Books by Paul W Simpson

It is 1887 and the glory days of the clipper City of Adelaide and her last Captain are over. Love, loss, ambition, family betrayal and the mysterious disappearance of a ship carrying the heirs to a vast family fortune. Such was the nature of the lives and disappearances of Grace and Captain Edward Alston in 1890. A Victorian era sea captain and his wife spend the last days of their lives filled with love, danger, familial conflict and mystery.

Sister to the famous flyer, Swordfish, the Gosport was the last clipper built in antebellum Virginia. Coming from the yard of shipbuilders Page & Allen, she started life as a Western Ocean packet carrying timber, to Europe before returning to New Orleans with French and German migrants. The clipper's hold would then be filled with bales of cotton for Liverpool's mills. Ole Virginia Bound records unwritten tales of the states last clipper and sheds light upon previously hidden period in America's maritime history.

The Loch Sloy was built for Aitken, Lilburn & Co of Glasgow. She sailed between Britain and Australia for more than twenty years. In that time she established a reputation as a crack wool clipper. Windjammer, the story of the clipper ship Loch Sloy is not an adventure nor is it a romance or a tragedy, even though it contains elements of all three.The ship, her captains, officers, crew and passengers, all those her sailed upon her call out from the past to have their stories told. The Loch Sloy's' keel was laid down in mid-1877. By August the construction of the hull and deck fittings had been completed. After her first marine survey, the masts were stepped in, and by the end of October the Loch Sloy was all but complete. The clipper lasted twenty one years before coming to grief on the jagged shore of Kangaroo Island during the predawn hours of April 24th 1899. The final chapter of the Loch Sloy like her unfortunate passengers and crew was buried beneath the ever shifting sands of Maupertuis Bay.

Around Cape Horn Once More is the story of the French Bounty Clipper Ship, Montebello. She was built in Nantes, France in 1900 and was lost on the rugged and lonely south coast of Kangaroo Island, South Australia in 1906. This book is a tale of the adventures of the Montebello and the men who sailed her around the globe. It brings to light a period of France's maritime history that has never before been told in such thrilling and dramatic detail. "we heard the roar of breakers, and then we knew that we were close to the land, and there was still no visible light. All hands turned out to put on canvas with a view to heading the vessel off the shore, but we had received the warning too late and within a few minutes we had struck on the fearful rocks. The ship shivered all over with the shock. I shall never forget the sensation it created. She bumped hard several times and threatened to go to pieces at any moment. The seas broke over her from end to end."