About

I have to confess I have been a bit of a history nerd for as long as I can remember, but what got me interested in maritime history was one long-forgotten shipwreck. A few years ago, I was flipping through some century-old newspapers when I stumbled upon a story about a sailor who was marooned on an island not too far from my home on Queensland’s Capricorn Coast.    Five of his shipmates drowned when the small coastal schooner sank during a ferocious cyclone, but our survivor washed up on a small uninhabited island.    After three weeks of toil, he escaped on a flimsy raft he built himself.   His story was remarkable, and I was hooked.

I began looking into other shipwrecks and, in the process, learned more about Australia’s rich maritime history.  In January 2022, I published my first book, A Treacherous Coast: Ten Tales of Shipwreck and Survival from the Queensland Coast. Two years later, in 2024, I finished my second book, Bolters: An Unruly Bunch of Malcontents, which tells the stories of those convicts sent to Australia and who escaped or tried to escape by sea. Most recently, I have compiled 60 rewritten blog posts in my third book, Tales from the Quarterdeck.

While researching I often come across interesting stories that have nothing to do with what I am working on. They find a home here on Tales from the Quarterdeck. I hope you find them as interesting as I do.

Regards

C.J. Ison.