Tragic ship tale focus of children’s book
Lockdown spurs writing for book
Throughout his life, Gordon Campbell has been intrigued by the tragic but intriguing story of the General Grant. The General Grant was a sailing ship heading from Melbourne to London when it smashed into cliffs in the subantarctic Auckland Islands, 465 kilometres south of the South Island, on May 14, 1866.
Of the 83 people on board, 15 eventually made it ashore at Port Ross at the northern end of the main island.
After nine months, four of the crew set out in a small boat for Bluff, more than 500km away, but were never seen again.
Another survivor died of illness before the 10 remaining castaways moved to nearby Enderby Island and were finally rescued by the whaling brig Amherst, having survived for 18 months.
The shipwreck has never been found but the tragedy has fascinated people, especially as the ship was carrying a cargo of gold from the Victorian goldfields.
“I’ve been interested in the General Grant since I was a kid,” Campbell says.
“I grew up in Southland. Several different expeditions during my childhood went down to try and find the gold that was thought to be on board when the ship went down.
“About 40kg of gold was kept in a safe and the miners were believed to have gold on them.
“There have been many expeditions over the years to try and find the shipwreck, including one last summer.”
Campbell, from Paraparaumu Beach, had long thought of writing a children’s book about the General Grant but it wasn’t until the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 that he decided to give it a go.
“I’d been quite keen for a while. “I did an article about the General Grant for the New Zealand Memories magazine quite a few years ago and then decided I would write a children’s story about it.”
He enjoyed developing the book, called The Island of Sunken Treasure, using his in-depth knowledge of the subject as well as other resources.
“It was a matter of getting the words to the right level for children and having the right number of pages to incorporate illustrations. I created a draft, which my family read through and made suggestions before I changed things, and I also simplified and cut out some things after a
request from the publisher.”
He was delighted with the book, which was published by Londonbased Austin Macauley Publishers in October. “I’m very pleased with the way it has been finished and the illustrations that were done. The publishing company did a really good job.”
The 36-page book is his second children’s book after Horeta and the Waka, published in English and Mā ori in 2007.
The book was based on Horeta Te Taniwha’s account of meeting Captain James Cook when he was a boy.