The Caliban Shore: The Fate of the Grosvenor Castaways

It's not every tale of disaster, deprivation, and death that makes readers want to visit the scene where it all took place, but Taylor's history of the Grosvenor wreck had me ready to pack for a trip to Pondoland. Shipwrecked on a dangerous and largely uncharted (or wrongly charted) coast, the survivors of the Grosvenor faced incredible physical challenges, but The Caliban Shore is not just the story of how they survived--or failed to. Taylor shows how misinformation, prejudices of all kinds, tribal warfare and colonial conflict combined to shape outcomes for the ship's crew and passengers, in some cases for decades following the disaster. One word of encouragement, in case anyone else has to do most of their reading in stolen bits of time between caring for large numbers of children: If there are too many names, titles and naval ranks for you to keep track of in the opening chapters of the book, rest assured the cast of characters dwindles fairly rapidly and before long you'll feel well and happily acquainted with all of them. Suspense, history, human drama--it's a great read!

I read this book in the space of a few days and found it totally engrossing. A grimly fascinating story, beautifully written, a wonderful read. Full of colour, historical depth, pathos. One of the most enjoyable books I've recently read.

I really can't add much to the glowing reviews of this superb book. Suffice it to say that the author, Stephen Taylor, uses a shipwreck on the Transkei coast as a springboard to reconstruct an entire world -- the world of 18th century seafaring, Pondo tribal life, the politics of the East India Company, European racial and sexual phobias, and more. His writing is flawless, whether describing African scenery or the interior lives of long-dead people. "Caliban's Shore" is a small masterpiece of historical and imaginative recreation. Six stars.

Unlike a few of the other reviewers/readers, I thought Mr. Taylor was a brilliant storyteller. How else to explain why I couldn't put this book down and had trouble falling asleep at night thinking about it? It is the rare storyteller that can keep you enthralled when the outcome is a foregone conclusion. I believe that it is precisely the addition of historically relevant exposition, intermingled with tidbits of human drama, that make this story so much more than the otherwise grim tale of "they sailed, they shipwrecked, they died." I learned a great deal of history and perspective about the time period. I found the story fascinating. It did take me awhile to become gripped by the tale (having to be introduced to all the major characters got a bit confusing early on), but even in this, Mr. Taylor uses his prose to gently remind us of who they are as the story progresses. By the end, I was saddened that we couldn't know more about most of them. I felt I had shared a part of their life and loss, and I was moved by the stories of people that became a small and tragic bit of history.

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