EXTRANEOUS ADVENTURES 287 



Now there was in New Bedford at the time one Captain 

 George S. Anthony, who had recently married Richardson's 

 daughter and retired from the sea after a relatively brief but 

 successful career as master. Captain Anthony was growing 

 impatient of his job at the Morse Twist Drill works, and 

 Jonathan Bourne, for whom he had sailed ten years in one 

 vessel, had persisted in offering him a ship. 



Meeting his father-in-law one day, Captain Anthony said, 

 'Tm tired of this. Go down and see Mr. Bourne and ask him 

 if he will let me have a ship." 



''Wait a few days; I have something better for you," Richard- 

 son replied. 



The next evening, in Richardson's store at 18 South Water 

 Street, with the lights out, a little group of men — Devoy and 

 other members of the Clan-na-Gael — told Anthony the story of 

 the Fenian convicts and proposed that he sail from New Bed- 

 ford, ostensibly on a whaling voyage, meet the convicts off the 

 Australian coast, on a day to be appointed, take them on board, 

 and sail for home. He met the committee for the second time, 

 twenty-four hours later, and promised to go. 



Acting as agents for the committee of the Clan-na-Gael — of 

 course, that name did not appear in the affair — Richardson and 

 Anthony bought the barque Catalpa on March 13, 1875, for 

 $5,500. She was a whaler that had been sold into the merchant 

 service, and they were obliged to make extensive alterations 

 and repairs, of which one was remarkable: the carpenter re- 

 moved from under the foot of the mainmast the riding keelson, 

 which had rotted, and so skillfully replaced it with a new piece, 

 that from the beginning of the voyage to the end the rigging 

 did not settle. 



To represent the committee, one man, Dennis Duggan, shipped 

 as carpenter and sailed in the Catalpa. For his first officer, the 

 captain chose Samuel P. Smith, a capable whaler from Martha's 

 Vineyard, in whom he had great confidence; but besides Captain 

 Anthony, Duggan was the only man on board who knew the 

 purpose of the voyage when, on April 29, 1875, the Catalpa 

 put to sea. 



