John Wheatley

A Golden Mist John Wheatley

In1859, the Royal Charter, a steam clipper returning to Liverpool from Melbourne, carrying 500 passengers and crew, and laden with bullion from the Australian gold fields, was wrecked in hurricane conditions at Moelfre, on the coast of Anglesey. Only forty people survived. A hundred and fifty years later, Saffy Williams, visiting the UK from South Africa, finds evidence that one of her ancestors lived in Moelfre at the time. In two fictional contemporary narratives, the diary of Sophia Davis on board the Royal Charter, and the memoir of Richard Williams, a young man living in Moelfre in 1859, the story of the lost treasure ship and the lives and passions of people associated with it, is told.