Jess Kidd's The Night Ship is a wonderful historical novel based around a true life event, the sinking of the Dutch sailing ship Batavia and the terrible fate of the survivors on the inhospitable islands off the coast of Western Australia where they end up. The two main characters are children and the narrative follows a dual timeline switching between a young girl on the ill-fated ship in 1629 and a young boy coming to live with his grandfather on Beacon Island in the 1980's. I really enjoyed the chapters about the ship, the writing is excellent and really conjures up the horrors of undertaking long sea journeys in that time period, these were my favourite parts of the story. Although they are centuries apart, the author very deftly links the stories of the two children. with clever use of repeated phrases and I was totally drawn in to their lives.