Port After Stormie Seas

Port After Stormie Seas

Port After Stormie Seas is a dramatic and heart warming story. It tells how Mary Grant Bruce’s grandmother, Louisa Ann Grant (later Whittakers) and her aunt, Miss Martha Louisa Moore (1804-1895), came to live in Australia.  It is a fictionalised account of the true story.  Some names are changed, and the timeframe is compressed, but the gist is fairly accurate.

Martha was an outstanding woman of great spirit.  She took her recently-orphaned nieces, Louisa and “Anne” (really Mary) from uncongenial relatives in Edinburgh and emigrated with them to Sydney, arriving in December 1835.  Later, she founded Moore Hall, Australia’s first school for young ladies, in what is now called Woollahra.  It was very successful, with boarders from all over eastern Australia and New Zealand.

Port After Stormie Seas is probably Mary Grant Bruce’s finest work.  The ABC broadcast it on its morning book reading in November 1983.

It is now available in The Whittakers Story, of which it is a core component. Click here if you want to buy that book.

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The Trustee of The Mary Grant Bruce Family Trust owns the extant copyrights to this story.

First Published in: May 1938
First Publication: Blackwood’s Magazine
Place First Published: Edinburgh

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