The General Grant's gold : shipwreck and greed in the Southern Ocean / Madelene Ferguson Allen and Ken Scadden.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 177-186) and index.

Part one. Fact, myth and mystery: 1: The stage -- 2: Gold -- 3: Cargo -- 4: The voyage -- 5: Disaster -- 6: Castaways -- 7:Homecoming -- 8: Rescue mission -- Part two. Dreamers, schemers and divers: 9: Tempting fate -- 10: Mutiny and murder averted -- 11: Early dreamers -- 12: The Enterprise and more dreamers -- 13: For the cost of a letter -- 14: Modern days -- Part three. Fame, fortune or futility?: 15: Who owns the gold? -- 16: The elusive cave -- 17: The lure of gold -- Appendices: 1. Estimates of the amount of gold on the General Grant -- 2. Crew and passengers on the General Grant -- 3. Expeditions -- 4. Proposed expeditions -- Maps: The Great Circle Route -- The Auckland Islands -- The course taken by the four men.

The wreck in 1866 of the General Grant in the desolate sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands is one of the world's great nautical mysteries, a story that still tantalises and thrills. When the ship was crushed in a cave beneath a sheer cliff face, a few crew members and a handful of passengers managed to escape in a lifeboat. For more than two years they lived a hand-to-mouth existence on a nearby island before they were rescued. In this book Madelene Ferguson Allen and Ken Scadden tell the full story of the voyage from Melbourne, the shipwreck, the plight of the castaways and the search for the gold. At this distance in time, separating the facts from the legends is difficult, but they have scrupulously researched the events of the shipwreck and examined every subsequent search for the gold.