The Caliban Shore: The Fate of the Grosvenor Castaways
Contents:
He recalls stories that some of the surviving women were incorporated into the local tribes. Here, he has to deal with legend more than facts, but Taylor does a good job of trying to present an accurate account of what may have occurred. Good descriptions of many of the individuals in the story are well-drawn.
It is a very thorough and approachable book, and I really couldn't put it down. Stephen Taylor's excellent grasp of the English language was a little difficult to wade through. The first part of the book chronicles the Grosvenor's journey from India and subsequent wreck off the southeastern shore of Africa in the 's. The sheer number of passengers made it hard to follow as characters are concerned. The second part attempts to piece together what became of the survivors and the third part relies on the first two parts to retell the story through court documents after an Stephen Taylor's excellent grasp of the English language was a little difficult to wade through.
The second part attempts to piece together what became of the survivors and the third part relies on the first two parts to retell the story through court documents after an investigation was conducted. So by that time you've read it all before. I quickly got bored and didn't finish the last 30 pages. May 26, Mike rated it really liked it Shelves: The tale of an East India Company shipwreck on the south east coast of what is now South Africa, Caliban's Shore is a beautifully written history that reads at times like a thriller.
The research, though limited by the scant availability of sources, is exhaustive, and Taylor's story telling whips along at a pace one would not expect from such a subject. It seemed at some points that certain characters had been forgotten, but back they came to surprise me and complete a very good account of a fas The tale of an East India Company shipwreck on the south east coast of what is now South Africa, Caliban's Shore is a beautifully written history that reads at times like a thriller.
It seemed at some points that certain characters had been forgotten, but back they came to surprise me and complete a very good account of a fascinating tragedy.
Feb 04, Fredrick Danysh rated it liked it Shelves: In the East Indiaman of tons was sailing the India Ocean off the southern coast of Africa when she encountered a storm and sank. This is the story leading up to the tragedy and of the struggle of the survivors to reach civilization. It gives an insight to conditions in Africa during the Eighteenth Century as well what occurs in a struggle to survive a disaster in a hostile environment. It was easy to read and I found it interesting. Jul 07, Joanne Annabannabobanna rated it really liked it Recommends it for: True Adventure, historical-non fiction.
Entirely riveting - could not put it down. Huge fan of this sort of lit. Although I read it a couple of years ago I can easily bring to mind vivid details of this incredible true story. Rates up there with "In the Heart of the Sea" by Nathaniel Philbrick for its descriptive, nail-biting account. The story starts in India as passengers and crew make preparations to leave the country and return to England — some having made their fortunes, some under a cloud, and others in an unseemly hurry.
In an East India Company ship ran aground on the eastern coast of South Africa. The Grosvenor was halfway home to England from India. The Caliban Shore: The Fate of the Grosvenor Castaways Paperback – May 31, The Grosvenor was one of the finest East Indiamen of her day, but she ran aground on the treacherous coast of south-east Africa. Stephen Taylor's THE CALIBAN SHORE is the story of shipwreck and the.
We follow the trail of events that lead to the Grosvenor sticking the rocks at on the shores of the Wild Coast, and the miraculous escape of passengers and crew out of , including women one heavily pregnant and children, the youngest only a toddler. After a few days taking stock, most of the men abandon the women and all but one of the children to their fate, and head for what they wrongly believe to be the nearest European settlement, nearly miles south.
Constantly splitting, re-grouping, and splitting again, they struggle against exposure, malnutrition, and disease, not to mention the intrusively curious and sometimes aggressive locals. Three months later, the first survivors reach safety, but even after two rescue missions, only eighteen survivors made it home.
The Wreck of the Grosvenor and the Strange Fate of Her Survivors
Written with wonderful attention to detail, and obviously supported by thorough research, in The Caliban Shore , Stephen Taylor has produced a gripping story, and one I found hard to put down. I loved this book! Taylor writes fluidly and his detail is what grabbed me from the start. Obviously he researched his subject well, not only the lives of those who were shipwrecked which he follows from start to finish, but also, more generally, the details of sailing at the time: I gained far m I loved this book!
I gained far more than the story of the Grosvenor castaways. Instead the book extended my knowledge of what was required to sail in those days. How hard it was to get crew, how many died horrifying , how many different nationalities among the crew members and so on. Then the story of the survival trek.
