My books fall into two main non-fiction categories; those related to maritime history-by far the larger at this moment-and all other.
With regard to my maritime history books, I further divided them into two series:
The New Jersey Shipwreck Series
The Great Atlantic Shipwreck series
The New Jersey Series examines shipwrecks dating from the Revoluntary War through the 1960s. They are generally shorter in length than the Great Atlantic Series.
Here are the books in the New Jeresy Series:
HMS Zebra (1777)
ENSNARED-THE LOSS OF HMS ZEBRA
Listen to a short description of Ensnared:
Perasto-1839
CATALYST-THE LOSS OF THE PERASTO
Listen to a short description of Catalyst:
John Minturn-1846
Great Isaac–1947
The Fog Shrouded Sea
Listen to a short description of The Fog Shrouded Sea:
The second group of maritime history books are full-length (220 pages plus) and are what I like to call “ship biographies”, meaning the entire history of the vessel, from birth, life at sea and their final demise. Many of these books attribute the loss to gross mismanagement by captain and crew and in some instances criminal behavior by the commanders.
Here is a list of the Great Atlantic Shipwreck Series:
S.S. City of Glasgow
Listen to a short description of Let Glasgow Flourish:
Let Glasgow Flourish
The Disappearance of the SS City of Glasgow
The Steamship City of Glasgow disappeared “without a trace ” in March 1854. No bodies were ever recovered, no wreckage ever found. Five hundred passengers and the ship simply vanished.
Left behind were family members pacing the Philadelphia wharf expecting her to arrive “any day”. Newspapers from three continents excused her late arrival because of weather or mechanical breakdowns.
Let Glasgow Flourish is a biography of her short life and postulates where and how she disappeared in the North Atlantic in 1854. Included are many personal stories of the men and women who sailed with her starting from her maiden voyage in 1850 until her demise. Let Glasgow Flourish recounts the glory of her days and the sad afterthought of her disappearance for those still awaiting her arrival today.
Class Distinction
A True Story of Social and Maritime Disaster
Class Distinction, A True Story of Social and Maritime Disaster is published through Lodestar Books (London) and retells the 1833 disaster that claimed the lives of 200 British emigrants to the Australian continent. The disaster came upon the passengers and crew without warning; skies were clear, the sea becalmed, and the ship and its crew in good order. Two days before, all had celebrated the “passing of the line”: the crossing to the south of the equator. The tranquility they were now experiencing was in contrast to their first days at sea, two months earlier.
In November, 1832, the Hibernia departed from its Liverpool quay and encountered a storm so vicious that many ships were lost off the British coast and required Captain Brend to return to port for repairs.
When they returned to sea a week later they enjoyed favorable weather for the next two months and the passengers and crew settled into a steady rhythm. All that changed on February 5, 1833.
Just before the noonday sextant readings, first mate Samuel Geddes, was entering the ship’s “spirit room”. He and the young apprentice were drawing off a bucketful of brandy for the crew’s daily allotment. Geddes, however was already intoxicated, and his initial and subsequent actions caused a fire that grew rapidly throughout the ship.
The panic and confusion that ensued would claim the lives of most of the families aboard, while the ship went through sequential destruction. Three boats were deployed and eighty souls were able to pull away from the conflagration and into open water. The survivors now found themselves literally at the midpoint of the Atlantic Ocean, equidistant between Africa and South America and just south of the equator.
The survivors spent a week at sea in boats so porous that they required hourly bailing by eight men. Ultimately all were rescued by a British male convict-ship, the Lotus and that is where things go awry.
The Lotus initially hesitates to permit the survivors aboard. The concerns lie in the inconvenience, food allocation and greater security needed to accommodate eighty unplanned individuals. One forcefulLotus officer considers re-provisioning the boats and casting them off again with good wishes.
Fortunately for the survivors, the leaky boats that require constant attention are neglected during the discussion and sink alongside the ship. This forces the hand of the rigid official and he reluctantly takes in the survivors.
But wealth and class have its rewards. Those who were originally cabin passengers aboard the Hibernia are now afforded “every comfort, every luxury”. But those who were steerage passengers, including young women and families, are sent below deck to live among the convicts.
