File:Prison ship SUCCESS, Seattle, 1915 (TRANSPORT 673).jpg

On verso of image: Success, 1915.

A great attraction on the Northwest waterfronts in 1915 was the ancient convict ship SUCCESS, claimed to have been built in 1790, but actually constructed about 1840 of Burmese teak in India for the service of the East India Company. Her publicity claimed that she had been taken over by the British government in 1802 for transporting felons to the penal colonies of New South Wales. Actually, although used as a floating gaol in 1852, she never actually carried convicts. Owned by Capt. D.H. Smith, and fitted out as a floating museum of horrors, the bluff, beak-bowed vessel, rerigged as a barkentine, was towed around from the East Coast without mishap. She remained in Northwest waters until 1916 and lasted until 1946, when she was accidentailly burned near Port Clinton, Ohio. (pg. 252) Notes from Gordon Newell, ed., The H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest (Seattle: Superior Publishing Co, 1966).

• Subjects (LCSH): Success (Sailing ship); Sailing ships--Washington (State)--Seattle