Books : Floating Brothel, The: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and Its Cargo of Female Convicts
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 365.6
EAN num: 9780786867875
ISBN number: 0786867876
Label: Hyperion
Manufacturer: Hyperion
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 256
Printing Date: March 06, 2002
Publishing house: Hyperion
Release Date: March 06, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 540199
Studio: Hyperion
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
A seafaring story with a twist -- the incredible voyage of a shipload of 'disorderly girls' and the men who transported them, fell for them, and sold them.
This riveting work of rediscovered history tells for the very first time the plight of the female convicts aboard the Lady Julian, which set sail from England in 1789 and arrived in Australia's Botany Bay a year later. The women, most of them petty criminals, were destined for New South Wales to provide its hordes of lonely men with sexual favors as well as progeny. But the story of their voyage is even more incredible, and here it is expertly told by a historian with roots in the boatbuilding business and a true love of the sea.
SiGn Rees delved into court documents and firsthand accounts to extract the stories of these women's experiences on board a ship that both held them prisoner and offered them refuge from their oppressive existence in London. At the heart of the story is the passionate relationship between Sarah Whitelam, a convict, and the ship's steward, John Nicol, whose personal journals provided much of the material for this book. Along the way, Rees brings the vibrant, bawdy world of London -- and the sights, smells, and sounds of an eighteenth-century ship -- vividly to life. In the tradition of Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, this is a winning combination of dramatic high seas adventure and untold history.
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Rated by buyers 
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Love, adventure and seafaring around the world. A little known but very real story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, at the time of the last great world discoveries. That the protagonists were often performing heroic feats against their will, as in the case of the deported prostitutes, makes the tale even more captivating. This was enjoyable reading, instructive history and made you feel like you were one of the crew!
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This was a wonderful book to read to get the facts on the Australian migration from England. I highly recommend it.
Rated by buyers -
This book was absolutely fascinating and Sian Rees did an exemplary job in bringing the time and events to life. Definitely worth adding to your library. On a side note, there is a 60 minute documentary now airing on "Secrets of the Dead" on PBS which tells the story of several contemporary Australian women doing research on their family histories. They discover that their multi-great-grandmothers were among those chronicled in this book. The episode, entitled "Voyage of the Courtesans" (2005), combines these women's searches with re-enactments and interviews with experts and Sian Rees herself. It is an excellent show to partner with an excellent book.
Rated by buyers -
Like most readers I was probably attracted by the title and cover of this book and I wasn't disappointed. After reading this true story its obvious that a person really doesn't want a return to the "Good Old Days." They weren't very good at all. This is how most people actually scratched their ways through life in those days. Men were hanged for minor infractions and women were often burned at the stake for the same tiny infraction. Being exiled to one of the colonies was a big improvement. However, getting to those far away colonies was dangerous and totally unpleasant from every standpoint. Those long ocean voyages on wooden sailing ships were terrible even in the best circumstances. There was nothing romantic about braving the elements on a ship where the entire vessel smelled like an open sewer all the time. There was nothing romantic about having to share your body with members of the crew. There was nothing romantic about being becalmed and suffering from starvation and all manner of shipboard illnesses. After finishing this book a person will have to catch their breath, wipe off the smelly sea water and readjust to living on land, and apprecaiting the wonderful benefits of this century. This is history as it really happened and much of it was absolutely brutal. It's an eye opening read and hard to put down until the last page is absorbed. Then the reader will want to seek out the memoir of Mariner John Nicol who provided the only first-hand record of this incredible journey. Much of this book was lifted from the published recollections he dictated to a helpful publisher when he was 60+ years old.
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Novel or not, this book should be suggested or required reading in any women's studies/history course. The description of the petty crimes for which women were convicted, and the circumstances under which they were convicted, followed by their punishment and survival mechanisms are both entertaining and thoughtprovoking. The settler mothers of Australia! I wonder how many people yesterday could trace their lineage back to these brave women!
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