Australian Desperadoes: The Incredible Story of How Australian Gangsters Terrorised California
The Sydney “Ducks” or “Coves” were a rag-tag collection of unsavoury individuals from penal colonies in Australia who sailed off to the California Gold Rush and then held the burgeoning city of San Francisco to ransom in the early 1850s. From their haunts near Telegraph Hill, and led largely by former convict John Stuart, they set out to ravage the local population through extortion, robbery, assault and murder. They were also held responsible for burning the place down on a regular basis. When the city fathers, including the legendary Sam Brannan, finally had enough, they formed the Committee of Vigilance to hunt them down and hang them high.
This story is not as well-known as it might be, and so it’s a pity that this work is as unruly as the Vigilante pursuits and double-dealing became as it tries to pack in every individual who ever set foot on the Barbary Coast at the expense of a more streamlined focus. But it is the lack of concision with great swathes of text directly quoted from florid and hyperbolic mid-19th century sources that tax the reader the most.
The quintessential tale of the Ducks vs. the Vigilantes is yet to be told, and it may well be that a good novelist will be the one to get to grips with this fantastic material and whip it into shape in order to reach a wider audience in both Australia and the United States.