Joan Druett Books In Order

A Watery Grave

The year is 1838, and after more than ten years in the planning, the famous United States Exploring Expedition is set to launch into uncharted waters from the coast of Virginia. A convoy of seven ships filled with astronomers, mapmakers, naturalists, and the sailors charged with getting them around the world, the ‘Ex. Ex.’ is finally underway, with much fanfare. Aboard the convoy as ship’s linguist is Wiki Coffin. Half New Zealand Maori and half American, Wiki speaks numerous languages and is expected to help the crew navigate the Pacific islands that are his native heritage. But just before departure Wiki, subject to the unfortunate bigotry of the time, is arrested for a vicious murder he didn’t commit. The convoy sails off, but just before the ships are out of reach Wiki is exonerated, set free to catch up with his ship and sail on. The catch: the local sheriff is convinced that the real murderer is aboard one of the seven ships of the expedition, and Wiki is deputized to identify the killer and bring him to justice. Full of the evocative maritime detail and atmosphere that have won her numerous awards for her nonfiction, Joan Druett’s A Watery Grave is the mystery debut of a masterful maritime writer.

Shark Island

Wiki Coffin, linguist aboard the U.S. Exploring Expedition, the famous voyage meant to put America at the forefront of 19th century scientific discovery, brings many skills to his job. Whether he’s translating native languages, assisting his good friend Captain George Rochester as unofficial first mate, or upholding the rule of law as deputy to the sheriff of the port of Virginia, Wiki is never far from the action aboard the seven ships that make up the expedition. But when they encounter a wrecked sealing ship and its desperate crew on the shoals of remote, uninhabited Shark Island, Wiki has little idea just how many of his skills are about to be put to the test. As soon as they board the wreck, a dead body turns up with a dagger firmly inserted between its shoulder blades. And it’s not just any dead body: the victim of the brutal murder is none other than the enigmatic captain of the doomed voyage. What’s more, Wiki’s colleague and nemesis Lieutenant Forsythe is suspected of the crime. Knowing full well that Forsythe is capable of such violence, Wiki nonetheless believes him innocent and is duty bound to prove it for the good of the expedition. Was the murder a case of mutinous sealers taking the law into their own hands? Did the secrets of several mysterious long ago voyages finally come back to haunt a dishonest and dishonorable captain? Or is Shark Island home to something more sinister than a few lonely goats? Something isn’t quite right about the crew of the wrecked ship, and Wiki will stop at nothing to find out just what it is that they’re hiding, and, in the process, unmask a vicious killer.

Run Afoul

U.S. Exploring Expedition linguist Wiki Coffin sails with the famous convoy of ships toward Brazil, with no idea of the amazing events the fates and the winds have set in store for him.
As the great flagship Vincennes, under the dubious command of eccentric captain Charles Wilkes, leads the convoy toward a dramatic entrance in the port of Rio, careless maneuvering causes one of the vessels to Run Afoul of a Boston trading ship a shocking embarrassment that none of the sailors aboard is likely to live down during their time in port.
As it turns out, the trader is owned and commanded by the famous and larger than life Captain William Coffin, father to Wiki and sailor of all seven seas as well as another dozen or so he’s managed to invent in his years of telling tall tales. The encounter sets in motion a series of confounding events that reunites the elder Coffin with his illegitimate half Maori son and that, before they are through, will see two men dead, Coffin on trial for murder, and Wiki working feverishly to unmask the real killers before the expedition sails on, leaving his father at the mercy of an unforgiving Brazilian court and Wiki s own tenuous grip on family hanging desperately in the balance.

Deadly Shoals

Wiki Coffin plays many parts on the U.S. Exploring Expedition—sailor, linguist, navigator, and, as half-Maori, cultural go-between. But then the brig Swallow reaches the coast of Patagonia, an area infamous for its rough gauchos and revolutionary spirit, and he must take on his other role, that of agent of U.S. law and order.

A New England whaler shows up, desperate to find the devious trader who has cheated him of a thousand dollars and a schooner. Wiki is assigned to find the missing ship, only to follow a trail of clues to a dead body, half-buried in a hill of salt, its skull picked clean by vultures. The adventure unravels in the impoverished village of El Carmen de Patagones, where the threat of French invasion is imminent, and business is at a standstill under the orders of General de Rosas, the tyrant of Buenos Aires.

Wiki must risk both life and reputation in pursuit of a vicious and determined killer who has set his sights on another target: the U.S. Exploring Expedition itself.

A Promise of Gold

Orphaned and friendless in the primitive colony of New Zealand, actress adventurer Harriet Gray lives on her wits until the day a message arrives from her brother, Royal, instructing her to charter a ship with a captain opportunistic enough to participate.

Petticoat Whalers

Joan Druett offers an informed and accessible account of little known stories of wives of whaling captains who accompanied their husbands on long and arduous journeys to bring whale oil and blubber to New England. Surprisingly, by 1850 roughly a sixth of all whaling vessels carried the captains’ wives. Invariably the only woman aboard a very cramped ship, they endured harsh conditions to provide companionship for their husbands, and sometimes even exerted a strong unofficial moral influence on a rowdy crew. Joan Druett provides captivating portraits of many of these wives and the difficult circumstances they endured. Petticoat Whalers, first published in New Zealand in 1991, has been out of print since 1995. The Kendall Whaling Museum’s L. Byrne Waterman Award citation states: ‘It is not insignificant that Petticoat Whalers is already an indispensable classic, and Druett’s other books and articles have earned the status of Basic Necessities on any well stocked shelf of maritime narratives and reference works.’

