Granville Allen Mawer, a former senior public servant in Australia, is a historian who has specialized in military, maritime and exploration history. His previous publications include Most Perfectly Safe: The Convict Shipwreck Disasters of 1833-42; Ahab’s Trade: The Saga of South Seas Whaling; South by Northwest: The Magnetic Crusade and the Contest for Antarctica; Diary of a Spitfire Pilot; Incognita: The Invention and Discovery of Terra Australis; A Voyage to New Holland and Round the World and South Sea Argonaut: James Colnett and the Enlargement of the Pacific.