The greatest escape story of Van Diemen's Land's colonial history by the son of Australia’s best-loved storyteller.
In 1823, cockney sailor and chancer James Porter was convicted of stealing a stack of beaver furs and transported to Van Diemen's Land. After several escape attempts, Porter, who told authorities he was a 'beer-machine maker', was sent to Macquarie Harbour, known in Van Diemen's Land as hell on earth.
When Governor George Arthur announced that the Macquarie Harbour prison would be closed and its prisoners moved to the new penal station of Port Arthur, Porter, along with a motley crew of other prisoners, pulled off an audacious escape. Wresting control of the ship they'd been building to transport them to their fresh hell, the escapees instead sailed all the way to Chile.
What happened next is stranger than fiction, a fitting outcome for this true-life picaresque tale.
Published: 2018
Format: softcover
Pages: 323 |
