vChris Mills, the author, has supplemented a selection of contemporary newspaper articles, mainly from the 1920s and 1930s, with background information from other sources such as the reports of Marine Courts of Inquiry, extracts from ships’ logs, and references to crew agreements, law reports and published narratives by ship masters. A few imaginative details have been added, but the stories are all firmly based on true events as reported and recorded at the time.
Each of this book’s chapters describes an incident from the period which was something of a golden age for British shipping. These incidents affected vessels of the Red Ensign going about their business.
Mills portrays what conditions were like on board British merchant vessels of the time and has made his subject a most readable one.