrative. Where once
Convict Ship” was seen to be spreading the
she had been the home to notorious
convict stain that Federation had sought to
bushrangers, she was now linked with the
erase.
American War of Independence (America‟s
refusal to take more convicts lead to
transportation to Australia) and the
discovery of America by Christopher
Columbus (an article in the Alexandria
Gazette assured its readers that a visit to the
Success was the equivalent of visiting
Columbus‟s flagship the Santa Maria).14

As the world started to recover from the

Great War, reports started arriving in
Australia about the convict ship. Australian
citizens in America were reading newspaper
reports about the atrocities inflicted on
poor souls who were transported. Others
came across the ship itself as it was berthed 17
in one of the many ports. When the
Australian Government became aware of Three weeks after the above article
her notoriety and the imagined slur of a appeared in the Brisbane Courier, another
convict taint against the nation, questions article in the Hobart Mercury filed from
began to be asked.15 Washington stated that the Australian
Trade Commissioner, Mr H V Brookes,
When the Attorney General of Australia
received assurances from Mr Stimson, the
asked for a report on the facts of the ship,
Secretary of State that he would personally
the Director of the Commonwealth
look into having the exhibition prevented,
Investigation Branch, Mr HE Jones, who
due to the untruthfulness and its “injury to
compiled it, seems to have some sympathy
Australia‟s reputation”.18 Although these
for Mr Harvie and his endeavours. One
“assurances” were being given in 1930, the
paragraph states:
Australian Government were aware of the

6
ship and its notoriety as early as 1913. A
Mr Thompson who was visiting America
came across the ship and its sordid stories
and wrote to the Department of External
Affairs in Melbourne, in which he
described the displays and he also included
a copy of the catalogue which listed all the
men who had been imprisoned in her and
their crimes.19
Fig. 7
Given that in Australia the idea of the
“convict stain” was well entrenched in our
psyche until the 1950s, it seems
incongruous that the people of Sydney,
Adelaide and Brisbane would want to step
on board such a ship. We can only suppose
that the end of transportation to the east
coast of Australia in the 1850s meant that
by the end of the century we were
7
sufficiently removed from it that it held a
morbid fascination.20 The British also
appear not to have an issue with being
confronted with a past that was steeped in
abject misery and man‟s inhumanity to
man. The thousands who visited may well
have seen it as another Madame Tussauds,
replete as it was with its wax figures. And
the Americans, perhaps no more than
another “travelling circus” such as Barnum
and Bailey‟s or the Ringling Brothers, both
of which had been going since 1871.
The end came to the Success in 1945 in Port
Clinton, Ohio when she caught fire and
sank. The ship has become a popular dive
site and over the years, many of the objects
once used as exhibits, have been retrieved
by locals.
Fig. 8 Relics of Convict Discipline postcard
c1914
And Houdini? After an hour‟s wait by the anxious onlookers, he appeared at a window and
made a dramatic dive from an upper porthole into the Hudson River, making his the last, and
only, successful escape ever made from the Success.

1
NAA :B741, V/4289
2
Roland Wettenhall, ’Victoria’s Yellow Stain: The Fleet of Floating Prisons’, Victorian Historical Journal, 86/2
(2015), 255
3
Australian Dictionary of Biography, v, s.v. ’Melville, Francis (1822-1857)’ s.v.’ Power, Henry (Harry) (1820-
1891)’
4
Ibid. ‘Power, Henry (Harry)’
5
‘Old Floating Prison’, Argus, 21 April 1890,9, in Trove [online database] accessed 5 Sept 2018
6
ibid
7
The Oxford Companion to Australian History, s.v. ‘Pentonvillians’
8
Darren Watson, ‘100 Howling, Scowling Scoundrels: Exhibiting the Convict Hulk Success in Australia’,
Victorian Historical Journal, 74/2 (2003), 254
9
Ibid. 264. NAA :B741, V/4289
10
‘Adventures of the ship Success a Relic of Australia’s History’, Huon Times, 25 April 1924, 3, in Trove [online
database] accessed 6 Oct. 2018
11
NAA: A367, C2473
12
‘Sale of Convict Ship’, Mercury, 27 May 1912, 4, in Trove [online database] accessed 8 Sept. 2018
13
Keystone films, “Mabel and Fatty viewing the World’s Fair at San Francisco 1915”, *film+ Internet Archive
accessed 28 Sep. 2018
14
Rose Cullen, ‘The success of the Success: Negotiating Dark Tourism on an exhibition ‘Convict Ship’, Journal of
Tourism History, 9/1 (2017), 21
15
NAA: A1; B741; A367
16
NAA: A367, C2473, p31
17
‘Convict Ship, Misleading Claims’, Brisbane Courier, 1 Oct. 1930, 17, in Trove [online database] accessed 5
Oct. 2018
18
‘Old Hulk Success shown as Ex-Convict Ship’, Mercury, 22 Oct. 1930, 14, in Trove [online database] accessed
7 Oct. 2018
19
NAA: A1; B741
20
Rose Cullen, ‘The success of the Success: Negotiating Dark Tourism on an exhibition ‘Convict Ship’, Journal of
Tourism History, 9/1 (2017), 5

