WEMYSS, Thomas

Narrative of the Melancholy Shipwreck of the Charles Eaton...

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W. Robinson, Stockton, 1837. Octavo, [ii], 49 pp.; front flyleaf cut away; a couple of spots but anexcellent copy in the original undecorated green cloth, simply lettered in gilt on the front cover. The first edition of this very uncommon shipwreck account.

The Charles Eaton, headed for New South Wales with twenty-five child emigrants aboard, was lost in Torres Strait on 29 July 1834. The survivors were savagely mistreated by natives who killed all but the two cabin boys and two child emigrants, the Doyley brothers. Only the cabin boy Ireland and the younger Doyley - he was fourteen months - ultimately survived to be rescued two years later by Captain Lewis on the schooner Isabella, sent by Governor Bourke to assist the survivors. Murray Island, where the survivors were found, is near the far northern end of the Great Barrier Reef. The remainder of the crew and passengers had all been murdered by the islanders.

It was discovered that the cabin boy, John Ireland, had witnessed the massacre of the crew, as well as the killing of the captain and passengers who landed a week before on the same island and met the same fate.

The child Doyley eventually returned to England, where he lived with his uncle at Stockton. As he was less than two years old at the time of the wreck he could not have been much of a reliable source for Wemyss, the author of this account, who lived near Stockton at the time. Wemyss published several devotional works and edited The Dissenter, the magazine in which the first narrative of the shipwreck appeared.

A second edition of Wemyss' narrative was published almost fifty years later in 1884.
Ferguson, 2410; not in the catalogue of the Hill collection.

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