New Zealand Disasters

Hardback, 1963, 208 pages, dust jacket covered in plastic with blue tape along top and bottom edges, foxing at page edges, otherwise good secondhand condition.

From interviews, pioneers' narratives, old newspaper files and diaries the author has reconstructed the desperate days when disaster struck New Zealand settlements, cities and travellers. His research covers almost the whole period of European history in New Zealand. His chapters run chronologically, commencing with fire, storm and earthquake in Wellington in the 1840s and ending with the railway disaster at Tangiwai on Christmas Eve, 1953, which cast a shadow over the Queen's visit. In the century between these tragic events New Zealanders suffered and died in landslides, earthquakes, volcanic eruption, shipwrecks, mine and tunnel disasters, floods, epidemic, tornadoes, aircraft and railway accidents, disastrous fires and mountain tragedies. The most calamitous of these have been investigated by the author and retold graphically in the pages of this book. His book is not a morbid investigation into tragedy for tragedy's sake but rather it serves to show the triumphs of ordinary men and women in the face of misfortune and misadventure...