Author(s): William Golding

Fiction

The extraordinary story of a warship's troubled journey to Australia in the early 1800s

Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth century, asingle passenger, the obsequious Reverend Colley, attracts the animosity of the sailors, and in the seclusion of the fo'castle something happens to bring him into a 'hell of self-degradation', where shame is aforce deadlier than the sea itself. Close Quarters: In a wilderness of heat, stillness and sea mists, a ball is held on a ship becalmed halfway to Australia. In this surreal, fete-like atmosphere the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them thickets of weed like green hairspread over the hull. Fire Down Below: A decrepit warship sails on the last stretch of its voyage to Sydney Cove. It has been blown off course and battered by wind, storm and ice. And after a risky operation to reset its foremast with red-hot metal, an unseen fire begins to smoulder below decks.