NOW AVAILABLE (Re-issued January 2010)

HARDBACK

Actual Size: 16cms x 24cms
Pages: 192
Retail: £8.95
To order: ukwishingwell@aol.com

A period drama following the fortunes of the fictional Fenwick family, set against the background of the Birkenhead disaster in a web of deceit and twisted loyalties.

PAPERBACK

Actual Size: 11cms x 18cams
Pages: 318
Retail: £6.95 (Illustrated)
To order: ukwishingwell@aol.com

Factual historical reference book on the Troopship Birkenhead disaster of 1852. Regimental rolls and lists of survivors. The story of the disaster on the 26 February 1852 of Her Majesty’s Troopship Birkenhead provided, to a single man, one of the most noble examples of courage, discipline and self sacrifice ever recorded. Carrying troop reinforcements from ten of England’s finest regiments to the Cape Colony the Birkenhead hit an un- charted rock two miles off shore and took 436 men to the bottom in the hell of that dreadful night.

To save the women and children, 200 soldiers stood to attention on the deck of the stricken ship, under the command of Lt. Colonel Alexander Seton, thus giving birth to the time honoured tradition of ‘Women and Children First�in times of great peril. Launched in December 1845, the iron paddle steamer Birkenhead, originally intended to be a warship, was constructed by Laird’s of Merseyside and named initially as HMS Vulcan. She was built in the transitional period between ships of oak and ships of iron when the technology involved in the newer vessels was still in its infancy. Sixty feet wide and two hundred and ten feet long, she was not the largest of ships and the conditions on board as a troopship carrying seven hundred souls, must have been horrendous. In early January 1852, she left Portsmouth for Cork before sailing on into the illustrious pages of British history.