Driven by the Wind: The Memoir of Captain Henry Rose

- Blurb -

'...Christmas Day 1847 we were in a gale of a wind in the Bay of Biscay, the ship being deeply laden made rather bad weather of it. One of the boats was struck by a heavy sea and smashed and the First Mate had his leg broken. The Cook... told me that I would never see my mother again...' So began the adventures of Captain Henry Rose, who went to sea as a 14-year-old apprentice and rose through the ranks to command some of the fastest clipper ships in the world. He sailed the trade routes between England and China, the West Indies and the American seaboard, carrying soldiers and horses to the Crimea, slaves and coolies to American plantations and convicts to Australia. He was aboard the tea clipper Collinsburgh when she raced her rival Truce around Cape Horn from China to Gravesend, and in 1870 he captained the immigrant ship Merope on her record-breaking voyage across the Southern Ocean to New Zealand. Henry joined the newly-formed New Zealand Shipping Company in 1873, relocating with his family from London to the Port of Lyttelton where he became NZSC marine superintendent for the colony. He then moved to Wellington as NZSC branch manager, joined the newly-commissioned Wellington Harbour Board and played a major role in developing harbour facilities there. He retired back to London, with his wife and two of their daughters, in 1898 after more than two decades of active involvement in public and community affairs. Driven by the Wind is based on a memoir Captain Rose wrote for his family in 1911, extensively researched and expanded by Nelson author Karen Stade and published at the behest of Henry's great grandson Alastair Rose.