Author's Introduction: This play is not merely a comedy of love, or an evocation of New Zealand, or the dramatization of a Maori legend; it also seeks to express what I must call a view or vision of life. ... I was looking through James Cowan's charming little Fairy Folk Tales of the Maori when I came across the chapter which Cowan calls "Whanawhana of the Bush": the legend of The Golden Lover. The whole play thereupon flashed into my mind complete.'
Introduction by Douglas Stewart. (1962: 8, 10).
"Shipwreck, written in 1951, recreates the infamous mutiny that occurred after the Dutch ship Batavia foundered off the northwest Australian coast in 1629. It is a complex and literary play which depicts with sympathy the anarchic mutineers Cornelius, Huyssen and Seevanck."
"This book 'Shipwreck: A Poetic Drama', was written by Douglas Stewart and illustrated with drawings and engravings by Norman Lindsay...The book is divided into three 'Acts'. which tell the story of the shipwreck of the BATAVIA."
Source: Australian National Maritime Museum http://collections.anmm.gov.au/objects/20202/shipwreck-a-poetic-drama;jsessionid=29E05D7347DA4C02D5CAB8860A347F0F