Class Distinction then details the lives of four convicts and several passengers in the days and years after the Hibernia disaster. The book follows the conflicting newspaper accounts to the defamation trial of an aggrieved official against a newspaper owner who dared to portray the accounts of the lowly steerage passengers.
Class Distinction is much more than the narrative of a 19th century shipwreck and an ensuing rescue. It provides a lens into British policy and the treatment of the underclass, from both the emigrant and convict perspective.
The life sentences imposed on convicts and the banishment to Tasmania for stealing a rope of onions provide concrete examples of the issues of the day. And the experience of steerage passengers, even those rescued from a disaster at sea, highlights the hypocrisy of British society in the early 19th century. Only those privileged at the top of society could earn “every comfort, every luxury”.
Undiminished Violence
The John Minturn storm of 1846
1845 was a quiet year along the eastern seaboard of the United States; no hurricanes or tropical storms recorded or reported. But the residents along the coast knew it was an aberration; Mother Nature keeps a ledger and things need to balance out over time.
So when 1846 arrived, the concern was real and folks kept a weather-eye looking for the next nor’easter. It finally arrived on Saturday, February 14th and pounded the coast from the Carolinas through Maine. But it was New Jersey that received the brunt of the storm. Fully nine ships would be thrown upon the shore and scores of deaths were recorded.
Please click here for more book details.
No Fighting Chance
Ireland’s Lady of the Lake Disaster of 1833.
Here is a link to a catchy contemporary song about the disaster:
(Scroll down the page until you see this video image):
No Fighting Chance recounts the 1833 “Little Titanic” disaster when 250 Irish emigrants suddenly found themselves abandoned by their captain in a rapidly sinking ship in the waters off Newfoundland. Earlier that day, the Lady of the Lake had struck an iceberg, an accident that could easily have been avoided. But once the ship’s wooden hull had been gouged, there would be too few minutes available for most of the passengers to transfer into the safety of a boat. The disaster would claim the lives of over two hundred individuals including many extended families looking to start life anew in the newly touted lands of North America.
So how could a ship strike a large iceberg that could be easily seen miles away on a calm and clear morning? The answer lies in the state of incapacity of both the captain and his crew that early morning.
But despite their inebriated condition, the entire crew and their captain were able to save themselves. And although a handful of passengers were able to join them, over two hundred men, women, and children would be swallowed into the ocean’s depths within fifteen minutes.
Yet, despite the shirking of the captain’s responsibilities immediately before and after the Lady of Lake’s demise, his actions would grow more treacherous and darker in the days that followed. He would turn on the few survivors hoping to eliminate them as witnesses to his cowardliness.
No Fighting Chance is more than just another story of tragedy and survival at sea. It provides insights into the motivation of 1833 Irish emigrants and why they would choose to leave their homeland, risk a journey across the ocean, only to arrive on a continent with formidable challenges and hard to quantify opportunities.
At the end of each chapter in No Fighting Chance, another event is described which provides another lens into the Irish and British condition. At the same moment that Irish emigrants were crossing the great expanse of the Atlantic in May 1833, England and Ireland were preparing for the boxing championship of Great Britain. The English champion was deaf from birth; the Irish champion had once before killed another man in the ring. Their fight would be one of the most brutal in the history of the sport and establish records, that still exists today, for both the number of rounds (99) and the length of the battle (3 hours and 6 minutes). At the conclusion, one man would reign the champion, the other would die from his wounds. Ireland would sustain two great blows to its collective soul within one month.
Unfortunately, Ireland would sustain two great blows to its collective soul: the loss of the Lady of the Lake and the death of Simon Byrne.
Please click here for more book details
Now available on Amazon
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Droits de l’ Homme (1797)
Listen to a short description of Expedition to Ireland:
Expedition to Ireland
Droits de l’ Homme (1797)
This short book highlights the late 18th-century conflict among three countries-England, France and Ireland. The alliance of the Irish and French against the English was best seen in the 1797 “Expedition to Ireland” and the loss of the warship Droits de l’Homme.
Expedition to Ireland is a thumbnail account of the disastrous plan to recruit Irish rebels in their mutual struggles with Great Britain. The book is accompanied by relevant maps and illustrations. Readers of the C. S. Forester’s fictional series, Horatio Hornblower will recognize the names of the vessels and commanders in this actual encounter.