8
Images:

Title page: Prison Hulk Success at Hobart, Tasmania [image]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_(prison_ship) accessed 4 Sept. 2018

Fig 2. ’Challenge to Houdini’, New York, 1913 [poster], New York Historical Society,
http://nyhistory.tumblr.com/post/174114042809> accessed 4 Sept. 2018

Fig 3. Green, A, SUCCESS, [hulk, Convict Ship] [image], (1900) http://digital.slv.vic.gov.au/1647341 accessed 4
Sept. 2018

Fig 4. The Iron Punishment Band, Prison Hulk “Success”, [picture] (1914) http://digital.slv.vic.gov.au/H22684
accessed 4 Sept. 2018
Fig 5. Ned Kelly Armour, [picture] (1914) https://www.sciencesource.com/archive/Prison-Ship-Success--Iron-
Jacket-SS2878181.html accessed 21 Oct. 2018

Fig 6. The Australian Convict Ship Success, [poster] http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-138302992 accessed 2 Sept. 2018

Fig 7. Catalogue of the Convict Ship Success: open daily from 10 a.m. till 10 p.m.: the only remaining convict
ship of Victoria in the early fifties. [pamphlet] (1891) http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-651215719 > accessed 2 Sept.
2018

Fig 8. Relics of Convict Discipline, [image] (1914) http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/H22671 accessed 8 Sept. 2018

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

‘Adventures of the ship Success a Relic of Australia’s History’, Huon Times, 25 April 1924, 3, in Trove [online
database] accessed 6 Oct. 2018

‘Convict Ship’, Northern Miner (Charters Towers), 24 Nov. 1928, 6, in Trove [online database] accessed 30 Sep.
2018

‘Convict Ship, Misleading Claims’, Brisbane Courier, 1 Oct. 1930, 17, in Trove [online database] accessed 5 Oct.
2018

Keystone films, “Mabel and Fatty viewing the World’s Fair at San Francisco 1915”, *film+ Internet Archive
accessed 28 Sep. 2018

National Archives of Australia: Department of External Affairs, Melbourne; Correspondence Files 1903-1938;
Convict Ship “Success” 1890-1938 (Canberra)

National Archives of Australia: Commonwealth Investigation Service, Melbourne; Correspondence Files 1924-
1962; Convict Ship “Success” 1914-1964 (Canberra)

National Archives of Australia: Special Intelligence Bureau, (Central Office) Melbourne; Correspondence Files
1916-1953 ; Convict Ship “Success” Australia and America – ownership and history, 1926-1934 (Canberra)

‘Old Floating Prison’, Argus, 21 April 1890,9, in Trove [online database] accessed 5 Sept 2018

9
‘Old Hulk Success shown as Ex-Convict Ship’, Mercury, 22 Oct. 1930, 14, in Trove [online database] accessed 7
Oct. 2018

‘Sale of Convict Ship’, Mercury, 27 May 1912, 4, in Trove [online database] accessed 8 Sept. 2018

Secondary Sources:

Australian Dictionary of Biography, v, s.v. ’Melville, Francis (1822-1857)

Australian Dictionary of Biography, v, s.v ’ Power, Henry (Harry) (1820-1891)’

Cullen, Rose, ‘The success of the Success: Negotiating Dark Tourism on an exhibition ‘Convict Ship’, Journal of
Tourism History, 9/1 (2017), 4-26

Duncan, Brad, Gibbs, Martin & Sonnemann, Till, ‘Searching for the Yellow Fleet: An archaeological and remote
sensing investigation of the prison hulk wrecks Deborah and Sacramento’, Bulletin of the Australasian Institute
for Maritime Archaeology, 37 (2013), 66-75

The Oxford Companion to Australian History, s.v. ‘Pentonvillians’

Watson, Darren, ‘100 Howling, Scowling Scoundrels: Exhibiting the Convict Hulk Success in Australia’, Victorian
Historical Journal, 74/2 (2003), 251-270

Wettenhall, Roland, ’Victoria’s Yellow Stain: The Fleet of Floating Prisons’, Victorian Historical Journal, 86/2
(2015), 250-275

10