Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Peter Grose, Allen & Unwin, $29.99.
This is an unlikely story of convict schemers, a stolen brig and a daring plan for escape from Van Diemen’s Land to Chile. It also tells of a band of convicts and a scoundrel by the name of Jimmy Porter.
This is a derring-do tale moving from the grim docks of 19th century London to the even grimmer shores of brutal penal colony of Norfolk Island. Grose brings to irresistible life a rollercoaster tale … the story of a small band of convicts who managed to escape the living hell of the Tasmanian penal colony of Sarah Island. They did that by stealing a leaky and untested brig they had helped to build and sailing across the Pacific to Chile with neither a map nor a chronometer.
It has everything: defiance of authority, treachery, piracy and mutiny, escape from the hangman’s noose and even love. Peopled with good men, buffoons, incompetents and larrikin convicts of the highest order, Ten Rogues is an unexpected and wickedly entertaining story from the great annals of Australia’s colonial history.
The story, however, doesn’t end there…with connections between the slave trade and convict ‘transportation’, Ten Rogues shines a light into some dark and previously well-hidden corners of colonial history.
It’s obvious: there is the lightness of touch of the master storyteller that he is.
Journalist, literary agent, publishing director and author of history books, Gross is a ‘fabulous raconteur’.
