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Book

Softcover; Rod Fraser.

The 2447 ton clipper Champion of the Seas was launched on April 19, 1854 - the largest sailing ship in trade afloat and as fast as she was beautiful. On one of her noon-to-noon runs she covered 465 nautical miles which stands as a record to this day.

Between 1854 and 1868 this magnificent clipper carried 5300 emigrants from Liverpool, England to Melbourne, Australia during 15 voyages. The forebears of hundreds of thousands of today's Australians first glimpsed their new homeland from the deck of this stately ship.

The Champion of the Seas is a collection of Champion material that has survived the 140 years that separates her time and ours. As well as the complete passenger list and comprehensive crew listings there are extracts from the Captain's Log.

Selections from the journal of Mary Ann Merson, who sailed on the Champion with her three small children in 1855, to join her husband in Melbourne, is absorbing reading. There are shipboard diaries of three other emigrant passengers. Each is intimate and touchingly personal. These documents reflect a time and culture which seems remote and bleak, so very different from our own.

Included are full reprints of the most amazing newspapers The Champion the Seas Gazette and The Champion of the Seas Times. Printed weekly aboard the ship they are an astonishingly technical achievement. Their contents are rare documents, rich with insight into the perils, joys and tragedies of our emigrant forebears.