Secrets of the Dead

Irish Escape

The voyage of the Catalpa is the extraordinary dramatic story of a covert rescue mission hatched in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to facilitate the escape of six Irish political prisoners from a notorious penal colony in Fremantle, Western Australia. At the center of this daring rescue is an unlikely hero -- a non-partisan Quaker by the name of George Smith Anthony, who as captain of the Catalpa, risked his life and liberty to bring these Irish rebels back to freedom in the United States.