She sailed from Cork on January 8th, 1835, B. H. Peck, master; Dr. Stevenson, R.N., surgeon.  She had on board 150 female prisoners and thirty-three of their children, nine free women and their twenty-two children, and a crew of twenty-six.  Several ships had been wrecked on King’s Island, and when a vessel approached it the mate of the watch warned his men to keep a bright look out.  He said, “King’s Island is inhabited by anthropophagi, the bloodiest man eaters ever known; and, if you don’t want to go to pot, you had better keep your eyes skinned.”  So the look-out man did not go to sleep.

Nevertheless, the ‘Neva’ went ashore on the Harbinger reef, on May 13th unshipped her rudder and parted into four pieces.  Only nine men and thirteen women reached the island; they were nearly naked and had nothing to eat, and they wandered along the beach during the night, searching amongst the wreckage.  At last they found a puncheon of rum, upended it, stove in the head, and drank.  The thirteen women then lay down on the sand close together, and slept.  The night was very cold, and Robinson, an apprentice, covered the women as well as he could with some pieces of sail and blankets soaked with salt water.  The men walked about the beach all night to keep themselves warm, being afraid to go inland for fear of the cannibal blackfellows.  In the morning they went to rouse the women, and found that seven of the thirteen were dead.

The surviving men were the master, B. H. Peck, Joseph Bennet, Thomas Sharp, John Watson, Edward Calthorp, Thomas Hines, Robert Ballard, John Robinson, and William Kinderey.  The women were Ellen Galvin, Mary Stating, Ann Cullen, Rosa Heland, Rose Dunn, and Margaret Drury.

For three weeks these people lived almost entirely on shellfish.  They threw up a barricade on the shore, above high water mark, to protect themselves against the cannibals.  The only chest that came ashore unbroken was that of Robinson the apprentice, and in it there was a canister of powder.  A flint musket was also found among the wreckage, and with the flint and steel they struck a light and made a fire.  When they went down to the beach in search of shellfish, one man kept guard at the barricade, and looked out for the blackfellows; his musket was loaded with powder and pebbles.

Three weeks passed away before any of the natives appeared, but at last they were seen approaching along the shore from the south.  At the first alarm all the ship-wrecked people ran to the barricade for shelter, and the men armed themselves with anything in the shape of weapons they could find.  But their main hope of victory was the musket.  They could not expect to kill many cannibals with one shot, but the flash and report would be sure to strike them with terror, and put them to flight.