I see no land
Mar 25, Phil rated it liked it Shelves: As tragic a ship wreck is hat's off to Stephen Taylor in making Grosvenor and it's crew and passengers come to life. This is not a fluid read, somewhat confusing at times compared to other readings on shipwrecks. India to Africa to Great Britan was the background just at times overwhelmed with too many characters in a story line that lacked transgression and fluidly to keep a readers interest at heart.
Sep 09, Bish Denham rated it really liked it Shelves: The author obviously did a great deal of research to relate this sad tale of a shipwreck gone terrible wrong. This is not a heroic story, like that of Shackleton and the crew of The Endurance. My only problem with it is that I had a hard time keeping the names straight, who was who, particularly when he got into the names of African people and tribes but that's because I'm so unfamiliar with the languages. Overall a satisfying read. Had the potential to be interesting, but never quite delivers.
Whilst I appreciate the researches were not able to establish all the details of the events, the writing was a bit dry.
I must admit that I skip read the second half. Oct 03, Peter Staadecker rated it liked it. Very thoroughly researched, but the huge cast of characters and the very long timelines - including the background prior to the voyage, during the voyage, during the wreck, the descendants, the subsequent treasure hunt scams etc - lost my interest at times.
A thoroughly researched and very well-written account of what happened to a group of castaways after their ship was wrecked off the coast of South Africa in Nov 11, Nicole rated it really liked it. I really enjoyed this book, a real non-fiction page-turner. It's the true and brutally interesting story of an English shipwreck on African shores in the late 18th-century.
Almost everyone survives the impact, but things go south quickly after that for a variety of reasons, some of which class divisions, utter ignorance of Africa are particularly Colonial and some of which poor morale in the ranks, unqualified idiots in leadership positions are timeless.
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I confess to having an affinity for a I really enjoyed this book, a real non-fiction page-turner. I confess to having an affinity for a good shipwreck story, but there's a lot else going on as well.
In the event, the party fell apart, the crew abandoning the passengers, then, in a disgraceful scramble, the captain and his officers deserting the ladies. Sep 06, Paul rated it liked it. Stephen Taylor has done a remarkable job in piecing together the various elements and relating them with the control of a natural story-teller. This book tells the true story of a ship that was wrecked off the coast of South Africa in the 's. Jan 12, Roger Boyle rated it it was amazing. He is an excellent writer with a concise style that was never too erudite or long-winded. They were officers and men of the ship's crew as well as a range of passengers, men, women and children.
You'll learn a lot about Colonial India, the lives of sailors and merchants of the time, and East Africa at the beginning of European contact. If anything, the author tries to cram too much in, telling us way too much about people who aren't major players in the story, and devoting a whole chapter to the survivors of another, unrelated shipwreck in roughly the same area. Still, I'll take too much information over cursory story-telling any day.
This is a very interesting and clearly exhaustively researched book. Jun 09, Todd Stockslager rated it liked it Shelves: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew, which I rated 4 stars , this one suffers a bit not so much from the quality of the writing but from the paucity of documentation surrounding the wreck and the fate of its survivors. The sad thing is that the remoteness of the Southeast African coast at the time of the wreck, along with bad political blood between England the ships hom The second in a series of true-life shipwreck stories I have read see Brian Hicks' Ghost Ship: The sad thing is that the remoteness of the Southeast African coast at the time of the wreck, along with bad political blood between England the ships home company and the Netherlands Capetown's home company , made searching for the survivors only a sometime thing delayed by several years!
In fact, while 13 out of on board made it out of Africa, it appears that at least some survived and lived on with the African peoples there. Again, proof positive is frustratingly just out of reach. Jun 28, Jeanne rated it it was ok. This book tells the true story of a ship that was wrecked off the coast of South Africa in the 's.
It tells the story of a series of passengers, from the crew, captain, maids, servants, to high society passengers. I found it a bit difficult to follow at many points, as the author would step back to tell the back story of several passengers before following what happened to them after the wreck. This book was highly recommended to me by a friend from South Africa, but I did not find it to be This book tells the true story of a ship that was wrecked off the coast of South Africa in the 's. This book was highly recommended to me by a friend from South Africa, but I did not find it to be all that great of a read.
If you're into maritime stories, stories of Africa or India in the 's, you might find it more compelling than I did. For 18th Century British colonists traveling back and forth between India and the mother country, Africa was the equivalent of what is today known as "flyover country. And if your ship crashed against the African shore, which would happen from time to time, you were stuck, possibly forever, in this unknown land. This is the story of one such ship, as related by a South African author.
