National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 74 | April 2005


Pictures Collection: Photograph of the Success

[The ship Success undergoing repairs in dry dock], Port Adelaide, South Australia, 18 April 1895

[The ship Success undergoing repairs in dry dock], Port Adelaide, South Australia, 18 April 1895
albumen photograph; 20.5 x 13.1 cm., on mount 30.6 x 23.0 cm
Pictures Collection, nla.pic-vn3308097

[CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

Recently the Library acquired a collection of papers relating to the history of the ship, Success. Included was an 1895 photograph taken by Hammer & Co. of Adelaide showing the ship undergoing repairs in dry-dock at Port Adelaide.

The Success has an amazing history, with interest continuing to this day. Built in 1840, in Burma, for Cockerell & Co. of Calcutta, Success started life as a trading ship for the Indian country trade before being sold in 1842 to a London interest. This is when the ship’s Australian connection began. Success was chartered to take settlers to the Swan River settlement in Western Australia, and from 1847 until 1852 voyaged from England to Australia with emigrants.

The 1852 gold rush in Australia proved too tempting for the crew, who abandoned ship in Melbourne to try their luck in the fields. Success was purchased by the Victorian Government in that year and fitted out as one of five prison hulks. Moored off Williamstown in Port Phillip Bay with a cargo of convicts, this was the most brutal period in the history of the ship, complete with murders and floggings. From 1860 to 1869 Success was used to incarcerate women and boys, and later to store ammunition. By 1885 the prison hulks were ordered to be broken up, but Success escaped this fate.

In 1890 Success was sold to Alexander Phillips, who planned to convert the ship into a barge, but the old prison hulk so aroused people’s curiosity that Phillips and partner, Edward Nottingham, decided to form a syndicate and use Success as a fee-paying exhibition ship. After being fitted out as a convict ship, with prison relics and wax figures of prisoners, the ship was towed to Circular Quay in Sydney. The first exhibition did not attract the anticipated crowds, but the potential was there and a new syndicate was formed in 1893. This syndicate profitably toured the Success around Australian ports before deciding to sail the ship to London in 1895. Photographs of the exterior and interior of the exhibition ship at this time are held in the National Library’s Beattie albums. It was while the ship was in Port Adelaide undergoing extensive repairs to the hull before the voyage to London that the new photograph in the Pictures Collection was taken.

Success toured the British Isles from 1895 until 1912, before sailing to the United States. From 1912 to 1943 the ship toured extensively in the States and was a huge attraction for visitors along the east and west coasts. Success sailed through the Panama Canal, was a major attraction at the Panama–Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, voyaged up the Mississippi River system and eventually ended up in the Great Lakes, with the ship’s last official exhibition site being at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1942.

For promotional purposes the truth about the origins of the exhibition ship was not allowed to get in the way of a good story. The history of Success was gradually blurred until the old trading ship turned prison hulk became known as the ‘convict ship from Australia’. A little more exaggeration, and Success became a convict ship from the First Fleet.

After 106 years, Success was burned to the waterline when a fire broke out aboard the vessel at Port Clinton, Ohio, on Lake Erie on 4 July 1946. However, interest in the Success did not end with the ship. Researchers have a website devoted to the vessel’s history, at: <http://home.gci.net/~alaskapi/success/ >
—Judy Newland, Librarian, Pictures Collection, jnewland@nla.gov.au

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