A story of tragedy at sea where every desperate act meant life or
death
The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months
of 1856 carried mail, crates of dry goods, and more than one hundred
passengers, mostly Irish emigrants. Suddenly an iceberg tore the ship
asunder and five lifeboats were lowered. As four lifeboats drifted into
the fog and icy water, never to be heard from again, the last boat
wrenched away from the sinking ship with a few blankets, some water and
biscuits, and thirteen souls. Only one would survive. This is his story.
As they started their nine days adrift more than four hundred miles off
Newfoundland, the castaways--an Irish couple and their two boys, an
English woman and her daughter, newlyweds from Ireland, and several
crewmen, including Thomas W. Nye from Fairhaven, Massachusetts--began
fighting over food and water. One by one, though, day by day, they died.
Some from exposure, others from madness and panic. In the end, only Nye
and the ship's log survived.
Using Nye's firsthand descriptions and later newspaper accounts, ship's
logs, assorted diaries, and family archives, Brian Murphy chronicles the
horrific nine days that thirteen people suffered adrift on the cold gray
Atlantic. Adrift brings readers to the edge of human limits, where
every frantic decision and desperate act is a potential life saver or
life taker.
