Evening Star Newspaper, April 24, 1930, Page 40

C—8 THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C.. THURSDAY, APRIL 24; 1930. The World’s Most Remarkable Exhibition! The Ancient Famous and Infamous Australian LONYILT 3 P NOW IN WASHINGTON, SEVENTH STREET WHARF This Old Craft Has Been Visited by Over 21,000,000 (Twenty-One Million) People Including Most of the Crowned Heads of Europe, and Has Received Patronage of Many of the Leading State and City Officials and Clergy of All Denominations Since Her Arrival in America THE OLDEST SHIP AFLOAT (LAUNCHED 1790). RAISED FROM THE BOTTOM OF SYDNEY HARBOR, AUSTRALIA, AND NOW ON A FINAL TOUR OF THE WORLD A Relic of the Barbaric Days When, for a Minor Offense, a Man Could Be Transported Overseas ¢or THE TERM OffiisV ATURAL When the Convict Ship Was Launched in Far- Away India in 1790— 1—Buffalo was the western frontier of America. 2—George Washington was serving his first term as President of the United States. 3—There were 145 offenses punishable by death in Eng- land. 4—Napoleon was only 21 years old and the Battle of Water- loo was still 25 years in the future. ROMANCE To view her massive yellow hull, stamped with the sinister black, broad arrows of the British penal system; her tall and mighty spars, which formerly flew her arrow-marked sails in many latitudes; her graceful figurehead, reminiscent of the days when fine deep sea ships were loved as women; and her stately quarter deck and broad stern, is to whiff the great salt water ocean and realize something of ships and men of other days. For she has sailed the Seven Seas, plowing her way through water and winds in many climes, with cargoes ranging from precious jewels of the Orient to wretched and suffering human beings herded below her decks like cattle. Nabobs of India and Siam have sipped tea on her quarter deck. Dusky Princesses of the East have been entertained in her cabins. Hundreds of pitiful prisoners have died in her dungeon cells. Pirates have chased her and more than one desperate battle has been fought across her solid decks. Her massive hull and her mainmast still bear the marks of pirate shots fired at her by black-flagged ships in the Indian Ocean. ;! Today she is the last vivid reminder of the master sea fictionists of another day, authors like Clark Russell and John Boyle O'Reilly, whose pen pictures antedated the red-blooded, blue-sea stories of London, Melville and Conrad. She forms your only chance to see a ship like those of which you have read. PATHOS She is a floating monument of the most pathetic human drama ever played; a startling reminder that 100 years ago, and even less, women and little children, as well as men, were punished with life-long suffer- ing and ignominy for trifling offenses. Aboard her may be seen the ring-bolts and chains to which were fastened beautiful girls, often convicted wrongly, but nevertheless compelled to helplessly endure the ter- rors of a voyage of 16,000 miles across the high seascompletely under the domination of brutal warders. While young women became gaunt and wrinkled, boys and girls of eight and nine years of age, trans- ported for stealing apples or a two-penny pie, became hardened criminals from the sights they saw and the punishment they endured. For age and sex did not spare the victim of the convict ship from the heavy irons, the cat-o’-nine tails, the whipping posts, the branding irons and the tiny air-tight dungeon cells be- -low the water line to which they were thrust for the slightest infraction of the rules. There is shown the figure of Elizabeth Stott and her child, transported for life, after death sentence had been commuted by King George I, to the penal settlement of far off Australia for the alleged forging of the equivalent of fifteen dollars. What became of them after she boarded ship and was placed in iron, God only knows. The records are mute. ~ No story ever written, no sermon ever preached, no drama ever acted, no scene ever thrown upon a silver sheet can vie in pathos with the silent testimony of this ancient vessel and her original cells and tor- tures, every one of which you may actually see and feel during your visit. HISTORY The Convict Ship teaches more strikingly than a”thousand-page volume or hundreds of photographs the story of human progress during three centuries. She was a link between the Orient and the Occident in the days when, as the pride of the vast East India Company’s fleet, she carried wealthy and noble pas- sengers from England to India, and, returning, brought invaluable cargoes of tea, spices, silks and jewels from Calcutta to London. As a dread felon transport, she carried miserable and often innocent men, women and children from England to Van Dieman’s Land and the penal colonies at Botany Bay, Australia, starting the growth of a new continent. She was an outcast from all traditions, from all the civilized world, from humanity itself, when moored in Hobson Bay, Australia, she was a hulk or floating prison used for the torture of those condemned to a living death in a prison which, as can be vividly seen, makes the Bastile, the Kremlin and the Tower of Lon- don at their worst seem habitable. She created maritime history when, under her own canvas and unes- corted, she sailed first from Australia to England, and then from England to the United States, crossing the broad Atlantic in 96 days. Since her arrival in this country she continues to make history, the number of her visitors, ranging into the millions, far outstripping that of any exhibit ever shown here. - THIS WONDERFUL VESSEL. HAS MADE HISTORY DURING THREE | CENTURIES She is the oldest ship in the world, and the only convict ship afloat out of that dreadful fleet of ocean hells which sailed the Seven Seas in 1790 A. D. She is unchanged after all these vears, nothing being omitted but her human freight and their sufferings from the cruelties and barbarities practiced upon them. She has held lurid horrors and dreadful iniquities be sides which even the terrible stories of the Black Hole of Calcutta and the Spanish Inquisition pale into insignificance. Aboard her are now shown, in their original state, all the airless dungeons and condemned cells, the whip- ping post, the manacles, the branding irons, the punishment bails, the leaden-tipped cat-o'-nine tails, the coffin bath and the other fiendish inventions of man’s brutality to his fellowmen. She marked the beginning of the end of England’s monstrous penal system. From keel to topmast she cries aloud the greatest lesson the world has ever known in the history of human progress. THE CONVICT SHIP WILL NEVER AGAIN BE SEEN IN WASHINGTON Your opportunity to visit her is NOW. Tf you do not seize it, yours will be the regret at not having seen the greatest and most extraordinary exhibition that ever visited this city. When you walk her decks, groo\’cd with the chains of her miserable victims, the past will speak to you of its sad, mournful lesson, but you will leave feeling better because you live in a better age. Wealthy Americans spend millions annually in visiting Europe’s old castles and prison dungeons. Today a short ride brings you alongside the oldest and most notorious float- ing prison the world has ever known. Do not miss this profound illustration of one of the most vital factors in the betterment of the age. During the period of the ship's stay in Washington the public will be admitted aboard every day from 10 A.M. to 11 P.M. / ADMISSION 50c—CHILDREN UNDER 10 HALF PRICE Open’ Every Day, 10 AM. to 11 PM. (7th Street Wharf, Washington) Guides Explain Everything Electrically Lighted Throughout Can Be Inspected Night or Day, .