Books

 

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, no hints of where or how she was lost.  The ship and five hundred aboard vanished.

Left behind were family members pacing the Philadelphia wharf awaiting her arrive “any day”. Newspapers from three continents excused her delay from either weather or mechanical breakdowns. They could not be more wrong. Some of the papers relied on three teenager girls who kept hopes alive through contact with the passengers through the “Spiritualism” movement.

Let Glasgow Flourish not like a  Eric Larsen thriller. It is more a biography of the vessel from birth to death life and postulates where and how she disappeared. Included are many personal stories of those who sailed from her maiden voyage in 1850 until her demise. Let Glasgow Flourish recounts the glory of her days and the those family members still awaiting to welcome her arrival on Philadelphia pier.

 

Softcover: Amazon

ebook:  Kindle

 

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.

Softcover: Amazon

ebook:       Kindle

 

 

No Fighting Chance

Ireland’s Lady of the Lake disaster of 1833

 

Here is a link to a 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 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 as the champion, the other would die from his wounds.  Ireland would sustain two great blows to its collective soul in one month in 1833.

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.

 

Softcover:  Amazon

ebook:        Kindle

Class Distinction

           The 1833 Hibernia tragedy that continued after rescue.

 

“The emigrant ship Hibernia, on passage from England to Australia, fell victim to sudden and uncontrollable fire in the south Atlantic ocean on 5 February 1833, and her survivors took to her few, and decrepit, boats. Had they not been picked up a week later by the reluctant convict transport Lotus, bound for Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), we would today know nothing of Hibernia’s fate.

But for most of her passengers rescue proved not to be the end of their travails, as the treatment given them in their time of greatest need was to mirror their status as cabin or steerage ticket-holders aboard Hibernia.

Tom Clark has researched both forward and back from this bizarre and improbable mid-Atlantic encounter to paint a vivid word-picture of the social conditions which placed a disparate collection of Britons on the high seas, and of the futures which awaited them on the far side of the world.

Class Distinction directs a lens at British official attitudes towards those of the underclass, be they banished to Tasmania for stealing a few onions, or steerage passengers penned below decks by their rescuers. As ever, those sufficiently privileged are due `every comfort, every luxury’.”

 

Originally published by Lodestar Books, London.

Current Out of Print.

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.

 

Softcover:  Amazon

ebook:        Kindle

 

      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”.

Softcover: Amazon

ebook:  Kindle