Minerva Reef Fourteen Desperate Weeks with the Castaway Tongans. By Olaf Ruhen. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR AND THE CAPTAIN. David Fifita, + David's wife: Alapasita Fifita

Minerva Reef Fourteen Desperate Weeks with the Castaway Tongans. By Olaf Ruhen.

 SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR AND THE CAPTAIN David Fifita. Also signed by David's wife: Alapasita Fifita.

Publisher: Minerva Bookshop Limited, first edition, 1963.

Good hardback with jacket. Some rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, faded spine,  inscription to end-paper, binding firm, pages very good, minor marks and shelf wear. Jacket is rubbed with some chipping, loss and tears to edges, spine is faded.

200 pages, illustrated.

On the night of 7 July 1962 the twenty ton cutter Tuaikaepau, sailing from Tonga to Auckland, ran hard upon the outer edge of Minerva Reef, 380 miles south of Suva in Fiji. Heavy seas and the sharp teeth of the coral quickly broke the cutter to pieces, and her complement of seventeen Tongans found themselves without even a small boat on a reef that was totally submerged except during the few hours of low tide each day.

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