Cythera ( ), a steel ketch, designed and built single-handedly by Peter A. Fenton, was the first subject of modern-day piracy in Australian history and set a legal precedent to laws in effect from 1858. Background and design In the 1940s, after being discharged from the Royal Navy and spending one cold winter back in his native England, Peter Fenton left for warmer climates and moved to Epo, Indonesia. There, he ran a tin mine until the 1945 revolution compelled him to leave. Fenton arrived in Sydney in 1947. He eventually married and had one child. In 1961, aged 37, Fenton decided he would build a boat and go sailing. He spent a year teaching himself about yacht design and started night school to learn welding, since he had decided to build his boat of steel for strength instead of wood as previously planned. (It would have been a schooner named Misty Isles). The renowned yacht designer Alan Payne commented that it was a "very hazardous undertaking to build of steel". On 23 January 1961, construction began in a rented lot below Sutherland Road in Paddington, New South Wales, which threatened to collapse on the almost finished yacht during torrential flooding in November of that year. 1963 maiden voyage 17 March 1962 saw Cythera launched between Timber Wharves 1 & 2 at Walsh Bay (The Rocks), and the next year was spent building steel masts for the ketch. On 31 March 1963, Fenton and his family, along with crew members Daniel Barrie and Derrick 'Ricky' Brewin and a journalist friend named Charlie Schriber, departed on the maiden voyage to Lord Howe Island en route to New Zealand. On the evening of 10 April, having arrived at Lord Howe Island on 7 April, all persons from Cythera were ashore for dinner. Barrie and Brewin left early, cut Cythera's anchor chains and sailed out of range of the local radar station. They headed for Rapa Iti and South America, where there were no extradition treaties at the time, lest they be apprehended, bringing a 5-gallon container of grey paint and several navigational charts. They renamed the vessel the Jenny 2 and, according to the logbook, "Took the yacht away from mooring. As lives were in jeopardy including the Captain's wife and daughter. It is assumed the captain [Fenton] is unbalanced. Our destination is unknown as yet". Marooned, and with nothing but what