This engraving depicts three scenes associated with the loss of the Dutch ship Batavia in 1629. Top: Batavia approaches the Houtman Abrolhos Islands off Western Australia at night. Lower right: the vessel aground on a reef with the crew in boats attempting to refloat it. Lower left: the state of the Batavia the next day, and the passengers and crew abandoning the ship. ANMM Collection 00004993 A special shout out to the sour-faced tortoise Enkidu, who always made me smile even while reading some of the horrors that Mayken and Gil had to cope with!

Mayken crawls forward and puts her palm next to his, flat against the planks. She sees how much smaller and cleaner her hand is. Too clean for a cabin boy. But John Pinten doesn’t seem to notice. I wasn’t sure how Kidd was going to knit the two stories together, but she did! This is a heavily researched story about the souls on the Batavia. Kidd provides an epilogue which illuminates the fact from the fiction.The tragedy of the story is well-known, but the author has made it personal and human, adding descriptive passages that add to the experiences of the children. This one is the old sailor teaching Mayken. Mayken’s nursemaid looks on with satisfaction. Imke revels in the trials of others with a pure and shameless joy. Given that this book is based on real-life events that took place during the voyage of the Batavia (as we are reminded in the epilogue), what do you think we should take away from Mayken’s story? Mayken loves the sailors instantly. The daring of them, their speed along the ropes, the heights they climb to! The predikant is pointing out the Dutch East India Company cadets and officials gathering at the top of the stern castle. Look, there is the upper-merchant in his red coat and plumed hat. Flanked by the under-merchant, also well hatted, and the stout old skipper, hatless. Three men entrusted by the Company with a cargo richer than the treasuries of many kingdoms, the lives of hundreds of innocent souls and this wonderful ship, newly built—her maiden voyage! Imke nods as though she’s interested. Mrs. Predikant stares ahead with her mouth turned down, trout-like, abiding.

The other half of the book belongs to Gil, an Australian boy, also nine, sent in 1989 to live with his late mother’s father, a cray fisherman, on one of the small islands off the coast of Western Australia. He doesn’t know who his father is, and he’s unhappy with his gruff grandfather.I love a good ghost story, and I love a good treasure hunt. The Night Ship has both and several other mysteries intertwined. The story alternates between the lives of two children, Gil in 1989, and Mayken in 1629. Both children have suffered loss and trauma and navigate it in their own way. They each have an assortment of people around them ranging from high class to low lifes and everyone in between. Looks are often deceiving and people aren’t always what they seem.

The stories unfold in alternate chapters, linked by repeated phrases, talismans and the myth of a terrifying sea monster. With a nod to the Australian horror film The Babadook, Gil finds an old storybook of his mother’s behind a cabinet, telling the tale of a bunyip, an eel-like shapeshifter that preys on children. As with the Babadook, the creature (whose legend originates with the indigenous people) is a projection of fear. “How do you describe dread, Gil?” asks Birgit, one of the scientists. “That’s what the bunyip is: an attempt to give fear a shape.” Gil is also nine and he has also recently lost his mother. The year is 1989 and he is living on a small island off the coast of Western Australia with his fisherman Grandfather. His story is horribly sad and I cried all the way through one chapter involving a tortoise. You have to read it to understand! Jess Kidd's latest offering has her trademark supernatural elements, and features an atmospheric storyline that shifts between 2 children, both 9 years old, living centuries apart and have just lost their mothers. It is 1628, Mayken is travelling with her beloved nursemaid, Imke, with her gift of prophecy, on the Batavia, the eponymous Night Ship, planning to join her father, who she doesn't know. The Batavia is sailing under upper merchant, Francisco Pelsaert, skipper Ariaen Jacobsz, both men hate each other, and the sly under merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz, it is an East India Company ship carrying a cargo richer than the treasuries of many kingdoms. In 1989, the lonely and reluctant Gil arrives on the sparsely populated Australian Beacon Island to live with his fisherman grandfather, Joss Hurley, a man shunned by other islanders, with a long running feud with the powerful Zanetti family. Mayken is a fine lady so she gets the winched seat, which is a plank with ropes attached at the corners. An old sailor wearing an India shawl around his head helps her up.Decorating the stern of the ship is a row of great wooden men. Great in that they are almost life-height and full-bearded. Great, too, in that they wear long robes. Magical realism and folklore at its finest. It doesn’t always work for me but was done exceptionally well. A rope falls, a cask drops, a sailor stumbles on the rigging. Imke looks alarmed; she is superstitious even for a peasant. ‘Close your mouth.’ I don’t think I can do justice to this amazing story, so I’m including a link to my friend Linda’s review, who has done just that. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

In 1629, nine-year-old Mayken, now motherless, is traveling via the ship Batavia's maiden voyage, to live with the wealthy father she has never met. She is joined on her journey by her nursemaid, Imke, to whom she is deeply attached. While this may not be the best possible choice for reading on a ship-based vacation, it is a moving and fascinating read for landlubbers. Kidd writes with the touch of the poet, adorning her compelling, moving story with sparkling descriptive finery, while offering us a child’s-eye view of the most remarkable ship of its time, and telling a tale of doom. Both Gil’s and Mayken’s stories are strong enough masts to have sailed alone, but together they make a weatherly craft and catch a strong wind, easily speeding past potential story-telling shoals. “How do you describe dread, Gil? That’s what the bunyip is: an attempt to give fear a shape.”The history of Mayken’s ‘Batavia’ voyage and the violent, blood-thirsty brutality of the crew are well known, making the islands a popular place for visitors to search for artefacts. This gives an opportunity for Mayken’s and Gil’s stories to parallel each other as he finds items that we know she used. She will keep us safe, though there’ll be storms and shipworms outside and in. To the ‘Batavia’ we must cling.’” T he Night Ship is an enthralling tale of human brutality, fate and friendship – and of two children, hundreds of years apart, whose destinies are inextricably bound together. Each child has parental figures who step in at different times in their journeys (for example, Imke, Holdfast, Dutch and Silvia). How would you describe these stand-in parents? In what ways were these adults important for Mayken and Gil? The author makes general comparisons at first, and as she reveals more of their lives, the similarities are almost word for word.