Joan Druett

It was not just the men who lived on the brink of peril under sail at sea. Lucretia Jansz, who was enslaved as a concubine in 1629, was just one woman who endured a castaway experience. Award-winning historian Joan Druett (Island of the Lost, Tupaia, The Discovery of Tahiti) relates the stories of women who survived remarkable challenges, from heroines like Mary-Ann Jewell, the 'governness' of a sub-Antarctic island, to Millie Jenkins, whose ship was sunk by a whale.MORE TALES OF SHIPWRECK AND SURVIVAL FROM THE AUTHOR OF ISLAND OF THE LOSTPraise for Island of the Lost. "A riveting study of the extremes of human nature and the effects of good (and bad) leadership." --FLORENCE WILLIAMS, New York Times "Depicted with consistent brio, stormy seas become epic events." --Publishers Weekly "The finest survival stories combine struggle and endurance with an intellectual puzzle. Cast onto a wild island, what would one do? ... This is one of the finest survival stories I've read." --BRUCE RAMSEY, Seattle Times "Druett's well-researched account earns its place in any good collection of survival iterature." --WOOK KIM, Entertainment Weekly

Harold Pcderson's discovery ships are in trouble. Specializing in exploring remote estuaries and photographing endangered wildlife in South East Asia and the western Pacific, his fleet ventures into waters that are rife with pirates.When Jerry Giacomo is hired by Pederson to make his ships look bullet-proof, he finds that the situation is even more precarious than expected. The Jihadist breakaway group Abu Sayyaf is operating in the South China Sea, and their brutality is notorious, with filmed beheadings as well as outrageous ransom demands. Because of the threat the terrorists present, Storm Swept, with all the Bacchantes on board, is requisitioned by the British navy, to take part in an exercise up a remote river in Borneo, where the pirates have their lair.At the same time, Helen Pederson is trapped in a remote village in Mexico, being blackmailed by her first husband. When she mnages to confide her dilemma to Jerry and Skye, the Bacchantes are forced to face yet another great challenge. The paternity of the girls has been brought into question yet again. And the answer could be fatal.

A raging hurricane. A tiny fishing village in a distant land. A London nightclub dancer stumbles into the local clinic with the famous fire-fighter who carried her to New Zealand. The wife of an American shipping tycoon is on board his new luxury yacht as it battles the storm to reach the village. The young wife of a wine-maker struggles through mud, wind and rain to call for help, as her husband has been mortally hurt. All three women are in labor.All three women give birth to baby girls. The clinic is destroyed by the storm, so no records survive. No one knows which baby belongs to which mother.Twenty-one years later, the American billionaire kidnaps all three young women, along with the men who were there when they were born, and takes them to sea on his yacht, convinced that his wife claimed the wrong baby. He is determined to find which girl is really his daughter.But the mega-yacht is old, and breaks down easily. As the strange voyage progresses through tropical Polynesia to New Zealand, crisis after crisis overtakes them. They are being stalked by something malign. Storms arrive and the engines give out. Reefs and shoals threaten. There's not just a question of identity at stake, but of survival, too.

Tupaia sailed with Captain Cook from Tahiti, piloted the Endeavour about the South Pacific, and was the ship's translator. Lauded by Europeans as an "extraordinary genius," Tupaia was a star navigator, a brilliant orator, and a most devious politician. Being highly skilled in astronomy, navigation and meteorology, and an expert in the geography of the Pacific, he was able to name directional stars and predict landfalls and weather throughout the voyage from Tahiti to Java.Though, like all Polynesians, he had no previous knowledge of writing or map-making, Tupaia drew a chart of the Pacific that encompassed every major group in Polynesia and extended more than 2500 miles from the Marquesas to Rotuma and Fiji.Tupaia also became one of the ship's most important artists, drawing lively pictures to illustrate what he described, and he could justly be called the Pacific's first anthropologist. Despite all these amazing accomplishments, however, Tupaia has never been part of the popular Captain Cook legend. In Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator, Joan Druett restores this extraordinary genius to his rightful place in history.WINNER OF THE NEW ZEALAND POST GENERAL NON-FICTION AWARD

Romance and the islands have gone hand-in-hand since the bare-breasted young women of Tahiti gave a rousing welcome to the 18th-century European adventurers who discovered the island. It was not just a tropical port of call that Captain Wallis and his men found, but their tales of golden girls and a majestic island queen became a foundation stone of the Romantic Movement, an enduring inspiration for writers, artists, filmmakers ... mutineers.Joan Druett follows up her prize-winning biography of the remarkable priestly navigator, Tupaia, by bringing this extraordinary story to life.

“Riveting.” —The New York Times Book Review Hundreds of miles from civilization, two ships wreck on opposite ends of the same deserted island in this true story of human nature at its best—and at its worst. It is 1864, and Captain Thomas Musgrave’s schooner, the Grafton, has just wrecked on Auckland Island, a forbidding piece of land 285 miles south of New Zealand. Battered by year-round freezing rain and constant winds, it is one of the most inhospitable places on earth. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death. Incredibly, at the same time on the opposite end of the island, another ship runs aground during a storm. Separated by only twenty miles and the island’s treacherous, impassable cliffs, the crews of the Grafton and the Invercauld face the same fate. And yet where the Invercauld’s crew turns inward on itself, fighting, starving, and even turning to cannibalism, Musgrave’s crew bands together to build a cabin and a forge—and eventually, to find a way to escape. Using the survivors’ journals and historical records, award-winning maritime historian Joan Druett brings to life this extraordinary untold story about leadership and the fine line between order and chaos.

