The story of the Hougoumont Ship & The Rising Of Moon w/ Áine Tyrrell Live from Fremantle Port

This port in Fremantle Western Australia, Noongar Country holds a story for this land, for Ireland and for a future where poets, writers and activists are not silenced for their part in the truth telling of systematic oppression. This passage of water and the passage of time is a story to how these how the sacrifices these men made would then go onto to become heroic stories of our times. May we learn from Noongar Country and do better in the now.

I sing this song today that was sung aboard the Hougoumont Ship for our resistance, for peaceful way forwards for Palestine, for our stories of the Irish diaspora that rarely make it home to Ireland, and for those that need to connect in with who they are as Irish on these lands.

Fremantle is where the last convict ship to ever arrive in so-called Australia came in through. Aboard that ship 62 Fenian political prisoners were transported for their part in the Fenian Rising of 1867. About 17 of these were military Fenians. The rest were writers, political minds, poets, and activists.

My father spent a lifes work trying to bring awareness to the story of one of these Fenians. The incredible, poet, writer and journalist John Boyle O'Reilly. Thanks to him and other aboard numerous letters survive, and many articles about the voyage were later written. Also, during the voyage a number of the Fenians entertained themselves by producing seven editions of a shipboard newspaper entitled The Wild Goose, which survive in the State Library of New South Wales. A number of journals of the voyage from Denis Cashman John Casey and the memoirs of Thomas McCarthy Fennell have also been published.

I sing it up for their sacrifices on board the Hougoumont ship and after as the disruption and change to our Irish family lines have changed forever due to the colony transporting our rebels and forcing famine for many to have to emigrate. Many of these Fenians would have go on to stay here or some aboard the Catalpa rescue which saw many of your ancestors set up new Irish diaspora lines in Australia, USA and Canada.and for us all to lean in to learn from them.

Thank you Noongar Country for holding my story and keeping theirs here. Let's keep telling their story.