Port Essington

For many of the Royal Marines sent to Port Essington, life was a living hell of malaria, scurvy, termites, shipwrecks, cyclones, boredom, isolation and death. For one man, it was the ''most useless, ill-managed hold in Her Majesty''s dominions'' which deserved ''all the abuse that has ever been heaped upon it''.
But it wasn''t always so: in the beginning, French visitors shared their best Bordeaux ...