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Hell Ship
- Narrated by: Michael Veitch
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
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Publisher's Summary
The riveting story of one of the most calamitous voyages in Australian history, the plague-stricken sailing ship Ticonderoga that left England for Victoria with 800 doomed emigrants on board.
For more than a century and a half, a grim tale has passed down through Michael Veitch’s family: the story of the Ticonderoga, a clipper ship that sailed from Liverpool in August 1852, crammed with poor but hopeful emigrants - mostly Scottish victims of the Clearances and the potato famine. A better life, they believed, awaited them in Australia.
Three months later, a ghost ship crept into Port Phillip Bay flying the dreaded yellow flag of contagion. On her horrific three-month voyage, deadly typhus had erupted, killing a quarter of Ticonderoga’s passengers and leaving many more desperately ill. Sharks, it was said, had followed her passage, as the victims were buried at sea.
Panic struck Melbourne. Forbidden to dock at the gold-boom town, the ship was directed to a lonely beach on the far tip of the Mornington Peninsula, a place now called Ticonderoga Bay.
James William Henry Veitch was the ship’s assistant surgeon, on his first appointment at sea. Among the volunteers who helped him tend to the sick and dying was a young woman from the island of Mull, Annie Morrison. What happened between them on that terrible voyage is a testament to human resilience and to love.
Michael Veitch is their great-great-grandson, and Hell Ship is his brilliantly researched narrative of one of the biggest stories of its day, now all but forgotten. Broader than his own family’s story, it brings to life the hardships and horrors endured by those who came by sea to seek a new life in Australia.
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What listeners say about Hell Ship
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Retired
- 11-04-18
Thought provoking.
Informative, well written and read. The never ending story of the journey for a better life and the difficulties faced. I really enjoyed this audio book.
1 person found this helpful
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- H E NORMAN
- 08-06-20
Worse things happen at sea.
I found this a riveting story. Well researched and delivered by the author. The unrelenting bleakness of the voyage and the dashed dreams of families looking for a better life will stay with me.
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- Frankzippa
- 06-02-19
A lesson in research and story telling
A well told incredible story and history lesson researched in the finest detail more than just the story of the ships journey.
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- Mary Carnegie
- 01-15-19
A harrowing true story from Scotland and Australia’s past.
The author narrates the voyage of his great-grandparents to Australia. The mid 19th century saw large numbers of Irish and Scots displaced from their ancestral lands, or driven by economic necessity to seek a new, very different life far from home. Ironically, sheep-farming, which had replaced humans in the Highlands, required new manpower in Australia, preferably family men who wouldn’t dart off in search of gold at Ballarat. So the powers-that-be organised population transfer to the other end of the earth for thousands. Veitch’s great grandfather was one of the two doctors on the nightmare voyage of the Ticonderoga, and his great grandmother a passenger.
Conditions on board were better than on a slave ship, but far from good enough to prevent the spread of disease on a nonstop journey from Birkenhead to Port Phillip. Most passengers were Scots, but I wasn’t surprised to learn that the English passengers got the best quarters, and the few Irish the worst!!
Even when the clipper reached Australia, the horror was not over; the yellow jack of quarantine was flying, so that disembarkment was not immediate. In spite of their tragic arrival, many survivors did establish a new life, and their descendants are numerous.
In the UK, history tends to have focused on emigration to North America, and I was glad to hear of this lesser known migration.
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Story
America's first frontier was not the West; it was the sea, and no one writes more eloquently about that watery wilderness than Nathaniel Philbrick. In his best-selling In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick probed the nightmarish dangers of the vast Pacific. Now, in an epic sea adventure, he writes about one of the most ambitious voyages of discovery the Western world has ever seen - the US Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842.
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A good solid voyage of discovery
- By Ken Sundermeyer on 06-18-05
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Farther Than Any Man
- The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the annals of seafaring and exploration, there is one name that immediately evokes visions of the open ocean, billowing sails, visiting strange, exotic lands previously uncharted, and civilizations never before encountered - Captain James Cook. Full of realistic action, lush descriptions of places and events, and fascinating historical characters such as King George III and the soon-to-be-notorious Master William Bligh, Dugard's gripping account of the life and death of Captain James Cook is a thrilling story of a discoverer hell-bent on going farther than any man.
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Sloppy History
- By Kyle P. Dalton on 04-06-18
By: Martin Dugard
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A Commonwealth of Thieves
- The Improbable Birth of Australia
- By: Thomas Keneally
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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It was 1786 when Arthur Phillip, an ambitious captain in the Royal Navy, was assigned the formidable task of organizing an expedition to Australia in order to establish a penal colony. With the authority of a renowned historian and the narrative grace of a brilliant novelist, Thomas Keneally offers an insider's perspective into the dramatic saga of the birth of a vibrant society in an unfamiliar land.
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Interesting tidbits, but slow overall
- By Dan on 08-23-07
By: Thomas Keneally
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Island of the Blue Foxes
- Disaster and Triumph on the World's Greatest Scientific Expedition
- By: Stephen R. Bown
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of the world's largest, longest, and best-financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told. The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue.
