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The Third Son of a Duke

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Six weeks in a boat can be a long or short time, depending on the circumstances.  To use a pun, of sorts, our protagonist is going to be all at sea with his feelings, while knowing that family obligations, and the upcoming parting at Melbourne with those he had spent quite some time with, will be leaving the ship.

That is going to be an interesting chapter, because there is a sad parting and an unexpected one.

The thing here is that the intrepid adventurers all seem to come together at some point over the voyage, and since they are all trying to achieve the same thing, though some still have that ‘so-called’ outdated idea of marriage as security, that notion of independent women was stirring within this group.

Our protagonist is more like a fly on the wall than actively stirring the pot, but it is a theme of those days, the end of a golden period of emigration, of luxury ships, and the start of something new. 

Of course, it would take a World War to change the status of women and their ability to work and prove themselves.  It’s how to subtly weave this into the story.

But, since the story is following our protagonist, he is off to Queensland and a life he never expected could have happened to him in a million years.  It will be so different to the cold, wet, green lands of Derbyshire back home; culture shock doesn’t even begin to describe it.

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1655 words, for a total of 19145 words.