Bloodlust – Book Summary

“Bloodlust” begins in 1851 with young American scientist, Daniel Ruth, standing in the Philadelphia study of Dr Samuel Morton, America’s most famous phrenologist, holding a human skull in his hand. Morton warns him that it belonged to a cannibal. Daniel is puzzled as the skull seems to be Caucasian in size and character, yet Dr Morton’s experiments had proved they skulls held the largest brains and were the most intelligent of the human species. The notion of a white cannibal piques Daniel’s scientific curiosity and Morton urges him to go to Tasmania to discover who Pearce was and what made him a cannibal.

Without even telling his parents Daniel travels halfway around the world to Tasmania and begins exploring the Pearce legend. Through an ex-jailer he uncovers the existence of a journal Pearce had written during his final days, which had been left in the abandoned prison at “Hell’s Gates” where Pearce had been imprisoned.

Daniel sails to the wild, uninhabited west coast and is set ashore on an abandoned Sarah Island where Pearce was held for two years. Immediately, he feels an uncomfortable presence, but puts it down to the ghosts of the past. He finds Pearce’s journal amongst the ruins of the old penitentiary block and begins to read.

The main part of the book, set in the 1820’s, begins with Pearce sailing through Hell’s Gates – the convict name for the entrance to Macquarie Harbour. On the ship Pearce befriends another convict called Alexander Dalton and they come ashore together. Sarah Island has been stripped back to the bare earth as though civilisation itself has been re-born there. It is run by a Lieutenant Cuthbertson described in his army record as; “a sadistic bully with unnatural tastes”

Pearce and Dalton are assigned to a logging crew and the early chapters of the book explore the harsh way of life on Sarah Island – the unrelenting cycle of work and punishment. The cold, hunger and cruelty quickly breaks some of the convicts and there are a series of murders – the perpetrators preferring to die rather than live. With law and order breaking down on the island, Dalton, Pearce and six other members of the logging crew steal a boat, but are forced to ditch it and escape into the wilderness on foot.

Forced to trudge through the very wild, prehistoric landscape, the shine comes off their freedom very quickly and a week later they are out of food. The Pandora’s Box is opened when one lets slip the words “I could eat a piece of a man.” The most experienced member of the group, an ex-mariner Bob Greenhill, supports the idea referring to what he calls “the custom of the sea” – whereby shipwrecked mariners sacrificed a shipmate so the group can survive. They dismiss the idea, but are forced to return to after failing to find food by other means. To Pearce’s horror they vote to take Pearce’s friend, Dalton, but he knows that if he dissents they’ll take him instead. As they continue their terrible journey through the harsh wilderness, the group resorts to the worst sort of savagery. Human flesh becomes their staple diet and the battle for survival continues until only Greenhill and Pearce and remain. Finally, Pearce wears down the former mariner and kills him.

After forty nine days in the forests, Pearce finally reaches civilisation – making him the first white man in history to traverse the west coast of Tasmania. He’s picked up by two bushrangers, Churton and Davis, with whom he spends a couple of months living off the fat of the land before being betrayed and re-captured by the redcoats. Realising that he will hang for being a bushranger anyway, Pearce makes a clean breast of it and confesses to murder and cannibalism. To his astonishment they won’t believe him without the bodies and he is returned to Macquarie Harbour where he is provoked into escaping again along with a younger convict.

This time Pearce kills and eats his young companion before he’s even run out of food. Fearing that he’s getting the taste for human flesh – Peace surrenders and for a second time confesses to cannibalism and murder. This time he shows them the body and is sent to Hobart for trial. Pearce is hung on July 24, 1824.

The book ends with Daniel Ruth, who, has built up a healthy fear and respect for Sarah Island and its strange past as Pearce’s story unfolded before him. When the ship he’d chartered to take him back to Hobart is wrecked by a storm and he finds himself marooned in the wilderness with seven sailors, Daniel realises that Pearce may have died 30 years before, but the Bloodlust that haunted him still lives on.