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Vivid History of Russia's First Contact In Alaska
- By Neil Ring on 09-01-18
By: Stephen R. Bown
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Batavia's Graveyard
- The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny
- By: Mike Dash
- Narrated by: Guy Bethell
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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It was the autumn of 1628, and the Batavia, the Dutch East India Company's flagship, was loaded with a king's ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java. The Batavia was the pride of the company's fleet, a tangible symbol of the world's richest and most powerful commercial monopoly. She set sail with great fanfare, but the Batavia and her gold would never reach Java.
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Perhaps the best book ever
- By Ray928 on 03-12-19
By: Mike Dash
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The Great Race
- The Race Between the English and the French to Complete the Map of Australia
- By: David Hill
- Narrated by: Paul English
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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On the afternoon of 8 April 1802, in the remote southern ocean, two explorers had a remarkable chance encounter. Englishman Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicolas Baudin had been sent by their governments on the same quest: to explore the uncharted coast of the great south land and find out whether the west and east coasts, four thousand kilometres apart, were part of the same island. And so began the race to compile the definitive map of Australia.
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The Story of Australia that I Never Knew
- By MarkH on 04-05-13
By: David Hill
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Adrift
- A True Story of Tragedy on the Icy Atlantic and the One Who Lived to Tell About It
- By: Brian Murphy, Toula Vlahou
- Narrated by: Dan Warren
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months of 1856 carried mail, crates of dry goods, and more than 100 passengers, mostly Irish emigrants. Suddenly, an iceberg tore the ship asunder, and five lifeboats were lowered. As four lifeboats drifted into the fog and icy water, never to be heard from again, the last boat wrenched away from the sinking ship with a few blankets, some water and biscuits, and 13 souls. Only one would survive. This is his story.
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Engrossing
- By Trish on 04-20-22
By: Brian Murphy, and others
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Barons of the Sea
- By: Steven Ujifusa
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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When the United States was young, importing luxury goods from China was a secretive, glamorous, often brutal business - one where teas and silks and porcelain were purchased with profits from the opium trade. But the journey by sea to New York from Canton could take six agonizing months, and so the most pressing technological challenge of the day became ensuring one’s goods arrived first to market. Barons of the Sea tells the story of a handful of cutthroat competitors who raced to build the fastest, finest, most profitable clipper ships to carry their precious cargo to American shores.
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Lost at sea
- By Steve on 07-24-18
By: Steven Ujifusa
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Last Train to Paradise
- Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean
- By: Les Standiford
- Narrated by: Del Roy
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The paths of the great American robber barons were paved with riches, and though ordinary citizens paid for them, they also profited. Les Standiford, author of the John Deal thrillers, tells how the man who turned Florida's swamps into the playgrounds of the rich performed the almost superhuman feat of building a railroad from the mainland to Key West at the turn of the century.
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A Pleasant Surprise
- By Roy on 04-05-09
By: Les Standiford
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In the Kingdom of Ice
- The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette
- By: Hampton Sides
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late nineteenth century, people were obsessed by one of the last unmapped areas of the globe: The North Pole. No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans. On July 8, 1879, the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco to cheering crowds in the grip of "Arctic Fever." The ship sailed into uncharted seas, but soon was trapped in pack ice. Two years into the harrowing voyage, the hull was breached. Amid the rush of water and the shrieks of breaking wooden boards, the crew abandoned the ship.
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Superb tale that unravels at an iceburg's pace
- By Mel on 03-19-15
By: Hampton Sides
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The Man Who Ate His Boots
- The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
- By: Anthony Brandt
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of 19th-century British exploration. After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the 16th century: Find the fabled Northwest Passage, a shortcut to the Orient via a sea route over Northern Canada. For the next 35 years the British Admiralty sent out expedition after expedition to probe the ice-bound waters of the Canadian Arctic in search of a route.
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They don't get any better than this
- By Christopher on 08-15-14
By: Anthony Brandt
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Simple Courage
- The True Story of Peril on the Sea
- By: Frank Delaney
- Narrated by: Frank Delaney
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on historical documents and contemporary accounts and on exclusive interviews with Carlsen's family, Delaney opens a window into the world of the merchant marine. With deep affection, and respect, for the weather and all that goes with it, he places us in the heart of the storm, a "biblical tempest" of unimaginable power. He illuminates the bravery and ingenuity of Carlsen and the extraordinary courage that the 37-year-old captain inspired in his stalwart crew.
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Well written and read
- By AMS on 03-03-08
By: Frank Delaney
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The Graves Are Walking
- The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People
- By: John Kelly
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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It started in 1845 and lasted six years. Before it was over, more than one million men, women, and children starved to death and another million fled the country. Measured in terms of mortality, the Great Irish Potato Famine was one of the worst disasters in the 19th century-it claimed twice as many lives as the American Civil War. A perfect storm of bacterial infection, political greed, and religious intolerance sparked this catastrophe.
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Unforgettable, Haunting, and a Compelling Warning
- By Carole T. on 08-22-12
By: John Kelly