 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
The Incomparable Captain Cadell
By John Nicholson
Allen & Unwin $29.95
 Its title inspired by Conrad's character Nostromo, in the novel of that name, this is a ripping biography about a solitary Scot who strode across the sea and riverscapes of 19th century Australia and the Pacific.
An explorer, entrepreneur, ship designer and, his worst stain, a slaver who 'blackbirded' island labour to work the Queensland plantations, Francis William Cadell was raised on the Leith waterfront by a family of wealthy industrialists and ship builders.
Sent to Germany at 13 in the hope of curing him of a passion for the sea, he mucked around the Elbe estuary in boats and river barges, experiences he would remember later when he became a pioneer of paddle-wheelers in faroff South Australia.
In 1836, aged fourteen, he signed on to the Miverna, a well-armed East India Company vessel engaged in the Asia trade. It was his every dream - and perhaps nightmare - come true, being thrown together with a cast of nautical ruffians who sailed across half the world, found valuable cargo, fought battles on land and sea, then found their way home again.
Cadell's first voyage took him through the waters of today's Indonesia, where, four decades later, he would meet a violent death. Minerva's destination was Canton, centre of the trade in opium, brought from India and sold in vast quantities to the dependent Chinese.
Cadell left no record of the fierce fighting against the imperial troops, 'but we know he saw it all: the massacres, the shocking injuries, the disease, the massive superiority of the British war machine.'
Later, he paddled up the Amazon in a canoe, tried his luck on the Californian goldfields, and settled in Australia where he raced a grand clipper ship, Queen of Sheba, and became a pioneer of steamboat technology.
Toss in a stint of far north exploration, navel warfare on NZ's Waikato River during the Maori Wars, and time in the pearling industry, and you have an idea of his 'incomparable' life.
He was shot dead in the Gem, a schooner he commanded in the seas north of Timor, 'The thick amber light of a single guttering oil lamp revealed Cadell lying on his bunk, bloodstains spreading rapidly on his shirt and on the bedclothes beneath him.'
The crew fled by dinghy after sending the Gem to the 'ink-black ocean, eruptions of phosphorescent bubbles still rising on the surface after the tips of her masts has disappeared.'
The body of the hated captain remained on board.
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