Available on Amazon
The 1831 Loss of the S.S. Rothsay Castle
Listen to a description of Disaster at Dutchman’s Bank:
In August 1831, the steamer Rothsay Castle was following her routine excursion from Liverpool to North Wales. It was the height of summer and one hundred plus passengers were traveling to Beaumaris for an evening of festivities before the annual regatta the following day. The fifty-mile journey should take about 5 hours and the four-man band was aboard to entertain the passengers.
However, a negligent and drunken captain sat below deck for almost the entire voyage down the Mersey. Although the weather changed dramatically as the vessel entered the Irish Sea, Captain Atkinson was dismissive of the urgent appeals of his passengers to turn back to Liverpool or find the nearest safe harbor. In his own words:
“I think there is a d.—d deal of fear on board, and very little danger. If we were to turn back with passengers, it would never do—we should have no profit.”
He, his crew, and passengers would pay dearly as they approached Dutchman’s Bank in the middle of the night.
Available on Amazon
The S.S. Daphne Disaster of 1883
Listen to a short description of Lost at Launch:
On a warm day in July 1883, a crowd gathered for the launch of the newest steamship added to the fleet of the Glasgow, Dublin and Londonderry Steam Packet Company. At 11:25 a.m., a champagne bottle shattered across the bow, christening of the 500-ton SS Daphne.
As the Daphne began to leave her slip, she accelerated toward the Clyde while a hundred men aboard waved to the crowd of onlookers. Within seconds of entering the river, 124 men and boys would quickly lose their lives.
Knuckled Under
The Short, Tragic Life of Simon Byrne
Knuckled Under details the life of Simon Byrne, the great Irish boxer who fought for Great Britain’s boxing championship in 1833. The bare-fisted contest was remarkable on many levels, particularly for the fact it lasted 99 rounds over three hours and six minutes, making it the longest championship prizefight in boxing history.
Simon lost the fight and died from the wounds he received, making him noteworthy in the sport as one of only six fighters who have killed and been killed in the ring. He lost to an English mute named James “Deaf’un” Burke, a young man who was given little chance of escaping poverty through his work along the river Thames.
But Simon did not die immediately. For two days he nursed his wounds and felt depressed at having let Ireland down – and losing to an Englishman, no less. Utterly ashamed of his defeat, he stated he would die from “mortification”.
His death in May 1833 struck Ireland to its core. Tens of thousands of mourners assembled in the streets and honored the late warrior with great tributes. Lavish poems and elegies were written throughout Great Britain to mark his loss.
Knuckled Under details the life of this long-forgotten boxing hero, from round-by-round accounts of his earliest fights to his rise to the Irish championship. But Knuckled Under does much more than chronicle the details of Simon’s life. It describes the rise of bare-fisted fighting and how rules were ultimately formalized and followed.
Although the British aristocracy and tens of thousands of commoners attended the fights, the sport was illegal, yet covered widely in the press. Maiming and death in the ring were common, which prompted even greater interest in the sport and tighter policing by the magistrates.
Then there were the colorful participants themselves: bruisers such as East End Chicken, Beef-a-la-Mode, Three-Fingered Jack and the Phenomenon. But an earlier champion, Jem “Black Diamond” Ward, was perhaps the most controversial of all. Accused of throwing an earlier fight and banned from the sport, he would re-enter under a different identity and ultimately win the championship for England.
This is the only biography ever written about Simon Byrne. His story reflects not only his life’s tragic journey in and out of the ring, but provides great insight into a brutal sport and the Irish soul in the first half of the 19th century. Please click here for the book listing on Amazon.
The Forgotten Fifteenth
New Hampshire’s 1845 Militia
In June of 1845, just fifteen years shy of the American Civil War, one hundred and forty men signed a cloth petition addressed to the New Hampshire legislature recommending a new commander for their regiment. Though the men of the 15th Regiment have long passed into history, the petition has survived bearing the clear and legible signatures of each man.
The Forgotten Fifteenth is the story of each of the signers and the search for their identity. Each in some way contributed to the rich history of New Hampshire and The Forgotten Fifteenth retells their individual and collective stories. Please join me on this journey to remember the soldiers “between the wars”.