One of the greatest maritime tragedies of the nineteenth century occurred when HMS Birkenhead struck an un-chartered rock off Danger Point on the coast of South Africa. Of the 638 persons on board, 445 perished, the legend of the Birkenhead Drill was born.

It was a beautiful clear night in February 1852, at the Cape of Storms. How could one of Queen Victoria’s latest iron-ships sink less than two miles from the shore with such terrible loss of life?

The reader is transported on an historical journey through the smoky, industrial Birkenhead shipyard of Cammel Lairds – an impoverished famine struck Ireland – to the baronial homes of the aristocracy and a Colonial War in far-flung Africa.

It is a story of love and human passion relating the arduous times in which people lived and the many lives, which the great ship influenced.

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