Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 Friday Essay: Tall Ships, Tall Tales, and the Mysteries of Eugenia Falleni
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'I’m an unlikely sailor of tall ships. Too clumsy, too prone to motion sickness, too white and nervous about symbols of colonisation. Nevertheless, in 2013 I found myself up the mast in the middle of the Tasman sea, surrounded by nothing but open ocean. I was researching a novel about Eugenia Falleni, an Italian-born-woman-turned-Sydney-dwelling-man who was tried for the murder of his wife in 1920. As the commonly told version of the story would have it, Falleni “disguised herself” as a cabin boy and sailed from Wellington to Sydney on a Norwegian barque in the last years of the 19th century. According to some enthusiastic (but factually dubious) accounts, Falleni “roistered” around the Pacific, calling in at Honolulu, Papeetee, and Suva, drank with men, and passed as a man, but arrived in Sydney pregnant.' (Introduction)

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Last amended 2 Aug 2017 14:03:52
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-tall-ships-tall-tales-and-the-mysteries-of-eugenia-falleni-81170 Friday Essay: Tall Ships, Tall Tales, and the Mysteries of Eugenia Fallenismall AustLit logo The Conversation
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