Saltwater Vampires (published in August 2010) by Kirsty Eagar is a new addition to the burgeoning volumes of vampire literature for teenagers and young adults with an Australian twist. Eagar's description of the surf and understanding of the art of wave riding is reminiscent of the work of Tim Winton, while her vampires originated from a historic ship-wreck off the coast of Western Australia in 1629.
Saltwater Vampires is set in the coastal, holiday town of Rocky Head. It is typical of many small communities in Australia, blessed by a surf break and boasting a caravan park to accommodate the population which swells during the summer holiday season. Apart from its surf Rocky Head has another major attraction; an annual rock music festival which reaches its climax on New Year's Eve.
Australian Slant to Vampire Legend in Saltwater Vampires:
However, this year it is not just young rock music fans who are being drawn to the Rocky Head music festival. Four survivors of the Batavia shipwreck of 1629 who formed a pact to become vampires and have preyed on unsuspecting victims over the subsequent generations, plan on a killing spree as the festival counts down to the New Year.
Teenager, Jamie Mackie, has his own problems leading up to the New Year. He is still haunted by a recent boating accident in which he almost drowned. The accident also destroyed his relationship with his former best friend, Dale, who has also been left scarred by the accident. Jamie's restlessness drives him to go surfing at night, an experience that exposes him to the curse of the vampire.
Jamie and his friends have a limited amount of time to save Rocky Head from the vampires' nefarious plan and at the same time prevent Jamie from becoming one of the undead. In the process new relationships will be formed and old ones will be resurrected. Saltwater Vampires is a thrilling tale for young adult readers with the right balance of blood sucking violence and teenage issues; imagine vampires arriving in Home and Away's Summer Bay and is a worthy follow up to Kirsty Eagar's first novel Raw Blue which received overwhelmingly positive reviews.
Batavia Shipwreck of 1629:
Eagar drew on the historic Batavia shipwreck of 1629 as inspiration for her novel. The Batavia was a ship belonging to the Dutch East Indies Company bound for the Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia. Dutch ships of the era exploited the roaring 40s to speed up their voyage out but as methods of calculating longitude at that time were very inaccurate, a number of ships foundered on the Western Australian coast. Some theories say that Dutch shipwreck survivors met up with the local indigenous inhabitants and interbred with them, producing blonde headed Aboriginals in some areas.
The Batavia foundered on the Abrolhos Islands off the coast of Western Australia. Eagar's vampires are based on people who in real life were on board the Dutch ship. Their leader is Jeronimus Cornelisz. In researching her novel Eagar visited the Geraldton museum which houses an exhibit on the Batavia. She also aknowledges her use of Mike Dash's comprehensive account of the Batavia wreck, Batavia's Graveyard and Hugh Edwards' Islands of Angry Ghosts in providing authentic details about Cornelisz and his fellow survivors.
Cornelisz completed an apprenticeship as an apothecary; in modern terms as a chemist or pharmacist. However, according to Dash he would not have travelled to Java out of choice but may have been forced to leave Holland in a hurry either because of financial problems or because of his reputation as a heretic. He was known to be an acquaintance of the painter, Torrentius, whose beliefs, considered heretical at the time, saw him imprisoned. Eagar's Cornelisz is a member of a heretical secret society.
Jeronimus Cornelisz Leads Killing Spree After Wreck of Batavia:I
n real life Cornelisz had planned a mutiny with other dissatisfied members of the crew but the shipwreck happened before he could follow through with his plans. When the ship's commander, Pelsaert, sailed for Batavia on Java in the longboat with forty other survivors, Cornelisz became the leader of the group remaining on the Abrolhos.
With the help of his fellow mutineers and others who became his followers, Cornelisz first separated the survivors on different islands in the group, on the pretext of exploratory missions for food and water, so that he could control them more easily. Then he and his followers embarked on a killing spree in which neither men, women or children were spared. It was a spree that Cornelisz would eventually pay for when Commander Pelsaert returned with a rescue mission from Java.
Among Cornelisz' followers were sailor, Gerrit Haas, a survivor of scurvy with few remaining teeth, the cabin boy Jan Pelgrom and David Zeevanck. In Eagar's Saltwater Vampires these four men form a pact to become vampires after the wreck of the Batavia and return in 2010 to complete their killing spree.
Eagar's knowledg of the surf comes through in Saltwater Vampires. She changed from a successful career in the world of business so she could spend more time in the surf and has Sydney's northern beaches as her home. With Saltwater Vampires she has a distinctively Australian addition to the genre of young adult vampire literature.
Stuart McCulloch - From the idyllic location of a national park in Tasmania Stuart McCulloch writes about his interests of sport, movies and history and ...
