Overview

A TRUE STORY OF SHIPWRECK, SURVIVAL, AND ONE OF THE MOST DESPERATE OPEN-BOAT VOYAGES IN NAVAL HISTORY. After seven months of backbreaking labor dredging a channel through coral, ninety-three men looked toward San Francisco. Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Sicard set a course for Ocean Island, a speck of sand and reef sixty miles to the west. He sought to verify its position and search for castaways from previous wrecks. Instead, the darkness hid the jagged teeth of Kure Atoll. At 0300 hours, the Saginaw struck. The reef tore through her hull, leaving the ship a shattered wreck in the surf, but the men survived. They found themselves marooned on a desolate sandbank, two thousand miles from the nearest civilization. Life on the atoll became a struggle against the elements. The men hunted albatross and clubbed seals for oily, stringy meat. To stave off thirst, they fashioned a makeshift distillery from a salvaged boiler, coaxing drops of fresh water from the brine. At night, swarms of rats overran the camp, skittering over the sleeping men and gnawing at meager supplies. To save his crew, Sicard ordered the construction of a rescue craft from the ruins of the wreck. Five men volunteered. They took the captain's gig, a twenty-two-foot open boat and began an 1,800-mile journey across the most volatile reaches of the North Pacific. They carried a crude sextant forged from zinc scraps and a broken mirror, a few days of rations, and the weight of ninety lives. For thirty-one days, they battled storms, starvation, decay, and exhaustion in one of the longest and most dangerous open-boat voyages ever attempted. When their food spoiled, they survived on whale oil. Their journey remains one of the most extraordinary, and least known, survival stories in United States naval history. This account is reconstructed from the original 1870 deck logs of the USS Saginaw, the official reports of Lieutenant-Commander Montgomery Sicard, and the personal journals of Paymaster George Read and forged from the harrowing, first-hand testimony of William Halford. This narrative reconstructs leadership under duress, the mechanical grit of survival, and the high price of duty. Eight-eight men wait on the sand. Five men row for their lives. Fans of The Wager, Endurance, and In the Heart of the Sea will find a new epic of survival in the wreck of the Saginaw.

Full Product Details

9781764643108

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available