Wrecks and the relics of wrecks have always fascinated. Their search and finding brings the excitement of the chase, their identification involves detective sleuthing, their background entails historical research; the very sight of them evokes the adventure of their days of sailing, and the drama of their night of death. Australian writing is rich in books about them, with earlier emphasis more on the adventure and the drama, less on the historical research and the archaeological interpretations. But with the coming of modern underwater techniques and sophisticated instruments, the haphazard sampling of maritime ruins has changed into the modern science of marine archaeology. The enlightened Maritime Archaeology Act (W.A.) and Historic Shipwrecks Act (Commonwealth) have made these relics a part of our national heritage, the Marine Archaeology course at the Western Australian Institute of Technology has formalized the new science, and the Western Australian Museum has built up a compendious catalogue of all the wrecks ever recorded on the Western Australian coast, together with all facts known about them.

Graeme Henderson is in charge of this work at the Western Australian Museum, and his Unfinished Voyages decks out this catalogue, elaborating where necessary, expanding the historical background, adding maps and sketches, providing footnotes and references, and transmuting the formal catalogue into discursive reading. Nevertheless, he eschews the sensational, and perhaps underplays the drama. When there is quotation from contemporary newspapers (as with Lancier), or better still a rare eye-witness account (as with Governor Endicott) the change of style is evident.