The eclipse of Captain Moonlite

In 1879, the year that Ned Kelly and his gang held up the Bank of NSW at Jerilderie, a siege took place at McGlede’s farm at Wantabadgery on the Murrumbidgee River, 34 kilometres east of Wagga Wagga, NSW. All of the bushrangers were young and inexperienced and except for their leader, were largely unknown to the police.

The head of the gang was Andrew George Scott who, in an attack of poetic licence, called himself Captain Moonlite. Scott was born on the 5th of July, 1842, in Rathfriland, Ireland, son of Thomas Scott, an Anglican clergyman, and Bessie Jeffares. His father’s intention was that he join the priesthood, but Scott instead trained to be an engineer, completing his studies in London.

The family moved to New Zealand in 1861, with Scott intending to try his luck in the Otago goldfields. However, the Maori Wars intervened and Scott signed up as an officer and fought at the battle of Orakau where he was wounded in both legs. After a long convalescence, Scott was accused of malingering, and court-martialled. He gave his disquiet at the slaughter of women and children during the siege as the source of his objection to returning to service.

Scott arrived in Melbourne in 1868, and met Bishop Charles Perry whereupon he was appointed as a lay preacher at Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, with the intention of entering the Anglican priesthood on the completion of his service. He was then sent to the gold mining town of Mount Egerton.

Here he preached to the population and befriended many people with his easy charm and Irish wit. One particular young man he befriended was 18-year-old Ludwig Bruun, an agent for the London Chartered Bank. One night, as Bruun was entering the bank to retire for the night (he had a room at the back) a voice ordered him to “Open up the safe”. Recognising that it was Scott, Bruun assumed it was a practical joke.

But upon turning around, he saw a masked man armed with a pistol and realized that the situation was serious. Scott forced Bruun into the room and after removing the contents of the safe, including an amount of gold, ordered Bruun, at gunpoint, to walk down the road towards the stables. Scott kept repeating that he was waiting for a mate and that they were going to rob the bank at Gordon. After a while they proceeded to the schoolhouse where Bruun was forced against a wall while Scott wrote a note saying “I hereby certify that L. W. Bruun has done everything in his power to withstand our intrusion and the taking away of the money, which was done with firearms.” The note was signed, “Captain Moonlite”. Scott then fled after tying Bruun up but Bruun managed to raise the alarm soon afterwards.

Andrew Scott, alias Captain Moonlite (left) and James Nesbitt (right)

Excitement raged in the small community as Bruun kept insisting that the robber was Scott, but when no evidence was found implicating Scott, the blame was fixed on Bruun. The police arrested Bruun and also the school master, James Simpson, as it was thought it was he who had written the letter in the schoolroom. They were bought to trial but were acquitted due to lack of evidence. The police now knew that they had a bandit on the loose who went by the name of “Captain Moonlite” and the newspapers soon picked up on it. Not long after this, Scott tired of his congregation and headed for Sydney, leaving the unsolved disappearance of £1,000 and an amount of gold for the police to worry about.

In Sydney, using a dud cheque and some of the gold from the robbery, Scott purchased a yacht but his crime was quickly uncovered and he ended up serving 12 months in Maitland Goal. Meanwhile, the police had been thorough in their investigation of the events surrounding the Egerton bank robbery and upon Scott’s release from Maitland Gaol, he was arrested and charged with armed robbery. While awaiting trial in Ballarat Goal, Scott escaped but was captured a week later. In July of 1872 he was gaoled for 10 years for the Egerton robbery and sentenced to a further year for escaping custody, but with a bit of Irish luck, he was released from HM Prison Pentridge after serving only seven years.

After his release he reacquainted himself with James Nesbitt, a young man he had befriended in Pentridge. While some disagree on the grounds of speculation, he is considered by many to have been Scott’s lover and there is significant evidence to support this. Scott’s handwritten letters, currently held in the Archives Office of NSW, profess this love for Nesbitt. While it is difficult to definitively claim the exact nature of Scott and Nesbitt’s sexual practices, it can certainly be said that their relationship was an overtly romantic one. With the aid of Nesbitt, Captain Moonlite began a career as a public speaker on prison reform trading on his tabloid celebrity.

However, throughout this period Scott was harried by the authorities and the tabloid press who attempted to link him to numerous crimes in the colony and printed fantastic rumours about supposed plots he had underway. In light of all this adverse publicity, Andrew Scott, alias Captain Moonlite, decided he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and set about gathering a band of followers, mostly young unemployed youths. One such disciple, Tom Rogan, declared that “The Captain was the only friend I ever had”. Nesbitt and Rogan were joined by three other young men – Thomas Williams, Augustus Wreneckie and Graham Bennet. It was an association that would have disastrous consequences.

