Do we count you in?’ When Joe is reluctantly dragged into a deadly plot by rebellious convicts at the Castle Hill prison farm on the outskirts of Sydney Town, he quickly realises it does not pay to be their enemy. He has been quietly working out his sentence as a shepherd boy, in the company of his friends, Pat and Kitt–who has set her eye on Joshua Holt, son of the heroic General of Wicklow. But the croppies are hard, tough patriots of Ireland and desperate to revolt and Joe finds himself amidst a desperate bid for freedom in the first convict uprising against the colony of New South Wales.
"400 United Irishmen and fellow-rebels brought the spirit of Irish rebellion "down under" in the aftermath of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 - and changed Australia forever. At Castle Hill in 1804, this "army of shadows" carried on where they left off but during Bligh's overthrow in 1808, they stood back from a fight that was not theirs. The "political Irish" played a central role in the developing colony. Their professions, trades and skills made them useful as clerks, storekeepers and teachers, and fitted them to be overseers and constables, and helped bring self-sufficiency to the still-fragile colonial economy. They remained revolutionaries; only they negotiated change rather than raised warlike rebellion. Through their open defiance and quiet manipulation of authority, the harp "new strung" resonates to this day in the Australian ethos that United Irishmen helped to create." -- book cover.
'Do we count you in?' When Joe is reluctantly dragged into a deadly plot by rebellious convicts at the Castle Hill prison farm on the outskirts of Sydney Town, he quickly realises it does not pay to be their enemy. He has been quietly working out his sentence as a shepherd boy, in the company of his friends, Pat and Kitt - who has set her eye on Joshua Holt, son of the heroic General of Wicklow. But the croppies are hard, tough patriots of Ireland and desperate to revolt and Joe finds himself amidst a desperate bid for freedom in the first convict uprising against the colony of New South Wales.
This true life adventure story is the saga of four ordinary Englishmen—a pair of banished, first-time petty thieves and a couple chosen to be settlers—who charted a course that led them to help build and mould an infant country on the remotest continent in the known world. Two of their offspring united to continue the adventure. Vivid first-hand accounts have been pried from the daily, hand-written journals and writings of first-class passengers, crew, and one of the convicts aboard the small wooden sailing ships, as they battled winter storms on the treacherous North Atlantic and Southern Oceans and endured scorching doldrums in the equatorial region. Mutinies, inventions, discoveries, and wars have been chronicled to provide a backdrop of the prevailing international, societal, and interpersonal relationships of the period. Characters from history’s stage weave their way through these pages—figures including James Cook, Horatio Nelson, Robert Emmet, Jonathan Swift, William Bligh, Lachlan Macquarie, Samuel Marsden, Walter Lawry, Alfred Howitt, and some long-forgotten souls like the tragic Margaret Sullivan. Artwork of the period is included to help stimulate the imagination and help place the reader beside the characters as they toiled to eke out an existence. The primary objective of this biography is a quest to achieve a broader, deeper understanding and appreciation of the typical person—including their struggles, challenges, and contributions—in early colonial New South Wales, Victoria, and New Zealand. The goal is to further the development of a robust comprehension of the Life and Times that these Six Australian Pioneers experienced, as well, the millions of other pioneers just like them. This book will also appeal to those with an interest in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Australian, European, and New Zealand history; late eighteenth-century ocean voyages; and those with an interest in artwork of the period.
In 1798, the Irish rose up against the corrupt English government run out of Dublin. Joined by both Protestants and Catholics, the rebellion quickly spread across the country. Although the Irish peasantry were armed mostly with pikes, they were able to overwhelm a number of small, isolated British outposts. However, even with the half-hearted assistance of the French, the Irish could not compete with the organized ranks of the British Army when under competent leadership. In a brutal turning of the tide, the Redcoats plowed through the rebels. In just three months, between 15,000 and 30,000 people died, most of them Irish. This book tells the story of this harsh, but fascinating, period of Irish history and covers the organization and uniforms of the forces involved.
The Celts have always been seen to walk between the world of the living and a world driven by magic, passion, and fantasy. To those who want to venture down the rabbit hole, Alastar MacTire takes us on a walk through the history of the Celtic Nations starting with the struggling, passionate, magical Irish. All through history, Ireland is portrayed as one of the most fantasy-driven cultures known to man. A people that hold tight to not only their Christian beliefs but also the unspoken idea that sometimes, when nobody is looking, a world of myth and fantasy exists beyond the realms of humanity. A realm of gods, demons, fairies, and leprechauns.
As well as over 4000 clear and concise entries, this dictionary also contains biographies of key figures in world history. Other useful features include, subject entries on religious and political movements, maps, and full international coverage.
The true story of five castaways abandoned on the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812—a tale of treachery, shipwreck, isolation, and the desperate struggle for survival. In Left for Dead, Eric Jay Dolin—“one of today’s finest writers about ships and the sea” (American Heritage)—tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept, and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half. With deft narrative skill and unequaled knowledge of the very pith of the seafaring life, Dolin describes in vivid and harrowing detail the increasingly desperate existence of the castaways during their eighteen-month ordeal—an all-too-common fate in the Great Age of Sail. A tale of intriguing complexity, with surprising twists and turns throughout—involving greed, lying, bullying, a hostile takeover, stellar leadership, ingenuity, severe privation, endurance, banishment, the great value of a dog, the birth of a baby, a perilous thousand-mile open-ocean journey in a seventeen-foot boat, an improbable rescue mission, and legal battles over a dubious and disgraceful wartime prize—Left for Dead shows individuals in wartime under great duress acting both nobly and atrociously, and offers a unique perspective on a pivotal era in American maritime history.
