The Man Who Stole The Cyprus: A Trutstory Of Escape

摘要

The Man Who Stole the Cyprus is one of those delightful little books that comes along occasionally, which grabs attentionrnand interest from the opening pages and ends with the reader being both entertained and educated. Warwick Hirst obviously has conducted exhaustive research into this little-known (outside of Australia, at any rate) episode in maritime history and has produced a rollicking tale of convict life in a Tasmanian penal colony, escape, piracy, recapture, betrayal, remorse, and execution. Along the way, the reader is introduced to the system of penal transportation in the nineteenth century, whereby English criminals were banished to prisons in Australia for years of hard labor, and to the unimaginable conditions that caused the book's protagonist to choosernescape-and certain death if caught.