A little too much sp For 18th Century British colonists traveling back and forth between India and the mother country, Africa was the equivalent of what is today known as "flyover country. A little too much speculation, although it was probably necessary, but a fascinating story, not only of the castaways but of the natives that they encountered. As miserable as it can be to travel in the 21st Century, this book reminds us of how easy we have it compared to the way it used to be. Dec 04, Stacy rated it really liked it. This was one of my books that slipped through the system. I read it but forgot to write a review.
This is what happens when I get too far behind. A fascinating true story about a shipwreck that occured in the 's to mostly British citizens returning from India. The writing is based on several survivors' journals and newspaper interviews. From time to time the writing got a little bogged down in conjecture. I'm sure it's very difficult to write on an event that occured over two hundred years a This was one of my books that slipped through the system.
I'm sure it's very difficult to write on an event that occured over two hundred years ago. It always makes me think about what I would have done in similar circumstances. I shudder to think A lengthy historical journal on the wreck of the Grosvenor and the individual stories of the shipwrecked crew and passengers as they deal with a strange environment that most haven't experienced before.
Some survive, the majority do not, some disappear never to be heard of again whilst others seem to have integrated into the local's customs and traditions. The wreck becomes infamous and stays in the public's mindset for many years prompting many efforts to prove some of the unknowns of the wreck A lengthy historical journal on the wreck of the Grosvenor and the individual stories of the shipwrecked crew and passengers as they deal with a strange environment that most haven't experienced before.
The wreck becomes infamous and stays in the public's mindset for many years prompting many efforts to prove some of the unknowns of the wrecked ship. This was a fascinating read. I'd never heard of this ship wreck which happened on the coast of Africa in The book not only covers the sinking of the ship and the fate of the survivors, but it also tells you a lot about their lives and the times they lived in.
Some reviewers have called this a drawback, but it was all very interesting to me. It is detailed without being too long. If you like historical tales, this is a good one. Jan 12, Roger Boyle rated it it was amazing.
It may help if you like boats, but this story is terrifically well told and reconstructs beautifully what it was probably like to be on a ship in , and to be wrecked on the African coast. A masterful piece of research and re-telling. I hope very much that Taylor found no need to embellish any of what is a fantastic story - I doubt he did.
Sep 01, Ray Parish rated it really liked it. On the night of the 3rd, fires were seen, then a huge landmass to starboard. The second mate altered course, but was overruled by Coxon, who was convinced he was miles out at sea. After hours of uncertainty, 34 passengers, including 11 servants, and 91 crew reached shore. The castaways had various options. They could stay put until a rescue party managed to reach them. They could split into small parties, each proceeding at its own pace and living off what food they could barter.
They could head north to Delagoa Bay, as the Africans advised them to do. At Coxon's insistence, they headed south en masse - the worst possible choice. The coastline, with forests and estuaries and the desert of Algoa Bay, was all but impassable. Their number made them appear dangerous, though they had salvaged no gunpowder from the wreck and had no means of defence.
They had been shipwrecked in the famine season before the rains, when only small amounts of food were available. Taylor remarks at one point that the Grosvenor story is "singularly devoid of heroes" and more akin to "an especially black farce". In the event, the party fell apart, the crew abandoning the passengers, then, in a disgraceful scramble, the captain and his officers deserting the ladies. Fifteen of the crew, including eight lascars, completed the journey south.
For decades afterwards, rumours persisted that Lydia Logie and perhaps Mary Hosea had survived as wives in an African kraal. Taylor tracks these rumours down to an unidentified survivor of a different wreck who became the matriarch of the amaTshomane or "seafaring" people. For the rest, his tale is of death. This is strong stuff and, for the most part, he organises it well. He is very good on technical details, such as navigation and the state of geographical knowledge, excellent on landscape, and his narrative is well constructed. He has walked much of the area of the shipwreck himself, and he keeps coherent track of the different parties of survivors as they split from each other and occasionally reunite.
My chief complaint is that he won't let the facts tell their own story. This is a book that would be rather more readable if Taylor weren't labouring so hard to make it so. William Hosea was apparently "slinking away" from India in "blind panic" and "like a thief in the night". But having prepared us for dramatic revelations, Taylor has no more to report than the suspicions that inevitably gathered round an official who made too much money in too short a time. Of the ex-soldier John Bryan, who opted on the day of the wreck to join the Pondo people, all the oral testimony can tell us is that he became a blacksmith, married a girl called Sipho, had two children by her, but lost her and the second child to a raiding party some years later.