LOST STORY OF THE WILLIAM & MARY

Sub-titled 'The Cowardice of Captain Stinson', here is 'a terrific, rollicking adventure.' - Simon Garfield. The emigrant ship William and Mary departed from Liverpool with 208 British, Irish and Dutch emigrants in early 1853, captained by young American Timothy Stinson. The vessel was sailing for New Orleans when the ship wrecked in the Bahamas in mysterious circumstances. Instead of grounding the ship on a nearby shore, or building rafts for the passengers, Stinson and the majority of his crew sneaked away in lifeboats - murdering at least two of the emigrants with a hatchet as they did so. They reported the ship sunk with all on board lost, but the passengers kept the ship afloat, and two days later were rescued by heroic wreckers as the ship went down. Now over 160 years on, the tale of the travellers murdered in Bahamian waters and the hundreds who escaped thanks to kindly wreckers can finally be told. Stinson is no longer getting away with murder. We read about Susannah Diamond, the English 19 year old hoping for a new life in St. Louis with her family, husband, toddler and unborn child, and Izaak Roorda, one of a group of 87 Dutch emigrants seeking to settle in Wisconsin, who found the lifeboat more perilous than the sinking ship. Roorda recalls, 'Barely had I returned to the great ship than I and many passengers took to the pumps: fear, anxiety and shock drove each of us instinctively to look for a means to save ourselves...wailing and groaning filled the air...others climbed into the masts; it is impossible to form an image of our terrible and hopeless situation, the cabin filled with people and when an enormous creaking sound was heard in the ship below, we thought the whole vessel would sink immediately into the depths.' 162pp, photos and woodcuts.