Hell ship : the true story of the plague ship Ticonderoga, one of the most calamitous voyages in Australian history / Michael Veitch.
Publication details: Sydney, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2018.Description: 260 pages. 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some colour), portraits, facsimiles ; 24 cmISBN:- 9781760630843 (paperback)
- Ticonderoga (Clipper-ship)
- Portsea Quarantine Station -- History
- Ticonderoga (Clipper ship)
- 1800-1899
- Immigrants -- Health and hygiene
- Immigrants -- Health and hygiene -- Australia -- History
- Typhus fever -- Australia
- Emigration and immigration
- Immigrants
- Ocean travel
- Typhus fever
- Ships -- Health regulations
- British -- Australia
- Typhus fever
- Ocean travel -- History -- 19th century
- Immigrants -- Australia
- Australia
- Australia -- Emigration and immigration -- History -- 19th century
- 994.02 23
- RC199.4 V45 2018
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item reserves | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Melbourne Athenaeum Library | Non-Fiction | 994.02 VEI | Available | 068728 |
First published 2002.
Includes bibliographical references.
For more than a century and a half, a grim tale has passed down through Michael Veitch's family: the story of the Ticonderoga, a clipper ship that sailed from Liverpool in August 1852, crammed with poor but hopeful emigrants-mostly Scottish victims of the Clearances and the potato famine. A better life, they believed, awaited them in Australia. Three months later, a ghost ship crept into Port Phillip Bay flying the dreaded yellow flag of contagion. On her horrific three-month voyage, deadly typhus had erupted, killing a quarter of Ticonderoga's passengers and leaving many more desperately ill. Sharks, it was said, had followed her passage as the victims were buried at sea. Panic struck Melbourne. Forbidden to dock at the gold-boom town, the ship was directed to a lonely beach on the far tip of the Mornington Peninsula, a place now called Ticonderoga Bay. James William Henry Veitch was the ship's assistant surgeon, on his first appointment at sea. Among the volunteers who helped him tend to the sick and dying was a young woman from the island of Mull, Annie Morrison. What happened between them on that terrible voyage is a testament to human resilience, and to love.