Home » News » South Australian shipwreck story retold as graphic novel in new Maritime Museum exhibition

5 July, 2024

South Australian shipwreck story retold as graphic novel in new Maritime Museum exhibition

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A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck: Rediscovering South Australian, a new exhibition about the wrecked British barque, opens this July at the Australian National Maritime Museum.

The exhibition showcases the story in a unique in visually stunning medium of a graphic novel.

A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck: Rediscovering South Australian graphic novel.

An image from A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck: Rediscovering South Australian.

Based on an upcoming graphic novel by Professor Holger Deuter, University of Applied Sciences, Kaiserlautern, Germany, and the museum’s Dr James Hunter, the exhibition showcases maritime archaeological research and highlights the variety of engaging and immersive ways in which these important stories can be told to, and appreciated by, a wide variety of people.

It combines award-winning VR (Virtual Reality) technology with comic art-style to enable guests to explore and experience the South Australian and its shipwreck site.

An image from A Graphic Tale of Shipwreck: Rediscovering South Australian.

Guests can also experience South Australian’s 2018 discovery and subsequent investigation by being able to view original and reproduction archival documents, and descriptions of archaeological techniques that reveal how it was finally discovered 183 years after its loss, with video and audio content to explain these processes.

This exhibition will bring to life South Australia’s oldest known shipwreck and provide a unique visual perspective of this historic event and the people associated with it.

Museum CEO and Director, Daryl Karp, said: “This exhibition highlights an exciting new way of storytelling, bringing to life these significant stories in Australian maritime history. We’re thrilled to be showcasing the brilliant designs of James and Holger, but also this groundbreaking new technology which allows the discovery of shipwrecks to become an immersive experience.”

Dr Hunter is Curator of Naval Heritage and Archaeology at the Australian National Maritime Museum, an associate lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at Flinders University in South Australia and a Research Fellow at the South Australian Maritime Museum and a research associate of the non-profit organisation, Ships of Exploration and Discovery Research.

“Too often exhibitions showcase the aftermath of shipwrecks,” he said. “Rarely do we see the process of a ship’s destruction visually represented. This exhibition will allow visitors a rare perspective of this historically significant event by providing captivating imagery and objects that highlight South Australian, its loss, and its shipwreck site.”

The free exhibition opens tomorrow, 6 July, at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney.

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