About the book
On the night of 20 August 1857 the clipper Dunbar, inbound from Plymouth with passengers and cargo at the end of an eighty-one-day passage, mistook her position in a southerly gale and was driven onto the cliffs just south of the entrance to Sydney Harbour. Of the 122 people aboard one survived, the seaman James Johnson, who clung to a ledge for a day and a half before he was seen.
Writer follows the ship, her passengers and the colony that waited for them, the public mourning that followed, and the inquiry that led to the Hornby Light on South Head. Many of the dead were Sydney residents returning from England, which is why the wreck is remembered as the disaster that "broke the colony's heart".
Notes
To come.