Historic Hood River
Success!?
Notes
It’s hard to surprise me these days, but this one did it. Would you expect to find an image of a ship purporting to haul convicts from England to Australia in the album of a woman who lived in Hood River and Sherman County, Oregon?
I can’t explain exactly where Alta Walter ran into the “Convict Ship. Success.” but this account of its very long life offers a few windows when it could have happened. After being built in Burma in 1840, she brought emigrants from England to Australia until 1852. While these weren’t exactly prisoners, when her crew abandoned the ship to try their luck at the gold fields of Australia, Success was used as a prison hulk. By the 1890s she was retooled as a museum piece claiming to be a “convict ship” as well as “the oldest ship afloat”, neither of which was true but which we can see painted on her hull. In 1915 she was in San Francisco for the Panama Pacific Exposition, so perhaps Alta Walter saw her their. She than sunk and was refloated and served as a museum again from 1918 on, traveling to Chicago for the 1933 Worlds Fair. Perhaps she visited Oregon in that time frame. She met her end (for good this time) when she burned near Cleveland in 1946.
In any case, it’s a great story and a great image of a ragged old ship, thanks to Alta Walter’s photo album.
The clip below is a tour of the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition, including extensive footage of Success (starting at 10:22). While there are many historical inaccuracies, it’s great to see footage of the actual ship.
Kalley
The video of the ship’s prisoner devices reminds me of visiting a museum in Rothenburg ob Der Tauber in Germany. They have a Medieval Crime Museum there.
I have to say that when the lady in the video slapped the man’s face, well that was funny!
JKG
What’s up with the arrows pointing up on the hull?
Arthur Babitz
This side up?
jnails
A teak ship must be hard to sink. Looked it up and teak is called the king of wood, hard and resistant to rot, natural oils, straight grain., grows 60 ft+ and more. So 2 foot thick sides makes for a long lived and unsinkable
ship.
L.E.
Thanks for the research and links Arthur.
Alan Winston
“An upward arrow is a symbol that typically represents growth, progress, improvement, or success”
JEC
The arrows are actually the British Broad Arrow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_arrow#/media/File:Four_men_in_prison_uniform_are_standing_in_a_line_in_front_o_Wellcome_V0041243.jpg
marking the ship and its “cargo” as property of the british government.