When the HMS Buffalo dropped anchor in Hobart Town, the old Tasmanian capital, that hot antipodal summer 170 years ago, its inmates were not Britain's usual convict castoffs. At heart, they were law-abiding shopkeepers, farmers, and laborers. What crime brought those American prisoners to the far side of the world? They tried to liberate colonial Canada from Britain.

Their guards marched them before the colonial governor, John Franklin. The former polar explorer, having been dealt the lowest card in the British patronage deck, ran a miserable colony economically dependent on convict labor. Franklin told them they deserved to hang and should be grateful for a life at hard labor instead.

Ironically, most of the American prisoners outlived Franklin. He died seven years later on another failed attempt to find the Northwest Passage.

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