I'm currently reading a book called The Wreck of the William Brown, a True Tale of Overcrowded Lifeboats and Murder at Sea by Tom Koch, a local fellow who's done a lot of newspaper and magazine writing in his time, and if you think the title's lurid, you should see the jacket cover up close.
It's not just about one terrible incident among many at sea, but about how, in this case, the political and commercial powers attempted to spin the story in order to protect their interests.
The William Brown, an American-owned boat on her way from Britain to America with a hold full of Irish emigrants in the year of someone's Lord 1841, just before midnight, rammed an iceberg and promptly sank. There were no lifeboats per se, there was just the longboat and the jolly boat (more or less a smallish cutter with a single sail, so far as I can gather) and that was pretty much standard at the time.
About nine or ten people made it into the jolly boat, along with the captain, and forty or so into the longboat with the first mate, and was it ever overcrowded! Still, the captain refused to transfer any to his own boat. Meanwhile, another thirty or so were still on the William Brown as it sank, or freezing in the water.
Around dawn, the captain shouted out directions toward the nearest shore, Newfoundland, hoisted sail and left the longboat to fend for herself. She had a non-functioning rudder, so her chances frankly stank. They blundered about for the rest of the day, finally working their way back into the Gulf Stream where they'd been, and the night and a storm came and the seas got really nasty.
The first mate wasn't quite up to the job, and he kind of sort of, almost plausibly deniably, ordered the seamen under his command to (ahem) lighten the load, as they were taking on a lot of water. So in the dark, rather matter of factly, they went round the boat. As they could catch hold of someone, they heaved him or her overboard. By the time dawn came again, they'd tossed over fourteen to sixteen passengers. Within two hours of the last one drowning, they were rescued by a passing ship, the Crescent bound for Le Havre.
The captain of the Crescent deposed the first mate, and in effect polished his story so as to deflect any blame from his own actions and seamanship, and by extension, that of the William Brown's captain, and by further extension, the seamanship and good intentions of all those who make their living ferrying emigrants from Europe to America. There was a great deal of money tied up in that trade, and more to be made from it, and as does the Crescent's captain, so then do the British and American Consuls who meet the boat and take the survivors in hand.
I'm at the point in the book where they've worked it so that the only person standing trial is a single seaman, a Swede, who was also the only person to have effected a heroic rescue of one of the passengers just before the William Brown was finally abandoned. And the shit is about to hit the fan.
More when I finish.
