Cyprus mutiny

rdf:langString Cyprus mutiny

rdf:langString Cyprus mutiny

rdf:langString Japanese watercolour from 1830 depicting a British-flagged ship believed to be the brig Cyprus

rdf:langString British Army

rdf:langString Convict insurgents

rdf:langString Lt Carew

rdf:langString William Swallow

rdf:langString Cyprus mutiny

rdf:langString August 1829

rdf:langString Recherche Bay, Tasmania

rdf:langString Successful mutiny

rdf:langString The Cyprus mutiny took place in 1829 off the British penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania, Australia). Convicts seized the brig Cyprus and sailed her to Canton, China, where they scuttled her and claimed to be castaways from another vessel. On the way, Cyprus visited Japan during the height of the period of severe Japanese restrictions on the entry of foreigners, the first Australian ship to do so. The mutineers were eventually captured. Two of them, George James Davis and William Watts, were hanged at Execution Dock, London on 16 December 1830, the last men hanged for piracy in Britain. Their leader, William Swallow, was never convicted of piracy because he convinced the British authorities that, as the only experienced sailor, he had been forced to remain onboard and coerced to navigate the ship. Swallow was instead sentenced to life on Van Diemen's Land for escaping, where he died four years later. Swallow wrote an account of the voyage including the visit to Japan, but this part of the journey was generally dismissed as fantasy until 2017, when he was vindicated by an amateur historian's discovery that the account matched Japanese records of a "barbarian" ship flying a British flag whose origins had remained a mystery for 187 years.