Among the stranger ships to (probably) call at Portrush was a genuine 19th-century relic of Australia’s convict era, touring the world as a floating museum.
From convict hulk to gold-rush prison
The Success was built at Tenasserim, Burma, in 1840 — a full-masted ship of 621 tons — and arrived at Melbourne in May 1852 carrying emigrants during the Australian gold rush. When her own crew deserted for the goldfields, the Victoria colonial government bought her, along with several similar vessels, to use as a prison hulk relieving Melbourne’s overcrowded jails.
A touring museum of horrors
Later refitted as a travelling exhibit displaying “the perceived horrors of the convict era,” the Success toured Australian ports, then England, arriving at Dungeness in September 1895. From there she crossed the Atlantic, most likely in 1912, to tour American ports for roughly twenty years — and a surviving poster, undated but consistent with details in its own text, suggests Portrush was possibly her last European port of call before that crossing. No local newspaper reference has been found to confirm the visit or how long she stayed.
A fiery end
The Success fell into disrepair in the late 1930s, and on 4 July 1946, while being dismantled for her valuable teak timber in Cleveland, Ohio, she caught fire and was destroyed — an oddly fitting end for a ship that had spent decades as a travelling spectacle, closing out her strange second life the way a good ghost story closes out its own.