The gang commenced their careers as bushrangers near Mansfield, in Victoria. While travelling through the Kelly Gang’s area of operation, Scott and his band were frequently mistaken for the Kelly Gang and took advantage of this to receive food and to seize guns and ammunition from homesteads. Inspecting Superintendent of Police John Sadleir, made a highly improbable claim that Scott sent word to Ned Kelly, asking to join forces with him but Kelly sent back word threatening that if Scott or his band approached him he would shoot them down. Scott seems to have never received the reply as his gang left Victoria in the later part of 1879, after operating there for a short time.

One story has it that Scott promised to lead them to his “property” near Wagga Wagga where he had assured them of work, but whatever their motivation, the gang turned up at Wantabadgery station and were told that the owners were not on the property and to come back the next morning.

Upon returning next morning, they were abruptly ordered off the property. The young men had not eaten for more than two days and it was then that Scott decided to again don the mantle of “bushranger”. The young men, lead by a lay preacher, cum bank robber, cum bushranger, attacked the undefended homestead and over the course of the next two days, 40 prisoners were taken hostage. But one man managed to escape and raise the alarm in Wagga Wagga. Four troopers then rode to the homestead and were met with volleys of gunfire from the bushrangers. The police retreated to a homestead close by and got a message out to Gundagai, 43 kilometres away, to send reinforcements.

Captain Moonlite knew what was coming and ordered his followers to “ride out or be caught and shot”. The young bushrangers did not hesitate, and fearing for their lives, saddled up and rode out of the homestead after Scott, heading for Edmund McGlede’s farm. Here they had food and drink and were mounted and about to ride out again when the police came galloping towards them. Ten troopers demanded that they “Surrender in the name of the Queen!” Scott and his men immediately took cover behind a fence and bushes near McGlede’s farmhouse.

When Scott refused to surrender, the shooting started. The first of the bushrangers to be hit was 15-year-old Wreneckie. As he was running from a fence to reach a better position, he was shot through the side, paralyzed from the waist down and mortally wounded. The bushrangers backed into the farmhouse firing, and then Williams was hit in the arm. As the police advanced on them, Senior Constable Edward Webb-Bowen was struck. Recent investigation pointed to Wreneckie being the likely shooter while on the ground to Webb-Bowen’s left, hitting him in the neck with a bullet fired from a Colt revolver. By this time a large crowd had gathered on the hills around the farm to witness the “showdown”. The scene was similar to the crowd that would gather to see the shootout involving Ned Kelly and his gang at Glenrowan one year later. The bushrangers were down to only three men and then a bullet came through the window and hit Nesbitt in the head. Realising that the game was up, Scott shouted out that he wanted to surrender.

Immediately the police entered the farmhouse to find Nesbitt lying on the floor and Williams crying near the chimney. Scott threw down his gun and surrendered, as did Bennet but there was no sign of Rogan. Some troopers went towards Junee looking for him thinking that he had somehow managed to escape. After the shooting stopped, the crowd came down from their vantage points to have a closer look at the bushrangers. Scott, ever defiant, glared back and seemed to enjoy the attention.

Wreneckie was carried inside the house and laid beside Nesbitt. He died at 3pm that afternoon and James Nesbitt died in Scott’s arms at 5pm. That night the remaining bushrangers were closely guarded in the farmhouse before being taken to Gundagai next morning. Rogan joined them as he was found hiding under a mattress in the McGlede’s bedroom next morning.

Senior Constable Webb-Bowen died five days later and the bushrangers were now not only up on charges of “Robbery-Under-Arms” and “Wounding with Intent”, they were facing a murder charge. The Wantabadgery Bushrangers stood trial in Sydney in December 1879. The four of them were found guilty and sentenced to death but after an appeal, Bennet and Williams had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Andrew Scott, alias Captain Moonlite, and 21-year-old Thomas Rogan, were to be hung. Even on the gallows platform, Rogan, ever faithful said, “I want to die near the Captain.” Scott always maintained that Rogan took no part in the gunfight at McGlede’s farm and was surprised that he had to hang.

While awaiting his hanging, Scott wrote a series of death-cell letters which were discovered by historian Garry Witherspoon. Scott went to the gallows wearing a ring woven from a lock of Nesbitt’s hair on his finger and his final request was to be buried in the same grave as his constant companion, “My dying wish is to be buried beside my beloved James Nesbitt, the man with whom I was united by every tie which could bind human friendship, we were one in hopes, in heart and soul and this unity lasted until he died in my arms.” His request was not granted by the authorities of the time, but in January 1995, his remains were exhumed from Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney and reinterred at Gundagai next to Nesbitt’s grave.