This story is set
in London in 1857 and mainly features the East End and the Isle of Dogs where
Mr Brunel’s great ship is under construction in the dockyard there.
The ship is called
Leviathan but was later named the Great Eastern as she was to trade with
eastern countries and was built to travel non- stop to the far east. She was
the largest ship in the world at that time, so being a fan of Brunel I
particularly enjoyed reading this book.
Our hero is Dr
Johnathan Silver who is incarcerated in Newgate prison having been found guilty
of murdering his wife. He is sharing the cell with another man who tells him
that they are going to be freed during the night before they are due to be
hanged in the morning.
With some bribery
of the guards and administration of sleeping draughts they are rescued by the
man’s young daughter who is dressed as a boy. They make their escape over the
roof tops of the jail but the old boy slips off the roof and is killed, but
undaunted his daughter Eliza still helps Silver to escape, especially as he had
stopped her sliding off the roof too.
Eliza takes him
back to her chandlery shop in the east end where he decides to find out who
actually killed his wife because we soon learn that it was not him and he was
wrongly accused.
He suspects the
senior engineer working on the Leviathan’s engines, as he was a previous suitor
of his wife, and using Eliza’s contacts at the shipyard he gets a job as a
carpenter working on the massive slipway being built to launch the Leviathan.
And so we follow
Silver in his hunt for justice, aided and abetted by Eliza who it turns out is
an accomplished cat burglar, breaking into rich people’s home to steal their
jewellery.
It is a great
story as you learn what it was like living in London in those days with all the
unpleasant smells, the smoke and the complete lack of any health and safety
measures!
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