THE GREATEST ESCAPE

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT WAS abolished in Britain in 1965. However, as was common knowledge in 1980s schoolyards, one could still receive the death sentence for four particular offences: piracy, treason, espionage and one other that no-one could ever remember – arson in the royal dockyards. In fact, piracy was still officially punishable by hanging until 1998.

So in 1837 it was certainly still very much a capital offence throughout the British Empire, including the Australian colonies. Such was the grim fate awaiting convict James Porter following one of the most audacious escapes in the history of the colony.

Sporting one good eye and a sharp wit, the young cockney lad had arrived 14 years earlier in Van Diemen’s Land. A death sentence for robbery had been commuted to life transportation, which, for Porter, became a downward spiral of escape attempts, floggings and increasingly heavier sets of irons, until, in 1830, a failed breakout saw him once again before