Cap’n ‘Ancock

Ruler of Australia’s Little Cornwall

by Mandie Robinson

Rigby, 1978, [First Edition], ISBN 0727006061, black and white photographic plates, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, front flyleaf removed, no inscriptions, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing and bumping (see photographs)

“Cap’n ‘Ancock “reigned” over Moonta in South Australia for thirty-four years.  It was said that his initials (H.R.H.) were appropriate.  In 1864at the age of twenty-eight he became superintendent of the Moonta mining Company, and in the years to follow he ran what were then the richest monies in Australia – the Moonta and Wallaroo copper mines on Yorke Peninsula in South Australia.  Though younger than many of the miners and mine captains, he knew, apparently instinctively, what was best for the mines, the miners, the growing township of Moonta became “his” town, the people became “his” people.
The history of the Moonta mines and the life-story of the man who was Moonta for thirty-four years are irrevocably intertwined.  Captain Henry Richard Hancock was a man to be reckoned with, and no one knew that better than the directors of the Moonta Mining Company who allowed him full rein in more ways than one.”