A Pearling Master's Journey In The Wake Of The Schooner Mist
Australian History Social History Cultural Studies Biography & Memoir Maritime History Transportation Adventure Non-Fiction
“A Pearling Master’s Journey: In the Wake of the Schooner Mist” is the only complete first-person chronicle of Australia’s last great pearling era, told by the man who skippered the legendary schooner through the shark-rich, tide-ripped waters of Broome, Thursday Island and the Arafura Sea. In 338 heavily-illustrated pages, Captain John Edgar deBurgh Norman takes readers aboard the Mist as she hunts for the Pinctada maxima shells that once supplied 80 % of the world’s mother-of-pearl. From cyclone survival and mutinous crews to the rise of cultured pearls and the collapse of the fleet, the narrative is both a gripping maritime adventure and an authoritative social history of the multicultural luggermen—Japanese, Malay, Aboriginal and European—whose labour built northern Australia.
Published in 2007 in a sturdy hardcover edition by Broome’s BPA Print Group, the book is written at young-adult-to-adult level and is now a sought-after textbook for Australian history, maritime studies and cultural-education courses. Dozens of period photographs, deck plans, lugger rigging diagrams and rare pearling-company ledgers appear nowhere else in print, making this volume a visual goldmine for researchers, genealogists and collectors of nautical memorabilia. Libraries across Western Australia cite it as a key reference for the state’s heritage-listed pearling sites.
This ex-library copy is clean, complete and tightly bound—no underlining, no dog-eared pages—professionally laminated to withstand heavy reading or classroom use. Minor shelf evidence (spine label, withdrawn stamp on closed edge) is noted, yet the chips to two bottom margins do not touch text, ensuring every map and photo remains fully legible. For anyone fascinated by Australia’s pearling past, maritime adventure or the multicultural roots of northern settlement, owning “A Pearling Master’s Journey” is like having the captain’s own logbook on your shelf—an irreplaceable window into a vanished way of life.
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