By Michael Roe
From Baird Maritime:
Another fine work of maritime history from Tasmania's impressive Blubber Head Press.
This concerns the stranding of a British convict transport ship near the entrance to the D'Entrecasteaux Channel south of Hobart in Tasmania. There was an appalling death toll.
The "cargo" consisted of 220 convicts. Of those, 163 perished with the ship. Only six non-convicts died. This, remarkably, was the first of four strandings of ships loaded with convicts bound for the prison colony of Van Dieman's Land in a period of 16 months from April 1835.
Of course tragic, fatal ship strandings were nothing new in 1835 nor are they now. As the author points out, the disaster was largely the result of a combination of political neglect combined with bureaucratic arrogance, carelessness and malevolent cost cutting.
You could think that modern societies would learn from their historic failures. Unfortunately not. Too many modern politicians and, particularly, bureaucrats exhibit the same negative character traits as their predecessors of two centuries ago.
Ordering Information:
{ma id=0908528329}
