Most Perfectly Safe : The Convict Shipwreck Disasters of 1833 - 42

Allen Mawer takes us back to Australia's colonial past to vividly describe what life was really like on a convict transport - and conduct an investigation into a train of disasters that, were they to occur today, would at least be worth a Royal Commission and might put paid to a political career or two.This lively account of the convict trade in the 1830s and the shipwrecks that plunged it into crisis is the first full-scale account of the experiences of the convicts (both men and women), the guards and crew, the civil servants who ran the system and the businessmen who profited from it.