One imagines that Hollywood studios will be bidding furiously for this raunchy tale, as described by Reuters:
Violence, drunkenness and all manner of debauchery featured on a six-month voyage on a migrant ship bound for Australia 170 years ago, a newly discovered diary reveals. The raunchy tale of anarchy on the high seas is recorded by a junior officer, James Bell, aboard “The Planter” which sailed to Adelaide from Deptford in east London in 1838.
Alcohol-fueled acts of “great violence” involving officers, mates and even the ship’s doctor are all recounted. In the green vellum-bound journal, Bell tells how the captain regularly entertained two of the 11 daughters of a doctor-preacher from Liverpool called McGowan.
He wrote: “our captain of course could not want a mistress till he returned to his own in…