The whaling captain, a secret plan and one of Australia’s boldest prisoner escapes

australiangeographic.com.au

The whaling captain, a secret plan and one of Australia’s boldest prisoner escapes

As a young child, Jim Ryan came across a treasure trove of items in the attic of his family’s home in New Bedford, Massachusetts, that told the story of one of the boldest prisoner escapes in Australia. The collection of keepsakes stored for decades dates back to the 1870s when his great-grandfather George Anthony captained a whaling boat from the US to Australia and back again to smuggle six Irish political prisoners to freedom. Anthony died in…