This recent non-fiction title from Random House NZ presents a diary of an migrant from London to Wellington, New Zealand in 1842, very early in the colony's history.
Keeping company with her ancestor Rebecca Remington (her great great grandmother), author Jenny Robin Jones imagines herself on board and records life at sea on the London using the journals of the ship's surgeon and a cabin passenger. The emigrants are met, revealing the lives they left behind, their expectations for the future, their relationships, their living conditions, as well as who got sick, who was born, and who died.
The entries also look forward twenty years, revealing the fortunes of the passengers during the difficult years of early European settlement, those who survived and flourished and those who foundered. It describes Wellington as the emigrants will find it and the historical events they will soon find themselves caught up in. The book has 350 pages including a small number of line drawings and early colour artworks.
The painting "Le départ" by Louis Remy Sabattier illustrates the theme and is not in the book.
The book is available in our shop ($46).
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