Author Description

In July 1789, 237 women convicts left England for Sydney Cove in Australia's New South Wales on board a ship called the Lady Julian. The women, most of them petty criminals, were destined to provide the colony's hordes of lonely men with sexual favors as well as progeny. This is the enthralling story of that extraordinary group of women and their voyage halfway around the world. Historian Siân Rees delved into court documents, letters and journals to extract firsthand accounts of the women's experiences on board a ship that both held them prisoner and offered them refuge from their oppressive existence in London. Forced by the economy of the times to beg, steal and sell themselves, the women of the Lady Julian defined resourcefulness, and set up profitable businesses in their various ports of call. many formed relationships with the ship's officers and sailors, and when the ship landed in New South Wales, they had newborn babies to show for it. At the heart of this riveting history is the passionate relationship between Sarah Whitelam, a convict, and the ship's steward, John Nicol, whose personal journals provided much of the material for this book. Along the way, Rees brings the sights, smells and sounds of an eighteenth-century ship vividly to life. Rollicking and exhaustively researched, The Floating Brothel ends with a grand beginning--the landing of these "disorderly girls" on a rugged continent that they would make their own. -- Inside jacket flaps.