| Description: |
On Friday, 13 December 1907, the largest sailing vessel in the world, the Thomas W. Lawson, was wrecked in a violent storm off the coast of the Isles of Scilly. This book explores the background of the schooner, and the effect her wreck had upon the small, close-knit island community, into whose lives she irrupted. |
| Synopsis: |
Towards sunset on Friday, 13 December 1907, the largest sailing vessel in the world, the schooner Thomas W. Lawson, reached the mouth of the English Channel after a stormy first transatlantic crossing, and with another gale brewing. Her crew realised, too late, that instead of being well clear of land they were among the rocks and shoals of the Isles of Scilly, and hurriedly anchored. In the night there was a violent storm, and by the small hours of the following morning she was a wreck. At daylight a six-oared island gig was launched into a still high sea to search for survivors among the rocks, eventually finding three. Men from the tiny island of St Agnes went out in their lifeboat to the Lawson when it arrived, or manned the gig next day, or both - 17 of them in all, of whom all but one were related to each other and 13 bore the same surname. One of them was aboard her as pilot when she went down, and was killed. It is an oft-told story, but there are a surprising number of contradictions among different versions, of apparent gaps in the narrative and of lack of attention to significant issues, as well as several (not so surprising) differences of opinion on moot points.This book goes back, wherever possible, to original sources to address those difficulties, and also fills in the backgrounds against which the unique vessel involved, the deeply superstitious man after whom she was named, and the small, close-knit community into which she irrupted, need to be understood. On the central question of what blame attached to the Lawson's master, Captain George W. Dow, it produces a new piece of evidence and reaches an unfashionable conclusion. |