Customer Reviews

Come Hell and High Water: Extraordinary Stories of Wreck, Terror and Triumph on the Sea

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Seventeen stories of naval disaster, heroism, and tragedy have been researched and read with the high drama of a novel in COME HELL AND HIGH WATER: EXTRAORDINARY STORIES OF WRECK, TERROR AND TRIUMPH ON THE SEA. From a sunken sub whose rescue involved revolutionary new techniques to a ship which sank because if the captain had turned back, he'd have to refund fares, COME HELL AND HIGH WATER is packed with high drama and offers any with an interest in shipwrecks or sea stories to enjoy a vivid collection. Perfect for the general-interest public lending library.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This is a compendium of short stories with a single theme - Shipwreck. There are 16 separate tales of tragedy each of which is based on fact and author Jean Hood is at her very best as she recounts all the passion, exhilaration, misfortune, bad luck, incompetence and loss of life which played a part in each disaster.

Whilst less than half the vessels covered were previously known to me, I learned much from the various accounts. From the earliest wrecks of 1752 (Prince) and 1755 (Dodington), we are given an authentic taste of what being shipwrecked was really like - through the ages, where further reports include the Méduse (1816), San Francisco (1853), USS Squalus (1939) and even the Kursk (2000) - to name but some.

The key to this excellent product is undoubtedly the remarkable degree of research which went into each of those 16 chapters. It is only from such a thorough and painstaking examination of minute detail that any author is able to provide the reader with a full and accurate description of what actually happened. This is supported, at the end of each chapter, by an extensive bibliography and "Notes" which reveal those sources. These include everything from national archive references from the relevant country, to books, newspapers and personal accounts. The equally exhaustive "Notes" contain anything (and everything) of relevance to that particular chapter such as an explanation of a ship type, or ASDIC or a description of what happened in later years to a central character.

From Chapter 2, we learn how Clive of India might have sailed on the ill-fated Dodington but, instead, travelled to India in the Streatham. The revelation of this defining moment from history serves to underline the value of all that research.

One might almost describe this as a book with no "margins" because the text fills every single page from top to bottom and side to side providing the reader with excellent value for money. In a word, this book is complete. It is also a job well done.

NM

I'm only part way through this book but I'm on the edge of my seat. Great value for the $ also.