CASTAWAYS ADRIFT AND ABANDONED

Sub-titled 'Thrilling Tales of the Sea Volume Three' here is seafaring before the 20th century bristling with peril. Illustrated with beautiful woodcuts and maps chapters cover The Loss of the Fleetwood of Boston, The Dromahair and Dreadful Sufferings at Sea: 'We cleared away the wreck as much as possible, and try to get some canvass to steady her...' 'We lived on half a biscuit a day. A barrel of salt beef and a barrel of salt pork were under the hatches, and after the storm somewhat abated we could just get at them by watching our chances between the seas. This was all the food we had...' Other stricken craft are the derelict junk Isukin Maru seven months adrift, the Milton, the Brigantine Mary T. Kimball and eleven days on a raft, the Psyché living on an open boat on sharks' blood and the wreck of the Amy Turner. There are stories of survivors and orphans at sea, the lost ship Margaret Tyson, the wreck of the schooner Leader, the loss of Jane Lowden and the terrible sufferings of shipwrecked crews, of the captain saved after 109 days on a wreck where passengers and crew starved, and tragedy and heroism in the Irish Sea. And finally mid-Pacific Crusoes with the tale of the Seladon and 2,000 miles in an open boat, tales of starving men and cannibalism, a castaway?s murder mystery, a wandering minstrel story, whale ships and castaways at Galapagos Islands. 254pp, paperback, illus.