A Full, True and Particular Account of the Melancholy Loss of the British Convict Ship Amphitrite, the 31st August 1833, off Boulogne, When 108 Female Convicts, 12 Children, and 13 Seamen Met with a Watery Grave, in Sight of Thousands, None Being Saved
A Full, True and Particular Account of the Melancholy Loss of the British Convict Ship Amphitrite, the 31st August 1833, off Boulogne, When 108 Female Convicts, 12 Children, and 13 Seamen Met with a Watery Grave, in Sight of Thousands, None Being Saved
On August 25, 1833, the British convict ship Amphitrite, filled with more than one hundred women prisoners and their children along with a crew of thirteen, left London for a convict colony in New South Wales. Less than a week later, all but three died when a savage storm battered their ship to pieces on the beach at Boulogne--in sight of hundreds of horrified onlookers. Inexplicably, the captain, John Hunter, had refused offers of aid from the shore. Sensational news coverage of the calamity prompted an Admiralty investigation to find out who was responsible. The suspicion was that Hunter and the surgeon aboard rejected assistance because they feared the women would escape custody. Some blamed the doctor’s wife because she had refused to go ashore in the same boat with the convicts so no boat was launched. Colorfully set in the political and social context of early 19th century Great Britain, this account of the shipwreck is peopled with a fascinating cast of characters that includes John Wilks, the Paris correspondent of a London newspaper whose reporting triggered public emotions; Lord Palmerston, the British foreign secretary; William Hamilton, the British consul who led the investigation; Sarah Austin, a British expatriate whose heroism the night of the wreck merits an award; and a Prussian prince. Drawing from government records in England, Scotland, and France, and from contemporary reports, Andrew Jampoler spins a memorable sea tale that is entirely true yet rivals the best of fiction. Readers will find this latest addition to his growing body of works firmly cements Jampoler’s reputation as a master storyteller.
Some two centuries ago, during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, New England’s merchants and traders found themselves frozen out of their traditional markets in Europe and the Caribbean. Desperate for new business for their idled ships and crews, they asked President Andrew Jackson to explore opportunities for them on the other side of the globe. Prompted by the secretary of the navy, Jackson sent Edmund Roberts—an unemployed ship owner from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with no diplomatic experience—on an “embassy” (mission) to the potentates of Oman, Siam, Cochin China, and Japan, to negotiate pioneering trade treaties. So began an unusual and ultimately fatal adventure that twice took Roberts to exotic and dangerous places on the other side of the globe. Because the British and the Dutch were deeply interested in these same new markets, Roberts’ mission was kept secret. Sailing in the ill-fated USS Peacock, first in company with USS Boxer, then with USS Enterprise, Roberts traveled almost 70,000 miles across the great expanses of two oceans to successfully negotiate treaties with Oman and Siam. Although he failed twice to win over the emperor of Cochin China and died miserably in Macao before departing for Japan, Roberts’ embassy was nonetheless instrumental in opening doors to new diplomatic realms and extending the commerce of the fledgling American nation. Kept secret at the time and largely forgotten today, Edmund Roberts’ fascinating and important story is recounted in this latest book by Andrew Jampoler—retired naval officer turned maritime historian—whose previous works include Sailors in the Holy Land and The Last Lincoln Conspirator.
RMS Rhone, just three years old then and the pretty queen of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company’s fleet, sank in the great St. Narciso hurricane of late October 1867, a devastating category three storm that bored a line east to west atop the Antilles, and ruthlessly thinned the islands’ population while it sank some seventy ships in port and local waters. Fleeing from Tortola across Drake Strait and toward open water at full speed, through the backside of the hurricane and nearly blinded by rain and spray, Rhone drove aground on Black Rock, in the shallows off Salt Island, shoved to her fate by 140 mile and hour winds. The impact and the subsequent explosion of her boiler tore the 310-foot long ship in half. One hundred twenty four drowned that morning or were scalded to death in the engine room. Only twenty-three survived. Five other company ships went down, too. Remarkably, a sixth company ship, the tiny paddle steamer Conway managed to live through the day, although dismasted and with her deck swept clear of funnel, paddle boxes, and rigging. This is the story of those ships, and the story of Jeremiah Murphy, a salty hardhat diver, who spent most of the next six years salvaging the wreck of the Rhone and clearing neighboring harbors of the storm’s detritus. Without a doubt, Black Rock and Blue Water will appeal powerfully to readers of maritime history, and to recreational divers of all ages.
