Product Description

The Grosvenor was one of the finest East Indiamen of her day, but she ran aground on the treacherous coast of south-east Africa. An astonishing number of her crew and passengers, including women and children, reached the shore safely, but the castaways found themselves hundreds of miles from the nearest European outpost - and utterly ignorant of their surroundings and the people among whom they found themselves. Drawing upon much new research, Stephen Taylor pieces together this extraordinary saga, sifting the myths that became attached to The Grosvenor from a reality that is no less gripping. Taking the reader to the heart of what is now the Wild Coast of Pondoland, he reveals the misunderstandings that led to tragedy, tells the story of those who escaped, and unravels the mystery of those who stayed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106996 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
"'A wonderful book, hugely satisfying on many levels - as a survival-and-ordeal chronicle, as social history, as anthropology, and an early foray into the exotic, but most of all as an adventure' Paul Theroux"

Daily Telegraph, 14 February 2004
The Caliban Shore is a … terrific salvage operation ... complex, moving and immaculately paced.

Scotsman, 14 February 2004
Taylor takes us into entirely unexpected places, into stories that can only be half-told but which have extraordinary resonance.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic tale of adventure and endurance
The Caliban Shore is one of those extraordinary stories that you comes across rarely, but which makes you marvel at the incredulity of what happened to a disparate band of (predominantly) Brits who were wrecked off the coast of Africa in 1782, hundreds of miles from the nearest Europeans and entirely ignorant of the people or land into which they had inadvertently blundered. As they try and work their way down to the Dutch settlements in the far south they begin to realise that none of them might make it out of this strange land.

Stephen Taylor does an excellent job of piecing together all the fragmentary truths, rumours and myths surrounding the Grosvenor castaways and weaving a fascinating narrative of what the ordeal was like for those who had to endure it. The story throws up many heroes and villains, mysteries and startling truths. It also provides an interesting account of the state of Indian colonial society in the 18th century and the state of the tribes of South Africa at the same time. Definitely well worth a read.

Bring a film out on it!
The Grosvenor was one of the finest East Indiamen of her day, but she ran aground on the treacherous coast of south-east Africa. An astonishing number of her crew and passengers, including women and children, reached the shore safely, but the castaways found themselves hundreds of miles from the nearest European outpost - and utterly ignorant of their surroundings and the people among whom they found themselves.

Drawing upon much new research, Stephen Taylor pieces together this extraordinary saga, sifting the myths that became attached to The Grosvenor from a reality that is no less gripping. Taking the reader to the heart of what is now the Wild Coast of Pondoland, he reveals the misunderstandings that led to tragedy, tells the story of those who escaped, and unravels the mystery of those who stayed. An unforgetable story of its time of how the survivors trekked for over 400 miles across the most hostile of lands suffering the most extreme of privations. After many months they reach safety amongst kind hearted dutch settlers...but alas for many it was not to be!

Gripping story, told really well with great detail and a flowing easy to read narrative....great read!

A poignant tale of misery on the high seas and a captivity narrative
This book isn't just about the shipwreck of the East Indiaman Grosvenor in south-east Africa and the travails of its survivors, which is covered in only a few chapters in the middle of the book, it's also a social and political history of the burgeoning British empire and, surprisingly, about the integration of some of the survivors in the African tribes' society. I was surprised about that last bit. I thought this was just going to be a dark tale about conflict and treachery such as in The Raft.

Firstly, I thought it was difficult to get the most out of this book because there are so many people in it! This might sound a bit trite -- of course there are many people on a ship! -- but after being introduced with their own little potted biography I soon forgot who each person was so the nuances of their own suffering was lost. It would have been nice to have had a dramatis personae to refer back to or, failing that, the author could have jogged the reader's memory at intervals.

I call this a "poignant" tale and not a dark one because there isn't really any conflict or treachery in it. All the survivors behaved remarkably well, or so the accounts of it say. They looked after the ill and injured as best they could and the worst thing anybody did to anybody else was to split up into factions to make their own way. Which they can hardly be blamed for. There were no fights, no robbery, no lust, no cannibalism (though one party did eat their shoes), no murder, no mutiny, few, and only half-hearted, attacks by "savages", no attacks by wild animals, plentiful drinking water for the most part (though urine was drunk at one point), and a general lack of anything very, well, dramatic. I was secretly a little disappointed about that.

One random point of interest I noted: on the frontispiece, "Loss of the Grosvenor, Indiaman" by Thomas Tegg dated 1808, which is a dramatic scene of the wreck, the ship is quite clearly called the "Grovesnor". What an elementary mistake.

I loved the language of William Habberley, young midshipman (I think), whose memoir is the most comprehensive and widely quoted source that Taylor draws upon. It's so quaint and punctilious. How he remembered all the details of such an ordeal can only be wondered at. The author does use many other sources, though, to complement Habberley's and he weaves them seamlessly into his excellent narrative. His language is plain and unadorned, just as it should be: he lets the story tell itself.

Another couple of books that I would recommend to readers interested in this one are: Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850 (which Taylor alludes to) and The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (which is more swashbuckling and sensational).