Brendan Whiting

Who was Brendan Whiting?

Brendan Whiting was an Australian author and researcher, who wrote non-fiction books.

Whiting was born in Australia, and lost his father during the Second World War when he was 6 years old. His first book, Ship of Courage, researched the Australian cruiser HMAS Perth, on which his father died. The ship was sunk by the Japanese in 1942 during the Battle of Sunda Strait. In that book, Whiting researched and focused on the lives of the crew, rather than providing military details of the battle itself.

His second book, Victims of Tyranny, gave an account of the lives of the Irish rebels, the Fitzgerald convict brothers who were sent to help open up the north of Van Diemen's Land in 1805, under the leadership of the explorer Colonel William Paterson. It discussed the cruelty of the transportation system that the Irish rebels were subjected to and how the brothers eventually won their freedom.

Much of the media publicity Whiting received was due to his last book, The Shroud Story in which he presented evidence disputing the validity of the 1988 Carbon 14 dating tests on the Shroud of Turin.