Three intertwined stories highlighting the many challenges the US Navy faced during strategic and material evolution Hard Aground brings together three intertwined stories documenting the US Navy’s strategic and matériel evolution following the end of the Civil War through the First World War. These incidents had lasting consequences for how the navy would modernize itself throughout the rest of the twentieth century. The first story focuses on the reconstruction of the US Navy following the swift and near-total dismantling of the Union Navy infrastructure after the Civil War. This reconstruction began with barely enough time for the navy’s campaigns in the Spanish-American War, and for its role in the First World War. Jampoler argues that the federal government discovered that the fleet requested by the navy, and paid for by Congress, was the wrong fleet. Focus was on battleships and cruisers rather than destroyers and other small combat vessels needed to hunt submarines and serve as convoy escorts. The second story relates the short, tragic life of the USS Tennessee (later renamed Memphis), one of the steel-hulled ships of the new Armored Cruiser Squadron that was a centerpiece of the navy’s modernization effort. The USS Tennessee was ordered on two unusual missions in the early months of World War I, long before the United States formally entered the war. These little know missions and the sudden destruction of the ship by a storm surge in the Caribbean serves as the centerpiece of the story. Threaded through the narrative are biographical sketches of the principal players in the drama that unfolded following the ship’s demise, including two of Tennessee’s commanding officers: Vice Admiral Sims, who commanded the US Navy squadrons deployed to Europe in support of the Royal Navy; Rear Admiral William Caperton, who commanded the Caribbean squadron before the Memphis (formerly the Tennessee) was lost; Charles Pond, squadron commander during the wreck; and the American ambassador to the Ottoman court, President Wilson’s enthusiastic supporter, Henry Morgenthau. Jampoler concludes with an account of how the USS Tennessee’s destruction prompted fierce deliberations about the US Navy’s operations and chains of command for the remainder of the First World War and the high-level political wrangling inside the Department of the Navy immediately after the war, as civilian appointees and senior officers wrestled to reshape the department in their image.
With all that has already been written about President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, one of the little known stories is the case of the only successful conspirator, John Harrison Surratt, the son of Mary Surratt, who was hanged for her part in the crime. The Last Lincoln Conspirator is the true story of John Surratt, who became the most wanted man in America after the death of John Wilkes Booth’s and was the only conspirator to escape conviction. The capture and killing of Booth twelve days after he shot Lincoln and the fate of Booth’s other accomplices are familiar history. Four accomplices, including Surratt’s mother, were convicted and hanged, and four were jailed. John Surratt alone managed to evade capture for twenty months and, once put on trial, to evade prison. The first full-length treatment of Surratt’s escape, capture, and trial, this book provides fascinating details about his flight through Canada, England, France, the Papal States, and eventual capture in Egypt. Surratt’s desperate journey and the bitter legal proceedings against him that bizarrely led to his freedom hold the reader’s attention from first to last page.
In the tradition of great tales of men against the sea, Adak offers a compelling look at courage and commitment in the face of certain tragedy. Alfa Foxtrot 586 was a P-3 Orion on station on a sensitive Cold War mission off the Kamchatka Peninsula on 26 October 1978. When a propeller malfunction turned into an engine fire, the pilot was forced to ditch his turboprop into the empty, mountainous seas west of the Aleutian Islands. The aircraft went down in just ninety seconds, taking one of the three rafts with it. Thirteen men launched the other rafts, the smallest of which—terribly overcrowded—soon began to leak, threatening the nine men aboard. This account of the flight crew's desperate battle against the sea, and the heroic efforts to rescue them provide an engrossing true story of survival.
A Full, True and Particular Account of the Melancholy Loss of the British Convict Ship Amphitrite, the 31st August 1833, off Boulogne, When 108 Female Convicts, 12 Children, and 13 Seamen Met with a Watery Grave, in Sight of Thousands, None Being Saved
A Full, True and Particular Account of the Melancholy Loss of the British Convict Ship Amphitrite, the 31st August 1833, off Boulogne, When 108 Female Convicts, 12 Children, and 13 Seamen Met with a Watery Grave, in Sight of Thousands, None Being Saved
On August 25, 1833, the British convict ship Amphitrite, filled with more than one hundred women prisoners and their children along with a crew of thirteen, left London for a convict colony in New South Wales. Less than a week later, all but three died when a savage storm battered their ship to pieces on the beach at Boulogne--in sight of hundreds of horrified onlookers. Inexplicably, the captain, John Hunter, had refused offers of aid from the shore. Sensational news coverage of the calamity prompted an Admiralty investigation to find out who was responsible. The suspicion was that Hunter and the surgeon aboard rejected assistance because they feared the women would escape custody. Some blamed the doctor’s wife because she had refused to go ashore in the same boat with the convicts so no boat was launched. Colorfully set in the political and social context of early 19th century Great Britain, this account of the shipwreck is peopled with a fascinating cast of characters that includes John Wilks, the Paris correspondent of a London newspaper whose reporting triggered public emotions; Lord Palmerston, the British foreign secretary; William Hamilton, the British consul who led the investigation; Sarah Austin, a British expatriate whose heroism the night of the wreck merits an award; and a Prussian prince. Drawing from government records in England, Scotland, and France, and from contemporary reports, Andrew Jampoler spins a memorable sea tale that is entirely true yet rivals the best of fiction. Readers will find this latest addition to his growing body of works firmly cements Jampoler’s reputation as a master storyteller.
