Caliban's Shore: The Wreck of the Grosvenor and the Strange Fate of Her Survivors

Rating:
Summary: A poignant story, beautifully told
Review: I think the previous reviewer mistakes necessary context for annoying asides. Far from a chore to read, this gripping book is full of drama, pathos, intrigue, and the damning hubris of a period (18th-Century) of imperial arrogance.

Cast ashore in Pondoland, the survivors of the Grosvenor were presented with many opportunities for salvation, in the shape of the tractable and far-from-savage Xhosa and Pondo peoples they encountered. But under the blundering and self-serving leadership of Cat. Coxon and, the author suggests, the malign and racist influence of some of the East India Co. "gentlemen" who were the Grosvenor's VIP passengers, the 150-strong band of survivors were torn apart by fear, indecision, cowardice, and greed. The most vulnerable among them....the "ladies,"--one of whom, Lydia Logie, was heavily pregnant-- the elderly and several young children were abandoned to their fates. The remainder of the crew struggled 400 miles to the nearest european settlement, dying in ones and two of starvation, exhaustion, and disease. Just a handful of them survived.

That anyone survived is a remarkable testament to the fortitude and courage of those who labored at the bottom of the social heirarchy in 18th-Century England and its imperial outposts. That so many died is an indictment of the culture of the elite classes whose rigid intellectual and emotional armor collapsed in the face of alien circumstance.

This book is engaging, intelligent, and wide in scope, and the unanswered questions regarding the fate of some of the women, including Lydia Logie, is masterfully drawn.

I recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Shipwreck with Little Heroism
Review: In 1782, the 741-ton, three-masted square-rigger _Grosvenor_ was wrecked on the inhospitable shore of southeast Africa. One hundred and forty people were on board, and most of them survived the wreck. "What they had feared was shipwreck and death. Shipwreck and survival was not a possibility that anyone had much considered." So writes Stephen Taylor in _Caliban's Shore: The Wreck of the Grosvenor and the Strange Fate of Her Survivors_ (Norton). Unique among shipwrecks, this one had survivors from a broad spectrum of British society, cast upon a shore about which all were ignorant. Taylor's gripping story is fragmented; there are large gaps which no one will be able to fill. Readers will find intelligent speculation to get them through these gaps; Taylor's research includes digging into the old records of the British Museum and academic resources within South Africa (where he grew up), as well as traversing the lands where the survivors trekked after being cast ashore. It is a gripping story full of period details and human suffering, ingenuity, and greed.

The _Grosvenor_ was about to make its usual run to England for the British East India Company, and was hastily joined by William Hosea, a colonial aristocrat with his family. He was also traveling with a bag of diamonds that would have easily been turned into cash when he got back home. There were around seventeen other folk of his class making the trip, which would have taken several months; they would have insisted on plenty of food, even if the quality could not be sustained, and there was 2,700 gallons of wine aboard. For his costly passage, Hosea had directly paid the captain of the vessel, John Coxon who was better at commerce than seamanship. During the night of 4 August, some of the sailors were alarmed by what seemed to be lights on shore, but Coxon insisted that land was 300 miles to the East. When the ship foundered, 126 survivors came on land. Coxon was not the man to provide leadership, and the survivors split up, with groups forming and reforming, and generally leaving the weakest and wounded behind. They had to face impassable rivers, precipitous cliffs, starvation, and disease. It was a grueling, distressing story for almost all. 106 perished. The public was greatly interested in the wreck and its outcome, and took an especially prurient interest in the seven women who were lost; they were, in a phrase of the time, "doomed to worse than death among the natives."

The wreck has had surprising repercussions in the last century. In 1925, a drifter named Bock found a bright stone 150 miles south of where the wreck had occurred; it was a diamond, and he eventually accumulated over a thousand of them. He sold mining concessions, but no one else found anything. He was accused of "salting" the diamonds, fraudulently planting them to mislead others, and found guilty. The diamonds, however, are not the type from African mines, but are just the type Hosea would have been carrying. Bock's descendants are trying to clear his name, and gain recompense for loss of the treasure, which has disappeared. The _Grosvenor_ was well laden with goods, but because of its notoriety, folklore made it into a treasure ship. Over many years, different investment schemes, like the _Grosvenor_ Bullion Syndicate, have proposed diving for the treasure, and some have actually brought in the hardware to do so. Only failure and ruin came of such efforts, marked, as Taylor says, by breathtaking audacity and an astonishing willingness to be gulled. The _Grosvenor_ sank over two centuries ago, but the ship of fools sails on.


Rating:
Summary: A great story lost on wordy writer...
Review: The story of this shipwreck is truly fascinating and adventurous, however I was continually annoyed with the writers focus, direction, and superfluous diction. This true story could have been told in a much simpler fashion, ultimately making it so much more interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Good story, bad storytelling
Review: This book could have been less than 100 pages and be very good. The author throws in numerous side stories that have little relevance to the Grosvenor. It really detracts from the flow of the story. Very annoying, a chore to read.

Rating:
Summary: Survival and Seafaring
Review: Women and children first was not a concept of the East India Company ships during the last 1700s, as is amply exemplified by Stephen Taylor's Caliban's Shore. The story of the shipwreck and fight for survival (mostly unsuccessful) of the Grosvenor's castaways is a harrowing one, particularly as told in Taylor's account. The reader will also learn bits of colonial India history, early shipping, African exploration, and tribal relations sprinkled throughout the main narrative and the different elements are wonderfully captured and made whole. The author makes the curiously complicated flight for survival, as the one group drifts into several different evolving combinations heading toward such varied fates, more straightforward than it would at first seem, which is a relief. One of the highlights of the book, though, is its look at those survivors who remained in Africa, as well as those who only possibly may have lived on in Africa. It is a wonderful adventure story providing a fascinating glimpse into history.