• DOI:10.1353/NHR.2005.0022
• Corpus ID: 144608525

History into Myth: The Catalpa's Long Voyage

@article{Fennell2005HistoryIM,
  title={History into Myth: The Catalpa's Long Voyage},
  author={Philip William Hugh Fennell},
  journal={New Hibernia Review},
  year={2005},
  volume={9},
  pages={77 - 94}
}

• P. Fennell
• Published 7 June 2005
• History
• New Hibernia Review

The expedition described was the Catalpa rescue, which actually occurred in 1876, some years after the inspector had joined the police department. A New Bedford whaler, the Catalpa, purchased by the Irish-American organization Clan na Gael, had in fact sailed for Australia in 1875, succeeded in rescuing six prisoners in 1876, and returned to the United States. None of the original source documents available for the rescue list Inspector Harley as being a crew mem ber or a guest of the ship; nor, for that matter, does his name appear in any accounts of the escape.2 After all these years, one can hardly fault Harley's wish to be associated with such a dramatic and successful event that became the talk of Irish com munities throughout the world. The well-publicized rescue offered an enor mous boost to Irish nationalist movements, as well as to the spirits of Irish men and women cheered by any victory against the British Empire. Even though the inspector appears to have taken considerable liberty in his association with the Catalpa, his claim worked its way into the historical record. Likewise, the amount of misinformation about the Catalpa rescue over the past century-and a-quarter is no less fantastic.