Like a phantom dogging Harriet Gray's trail, Frank Sefton is polished, charming-and utterly ruthless. Once, he abandoned the actress to a miserable fate on the far-flung shores of New Zealand. Now, he is back in her life-full of devious schemes to rob and mortify her, far from the protection of Captain Jake Dexter, and his gold-seeking crew. The continuing story of a resourceful young woman making her way under difficult conditions in a dangerous world both at sea and ashore, and her convoluted love affair with Jake Dexter, entrepreneur, treasure-hunter, and pirate. Well told, with interesting detail and appealing characters - Preview Expertly recreates the dizzying days of the California gold rush, where fortunes could be made and lost in the span of a day ... an exhilarating voyage not soon to be forgotten - Cindy Vallar, Pirates and Privateers

As she stood on the deck of the brig Gosling, Harriet Gray was forced to face an unhappy truth. She had been duped, yet again. At eighteen, the lovely English actress had already known more than her share of betrayal. And now, a dishonest shipmaster had stranded her on board a ship that was manned by a lusty, treasure-hunting crew, with a pirate captain whose dangerous smile barely concealed his fury. And whose quest for the dark secret of Judas Island was about to unveil an ancient tragedy...

That the Gosling Company should become a theatrical company was a preposterous idea - as crazy as the actual fact that Captain Jake Dexter, once a respectable Yankee mariner, was now an infamous pirate. Yet, he had already travelled such a long, strange path as a fortune-hunting adventurer that metamorphosing into the manager of the first theatre in Sacramento, California, was just another step. But Jake Dexter could never imagine the danger that this would involve for his actress, Harriet Gray, or that his own life would be so threatened. The nail-biting climax to Jake's hunt for treasure ... and Harriet's search for true love.

This cross-continental journey had proved very pleasant, particularly considering that he was dead. Or so Timothy ironically mused... The year is 1905, and the heyday of Thames, in the goldfields of New Zealand. Back in 1867, Captain Jake Dexter, a flamboyant adventurer and pirate, and his mistress, the actress Harriet Gray, invested the fortune they made during the gold rushes of California and Australia in a theatre and hotel called the Golden Goose, which has become an internationally acclaimed tourist venue, famous for its Murder Mystery Weekends. Guests gather, and a fake murder is staged, and it is up to them to find the killer. But this hugely successful venture is now at great risk. Timothy Dexter, an American of dubious ancestry, threatens the inheritance of the Golden Goose Hotel, and the Gray family gathers to hold a council of war, interrupted when a real murder intervenes. And a young tourist, Cissy Miller, entrusted with a Harlequin costume and a very strange mission, may be the only one to hold the key to the mystery.

The fifth in the Wiki Coffin series finds the U.S. Exploring Expedition off Cape Horn, a grim outpost made still more threatening by the report of a corpse on a drifting iceberg, closely followed by a gruesome death on board. Was it suicide, or a particularly brutal murder? Wiki investigates, only to find himself fighting desperately for his own life.

After more than a century of silence, the true story of one of history's most notorious mutinies is revealed in Joan Druett's riveting "nautical murder mystery" (USA Today). On May 25, 1841, the Massachusetts whaleship Sharon set out for the whaling ground of the northwestern Pacific. A year later, while most of the crew was out hunting, Captain Howes Norris was brutally murdered. When the men in the whaleboats returned, they found four crew members on board, three of whom were covered in blood, the other screaming from atop the mast. Single-handedly, the third officer launched a surprise attack to recapture the Sharon, killing two of the attackers and subduing the other. An American investigation into the murder was never conducted--even when the Sharon returned home three years later, with only four of the original twenty-nine crew on board. Joan Druett, a historian who's been called a female Patrick O'Brian by the Wall Street Journal, dramatically re-creates the mystery of the ill-fated whaleship and reveals a voyage filled with savagery under the command of one of the most ruthless captains to sail the high seas.

Using diaries, journals, and correspondences, Druett recounts the daily grind surgeons on nineteenth-century whaling ships faced: the rudimentary tools they used, the treatments they had at their disposal, the sorts of people they encountered in their travels, and the dangers they faced under the harsh conditions of life at sea.

In an innovative look at maritime history from the female perspective, Joan Druett introduces a remarkable array of characters and re-creates their adventures with a captivating immediacy and wit. There are 'pirate queens' armed with cutlasses and pistols who strike fear into the hearts of sailors. There are sea-loving women and women eager to be with the men they loved, who dress as men and join unsuspecting crews where they serve with honour and daring. The brave housekeepers and rescue workers are here too - including twenty year old Grace Darling, whose rescue of nine castaways in 1838 inspired a torrent of books, songs and poemss. Finally, 'A Woman at the Helm' shines a spotlight on the long line of 'she captains' who conquered dangerous seas and commanded rough crews, often displaying fortitude lacking in many of their male counterparts.

Using diaries, journals, and correspondences, Druett recounts the daily grind surgeons on nineteenth-century whaling ships faced: the rudimentary tools they used, the treatments they had at their disposal, the sorts of people they encountered in their travels, and the dangers they faced under the harsh conditions of life at sea.

A "hen frigate," traditionally, was any ship with the captain's wife on board. Hen frigates were miniature worlds -- wildly colorful, romantic, and dangerous. Here are the dramatic, true stories of what the remarkable women on board these vessels encountered on their often amazing voyages: romantic moonlit nights on deck, debilitating seasickness, terrifying skirmishes with pirates, disease-bearing rats, and cockroaches as big as a man's slipper. And all of that while living with the constant fear of gales, hurricanes, typhoons, collisions, and fire at sea. Interweaving first-person accounts from letters and journals in and around the lyrical narrative of a sea journey, maritime historian Joan Druett brings life to these stories. We can almost feel for ourselves the fear, pain, anger, love, and heartbreak of these courageous women. Lavishly illustrated, this breathtaking book transports us to the golden age of sail.