The Night Ship is the story of two children separated by time but with much in common. Both have recently lost their mothers and are now travelling to start new lives with relatives they barely know.
The book opens in 1628 with Mayken and her nursemaid Imke on board The Batavia, bound for the Dutch East Indies. They are leaving their home in Haarlem to join Mayken's wealthy merchant father in his fabled marble mansion with roses around the doorway.
In alternating chapters we meet Gil. It's 1989 and he has arrived on Beacon Island, a remote and bleak outcrop of coral rubble off the west Australian coast, where his grandfather Joss scrapes a living from fishing. Beacon Island is also the place where The Batavia ran aground and was wrecked.
There are more parallels between the two than the early deaths of their mothers. Both are misfits - Mayken is a tomboy desperate to investigate life Below World, the decks where the sailors and soldiers live, whereas Gil is a sensitive and serious soul used to playing dress-up with his mum and ill-suited to the physical rigours of life on the island. Both are also drawn to the supernatural, to the monsters of myth and folktale as they try to make sense of their worlds.
As the archaeologists pick over the remains of the shipwreck in Gil's time and the ship slowly sails towards its terrible fate in Mayken's, the two children's stories entwine.
Inspired by the true and horrific story of The Batavia, The Night Ship is bewitching, heartbreaking and utterly compelling.