Success (prison ship)

The prison hulk, Success, at Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
History
Name:	Success
Completed:	1840
Fate:	Destroyed by fire in 1946
General characteristics
Tonnage:	621
Length:	117' 3
Beam:	26' 8
Draft:	22' 5
Installed power:	Sail
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship

Success was an Australian prison ship, built in 1840 at Natmoo, Burma, for Cockerell & Co. of Calcutta. Between the 1890s and the 1930s, she was converted into a floating museum displaying relics of the convict era and purporting to represent the horrors of penal transportation in Great Britain and the United States of America. After extensive world tours she was destroyed by fire while berthed in Lake Erie near Cleveland, Ohio in 1946.

Success was formerly a merchant ship of 621 tons, 117 feet 3 inches x 26 feet 8 inches x 22 feet 5 inches depth of hold, built in Natmoo, Tenasserim, Burma in 1840. After initially trading around the Indian subcontinent, she was sold to London owners and made three voyages with emigrants to Australia during the 1840s, On one of these voyages, following the intervention of Caroline Chisholm, Success sailed into Sydney town just the week before Christmas 1849 with families who had survived the Great Famine.

On 31 May 1852, Success arrived at Melbourne and the crew deserted to the gold-fields, this being the height of the Victorian gold rush. Due to an increase in crime, prisons were overflowing and the Government of Victoria purchased large sailing ships to be employed as prison hulks. These included Success, Deborah, Sacramento and President. In 1857 prisoners from Success murdered the Superintendent of Prisons John Price, the inspiration for the character Maurice Frere in Marcus Clarke's novel For the Term of His Natural Life.

In 1854 the ship was converted from a convict hulk into a stores vessel and anchored on the Yarra River, where she remained for the next 36 years.