The voyage of the Catalpa is one of history's unadorned gifts to adventure story writers. It began in 1875 when a group of wild American-Irish hired a three-masted whaler to sail from New Bedford to Western Australia. The aim of the expedition was nothing less than the 'Invasion' of Fremantle to release some Irish patriots transported to the colony ten years before after the failure of the 1865 rising. Against all the odds, it succeeded...