Sailing to disaster

When a convict ship that left Cork in 1835 sank off Tasmania, drowning 224 people, some blamed a ‘party atmosphere’ between the Irish prostitutes and sailors on board, writes Richard Fitzpatrick

ON May 13, 1835, a convict ship carrying female prisoners, along with nine free women, 55 children and crew, went aground off an island on the north-west coast of Tasmania. A total of 224 perished, only nine crew and six women survived. It was one of the worst shipwrecks in Australian history, and one of the most notable in Irish seafaring terms, for the convicts were Irish.

They left Cork 125 days beforehand, although for many on board their incarcerations went back a couple of years before their departure. Most had ended up in Dublin’s Kilmainham Prison, known at the time as “Ireland’s Bastille”, as far back as 1833, wending their way slowly through the legal system towards deportation to Australia.