A fine shipwreck has always represented sport pleasure, treasure, and in many cases the differnce between living well and just getting by. From all around Britain, Bella Bathurst has uncovered the secret history of wrecking, from shoreline orgies so debauched that few participants survived until morning to remote crofts fitted with silver candelabra via cows hung with lanterns to lure unwary ships to ruin and the Cornish reputation for drowning survivors.
‘The beauty of this book is that Bathurst never forgets that the whole attraction of wrecking is its mystery. Rich in the lore of the sea, but steeped in the everyday experience of the people she meets.’ Observer.
‘Bathurst is a brave and talented writer. She is wry, perceptive, laconic, occasionally downright funny and uncannily skilled at recreating atmosphere … some of her most intense passages about the movement of water are breathtakingly novelistic and poetically precise.’ Daily Telegraph
‘Bathurst’s descriptions are preise and graphic, but also poignant … Striking and memorable’. Peter Ackroyd, The Times