The Sailing Circle

‘The sister sailors of Long Island: prelimary list, 1826 1915’ p. 40 41.

Hen Frigates

A ‘hen frigate,’ traditionally, was any ship with the captain’s wife on board. Hen Frigates were miniature worlds wildly colorful, romantic, and dangerous. Here are the dramatic, true stories of what the remarkable women on board these vessels encountered on their often amazing voyages: romantic moonlit nights on deck, debilitating seasickness, terrifying skirmishes with pirates, disease bearing rats, and cockroaches as big as a man’s slipper. And all of that while living with the constant fear of gales, hurricanes, typhoons, collisions, and fire at sea. Interweaving first person accounts from letters and journals in and around the lyrical narrative of a sea journey, maritime historian Joan Druett brings life to these stories. We can almost feel for ourselves the fear, pain, anger, love, and heartbreak of these courageous women. Lavishly illustrated, this breathtaking book transports us to the golden age of sail.

She Captains

Long before women had the right to vote, earn money, or have lives of their own, ‘She Captains‘ bold women distinguished for courageous enterprise on the high seas thrilled and terrorized their shipmates, performed acts of valor, and pirated with the best of their male counterparts. From the warrior queens of the sixth century b.c. to the female shipowners influential in opening the Northwest Passage, She Captains brings together a real life cast of characters whose audacity and bravado will capture the imagination. In her inimitable style, Joan Druett paints a vivid portrait of real women who were drawn to the ocean’s beauty and danger and dared to captain ships of their own.

Rough Medicine

Using diaries, journals, and correspondences, Druett recounts the daily grind surgeons on nineteenth century whaling ships faced: the rudimentary tools they used, the treatments they had at their disposal, the sorts of people they encountered in their travels, and the dangers they faced under the harsh conditions of life at sea.

In the Wake of Madness

On May 25, 1841, the whaleship Sharon of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, set out for the whaling grounds of the northwestern Pacific under the command of Captain Howes Norris. A year later, while most of the crew was out on the hunt, Norris remained at the helm with four crew members three of them natives from the Pacific Islands. When the men in the whaleboats spied the Sharon’s flag flying at half mast a signal of distress they rowed toward the ship to discover their Captain had been hacked to pieces. His murderers, the Pacific Islanders, were covered in blood and brandishing weapons. Unless the crew could retake the Sharon, their prospects of survival were slim. The nearest land was seven hundred miles away. In an astonishing single handed recapture, the third officer, Benjamin Clough, swam through shark infested waters in the dead of night, slipped through one of the cabin windows, and launched a surprise attack on the mutineers, killing two of them and overtaking the other. Though news of Clough’s courageous act spread quickly through ports around the globe, an American investigation into the shipboard crimes was never conducted even when the Sharon returned home three years later, with only four of the original twenty nine crew on board. The true story of what happened aboard the Sharon remained buried for over 150 years. Through recently discovered journals of the ship’s cooper and the third officer, award winning maritime historian Joan Druett unearths the mystery of the ill fated whaleship. Dramatically and meticulously recreating the events of the Sharon, Druett pieces together a voyage filled with savagery and madness under the command of one of the most ruthless captains to sail the high seas. Like The Pirate Hunter and Blue Latitudes, In the Wake of Madness brings to life a riveting story and exposes the secrets that followed the men of the Sharon to their graves.

Island of the Lost

Auckland Island is a godforsaken place in the middle of the Southern Ocean, 285 miles south of New Zealand. With year round freezing rain and howling winds, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death. In 1864 Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four aboard the schooner Grafton wreck on the southern end of the island. Utterly alone in a dense coastal forest, plagued by stinging blowflies and relentless rain, Captain Musgrave rather than succumb to this dismal fate inspires his men to take action. With barely more than their bare hands, they build a cabin and, remarkably, a forge, where they manufacture their tools. Under Musgrave’s leadership, they band together and remain civilized through even the darkest and most terrifying days. Incredibly, at the same time on the opposite end of the island twenty miles of impassable cliffs and chasms away the Invercauld wrecks during a horrible storm. Nineteen men stagger ashore. Unlike Captain Musgrave, the captain of the Invercauld falls apart given the same dismal circumstances. His men fight and split up; some die of starvation, others turn to cannibalism. Only three survive. Musgrave and all of his men not only endure for nearly two years, they also plan their own astonishing escape, setting off on one of the most courageous sea voyages in history. Using the survivors’ journals and historical records, award winning maritime historian Joan Druett brings this extraordinary untold story to life, a story about leadership and the fine line between order and chaos.

Tupaia

Tupaia was the brilliant Polynesian navigator and translator who sailed with Captain James Cook from Tahiti, piloted the Endeavour across the South Pacific, and interceded on behalf of the European voyagers with the warrior Maori of New Zealand. As a man of high social ranking, Tupaia was also invaluable as an intermediary, interpreting local rituals and ceremonies. Joseph Banks, the botanist with Cook’s expedition, is famous for describing the manners and customs of the Polynesian people in detail. Much of the credit for this information rightfully belongs to Tupaia indeed, he could aptly be called the Pacific’s first anthropologist. Despite all this, Tupaia‘s colorful tale has never been part of the popular Captain Cook legend. This unique book tells the first contact story with Europeans as seen through the eyes of the Polynesians, and documents how Tupaia‘s contributions changed the history of the Pacific.