The floating brothel - Sian Rees

In July 1789, 237 women convicts left England for Botany Bay in Australia on board a ship called The Lady Julian, destined to provide sexual services and a breeding bank for the men already there. This is the enthralling story of the women, their voyage and life in eighteenth-century Australia. Based on painstaking research into contemporary sources such as trial records - most of the convicts were prostitutes or petty thieves - and the first-hand account of the voyage written by the ship's steward, John Nicol, who fell in love with the convict Sarah Whitelam, this is a riveting work of recovered history in the bestselling tradition of IN THE HEART OF THE SEA and THE FATAL SHORE.