Some two centuries ago, during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, New England’s merchants and traders found themselves frozen out of their traditional markets in Europe and the Caribbean. Desperate for new business for their idled ships and crews, they asked President Andrew Jackson to explore opportunities for them on the other side of the globe. Prompted by the secretary of the navy, Jackson sent Edmund Roberts—an unemployed ship owner from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with no diplomatic experience—on an “embassy” (mission) to the potentates of Oman, Siam, Cochin China, and Japan, to negotiate pioneering trade treaties. So began an unusual and ultimately fatal adventure that twice took Roberts to exotic and dangerous places on the other side of the globe. Because the British and the Dutch were deeply interested in these same new markets, Roberts’ mission was kept secret. Sailing in the ill-fated USS Peacock, first in company with USS Boxer, then with USS Enterprise, Roberts traveled almost 70,000 miles across the great expanses of two oceans to successfully negotiate treaties with Oman and Siam. Although he failed twice to win over the emperor of Cochin China and died miserably in Macao before departing for Japan, Roberts’ embassy was nonetheless instrumental in opening doors to new diplomatic realms and extending the commerce of the fledgling American nation. Kept secret at the time and largely forgotten today, Edmund Roberts’ fascinating and important story is recounted in this latest book by Andrew Jampoler—retired naval officer turned maritime historian—whose previous works include Sailors in the Holy Land and The Last Lincoln Conspirator.
RMS Rhone, just three years old then and the pretty queen of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company’s fleet, sank in the great St. Narciso hurricane of late October 1867, a devastating category three storm that bored a line east to west atop the Antilles, and ruthlessly thinned the islands’ population while it sank some seventy ships in port and local waters. Fleeing from Tortola across Drake Strait and toward open water at full speed, through the backside of the hurricane and nearly blinded by rain and spray, Rhone drove aground on Black Rock, in the shallows off Salt Island, shoved to her fate by 140 mile and hour winds. The impact and the subsequent explosion of her boiler tore the 310-foot long ship in half. One hundred twenty four drowned that morning or were scalded to death in the engine room. Only twenty-three survived. Five other company ships went down, too. Remarkably, a sixth company ship, the tiny paddle steamer Conway managed to live through the day, although dismasted and with her deck swept clear of funnel, paddle boxes, and rigging. This is the story of those ships, and the story of Jeremiah Murphy, a salty hardhat diver, who spent most of the next six years salvaging the wreck of the Rhone and clearing neighboring harbors of the storm’s detritus. Without a doubt, Black Rock and Blue Water will appeal powerfully to readers of maritime history, and to recreational divers of all ages.
Lauded for his ability to tell compelling, true adventure stories, award-winning author Andrew C.A. Jampoler has turned his attention this time to a young American naval officer on a mission up the Congo River in May 1885. Lt. Emory Taunt was ordered to explore as much of the river as possible and report on opportunities for Americans in the potentially rich African marketplace. A little more than five years later, Taunt, 39, was buried near the place he had first come ashore in Africa. His personal demons and the Congo’s lethal fevers had killed him. In 2011, to better understand what happened, Jampoler retraced Taunt’s expedition in an outboard motorboat. Striking photographs from the author’s trip are included to lend a visual dimension to the original journey. Readers join Taunt in his exploration of some 1400 miles of river and follow him on two additional assignments. A commercial venture to collect elephant ivory in the river’s great basin and an appointment as the U.S. State Department’s first resident diplomat in Boma, capital of King Leopold II’s Congo Free State, are filled with promise. But instead of becoming rich and famous, he died alone, bankrupt, and disgraced. Jampoler’s account of what went so dreadfully wrong is both thrilling and tragic. He provides not only a fascinating look at Taunt’s brief and extraordinary life, but also a glimpse of the role the United States played in the birth of the Congo nation, and the increasingly awkward position Washington found itself as stories of atrocities against the natives began to leak out.
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