The Miracle of the Kent: A Tale of Courage, Faith and Fire

摘要

Disaster at sea holds a universal fascination. It is hard to imagine any collection of maritime books offered by a bookstore or library that does not offer examples on the subject. Some of these examples, such as RMS Titanic, are quiternwell known. The loss of the East Indiaman Kent on March 1, 1825 in the Bay of Biscay is not among the more familiar sea dramas today. The event was thoroughly recounted by one of her survivors, Major Duncan MacGregor, 31st Regiment of Foot, shortly afterward, and less thoroughly by contemporary newspaper accounts. There was one fictionalized version among an 1865 collection of sea stories by William Russell, The Jolly Boat, and various nineneteenth and twentieth-century anthologies included summaries. But Nicholas Tracy provides the first complete account since Major MacGregor's, and the first to give the surviving information the benefit of modern historical attention.