The Luck of the Irish

The luck of the Irish was chronic bad luck, as their sad history attests. That's how it looked for 250 Irish convicts when their ship, the Hive , sank ignominiously off the NSW coast in 1835. Miraculously all survived, guided to safety by local Aboriginal people. They landed at a time when the so-called slave colony was at its height, ruled by the lash and the chain gang. Yet as Babette Smith tracked the lives of the people aboard the Hive , she discovered a very different story. Most were assig