The Wreck of the Neva – The Horrifying Fate of a Convict Ship and the Irish Women Aboard | Cal McCarthy & Kevin Todd | 2024 [NEW – HCDJ]

On 8 January 1835 the Neva sailed from Cork carrying 241 people — mostly Irish women convicts and the wives and children of convicts already transported, travelling to join their families in New South Wales.

On 13 May 1835 the ship struck a reef just north of King Island in Bass Strait and sank. Of the 241 aboard, 224 drowned — one of the worst convict ship disasters in Australian history. Only 15 women survived, along with two children. The women who drowned were mainly from County Clare, County Cork and County Galway, convicted of minor offences — theft, vagrancy, petty crime — and transported for terms of seven years or life to a country they would never reach.

Cal McCarthy and Kevin Todd trace the individual women aboard — who they were, where they came from, what brought them to transportation — giving faces and names to those who drowned.

BOOK DETAILS

• Hardcover with dust jacket.
• 217 pages.
• Published 2024.

CONDITION

New.

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