The Bent Page

Since my novel, An Island Away, has a shipwreck scene in it, I was looking through various databases for information on such incidents. Here is one of those fantastic panoramic photos courtesy of the United States Library of Congress, perhaps one of the ultimate databases of all time. It is not of a shipwreck, but it is of a famous ship that sank in record time, 18 minutes according to some accounts. You cruise ship passengers might enjoy a view of the Lusitania, that famous liner that sank under mysterious circumstances. The incident helped move America into the First World War.

I’m not sure where this waterfront is. It may be New York or somewhere in England. I’m trying to find out, and when I do, I’ll update this post with the correct info. The only data I have is that the photo was taken at the “end of a record voyage.”

On the left side of the frame, in the corner of the slip, you’ll see a steam tug. This must have been quite a vessel, an actual wooden-hulled steam tug. Many of them went to the bottom with all hands after a boiler explosion. Hard work that was. Dangerous, too. I worked with a tugboat captain in Philadelphia. He told me both his uncle and his father were engineers back in the days of steam. He added that he became a captain because they died in explosions because as engineers they were below deck when disaster struck. Wise move on his part, eh? He was a skilled operator, knew all the old tricks and had some hand-made instruments for plotting speed against the tide for a given boat and barge combination. I adapted his methods and made one of my own, a sort of slide rule device. It was accurate enough to save me many hours and plenty of money. All this without a computer. Amazing.