Book launch: Piracy in the Bay – The Great Nelson Gold Robbery

Join us for the launch of Piracy in the Bay – The Great Nelson Gold Robbery, which details the greatest single act of theft in Australian history.

In April 1852, the barque, Nelson – Captain Walter Wright commander – lay at anchor in Hobson’s Bay, preparing to sail for London with more than 8,000 ounces of gold secured in her hold. That night, a group of armed men boarded the vessel, overpowered her crew, shot her first mate, and escaped with a fortune – worth today more than $35 million dollars.

Piracy in the Bay is the first comprehensive study of this remarkable event. Drawing on trial transcripts, eyewitness testimony, contemporary newspaper accounts and unpublished family archives, Paul Wright – great grandson of the Nelson‘s captain – reconstructs the crime with precision and insight. It is a story backed up by never-before published photographs of some of the principal players in the Nelson affair.

But far beyond the drama of the robbery itself, the book situates the piracy within the wider social, political and economic upheavals of the gold rush era. It explores the implications for colonial law enforcement, the press, and public attitudes toward convict transportation, while also challenging novelist Marcus Clarke’s defamatory insinuations against Captain Walter Wright.

Meticulously researched and compellingly told, Piracy in the Bay restores the Nelson robbery to its rightful place as one of the most extraordinary episodes in Australian history.