Cirrus@Austlit

To a fourteen-year-old Cornish lad in the 1830's there seemed no harm in assisting his father and brother to smuggle brandy ashore. But when the gang is surprised by preventives, he is captured and sentenced to fourteen years' transportation in the penal colony in New South Wales. (Publisher's blurb inside front cover). The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1993): 387 comments: 'The Canary Jacket (1968) tells the story of the first Richard Jago, caught smuggling, who endures the hardships of life in the colonies.' It is related to The Jago Secret (1966) which describes the Australian Jagos searching for their ancestors in Cornwall.