Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant

In 1866 the three-masted General Grant leaves Melbourne for London by the far southern route, its returning miners carrying their gold sewn into clothes and hidden in pockets. In fog and at night the ship runs into the sheer rock of the Auckland Islands and is lost. Fifteen people get ashore, among them Mary Ann Jewell, the new wife of Joseph, a seaman and miner. Stranded on bleak, windswept land, the survivors must cooperate to live, with almost no food or tools and an officer broken by grief for the wife he lost in the wreck. Mrs Jewell narrates, eyeing every man with caution: some can be relied on, others see a female castaway as a liability or a curse. All the while, tales of the gold, who holds it and how much the sea swallowed, keep growing.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

326 pages in the original

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

New Zealand, 1866

First published

2022 by The Cuba Press

ISBN

9781988595559 (The Cuba Press, New Zealand)