|
|||
| CLASSIC DIVE BOOKS - Military
shipwrecks
Vessels lost due to war. Please note: The books are listed for interest only,
and not offered for sale.
|
|||
 |
GOODNIGHT, SORRY FOR
SINKING YOU
The Story of the S.S.City of Cairo. Collins, London, 1984. ISBN 0 00 216464 7. Hardcover, dustjacket, 250 pahes, mono pirnts, index. From the fly blurb: On 6th November 1942 the S.S.City of Cairo,. alone in the middle of the South Atlantic making for Recife in Brazil, was torpedoed by the German V-boat V-68. She had nearly 300 passengers and crew aboard, who moved quickly to the lifeboats. Twenty minutes after the first torpedo, KarI-Freidrich Merten sent another to scuttle the ship; in passing it sank one of the lifeboats and dam~ged another. As those in the water fought to clamber into the remaining boats, most of them already overloaded, he surfaced to identify his kill, to criticise the captain of the Cairo for his lack of organisation, to tell him how far he was from land, and to wish him 'Goodnight. Sorry for sinking you'. What follows forms one of the greatest tales of survival and endurance. The Cairo's captain decided that their only hope was to sail for St Helena, despite the considerable chance of overshooting and being lost in the ocean beyond. Three boats did become.detached from the main group, and their story is the most extraordinary of all. In the weeks that followed, the survivors, growing steadily fewer and weaker, found and knew the extremes of selfishness and depravity of which human beings are capable. But they also discovered in some-of their number a nobility and heroism that defies easy description. It is this latter which is the lasting impression of this book. [ps] |
 |
LANCASTRIA.
Geoffrey Bond. Oldbourne Book Co. Ltd., London. 1959. Hardcover, dust jacket, 256 pages, mono prints. From the fly: It was Monday, June 17th, 1940. Along the French coast a bewildered, battered army had crowded the beaches and filled the little ports, waiting to be picked up and taken back across the Channel. Lying off St. Nazaire was the liner Lancastria, 16,000 tons of elegance and steel, in which more than four thousand men, packed into every available inch of space, could be carried to safety. Between seven and eight that morning the first boats began to ferry their human cargoes out to the liner: airmen, pioneers, infantrymen, engineers, gunners, even 38 civilians. Around the Lancastria a group of ships was lying, all too vulnerable in those shallow waters. The Oronsay had already been hit. Then, about four o'clock in the afternoon - "at eight bells, at the end of the after- noon watch" - the Lancastria was struck by bombs, and turned over and sank. This was, it is true, a maritime disaster of the first magnitude: and yet, such was the heroism and fortitude it evoked, that it will always be remembered with a sense of national pride. Geoffrey Bond tells the whole story for the first time. He follows individuals and units across France to St. Nazaire; he tells what these people were doing when the bombs struck; he follows them into the water, and - for the lucky ones - to England and safety. All the records of the Lancastria Survivors' Association have been opened to him. In addition he has personally interviewed hundreds of men, of all units, who were there. His story is factual, intensely moving, gripping as the tension mounts page by page. Here, in clear, compelling prose, is the very stuff of war-a full record of tragedy, irony, infamy and human bravery. [ps] |
 |
THE CRUELEST NIGHT
Christopher Dobson, John Miller, Ronald Payne. Little, Brown & Co, Boston, Toronto. 1879. Library of Congress Catalog 79-91329. Hardcover, dustjacket, 223 pages, a few mono plates, index. From the fly: The Cruelest Night reveals, for the first time, the full story of the worst of all sea tragedies, the sinking by a Russian submarine of the German ocean liner Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic Sea in 1945. At least seven thousand military personnel and civilians in flight from the avenging Red army perished - nearly five times the number who died on the Titanic. The subsequent loss in the same operation of two other overladen German liners, the General Steuben and the Goya, brought the devastating toll to eighteen thousand. This book describes the background of the whole affair: the amazing episode of "Germany's Dunkirk," Admiral Doenitz's evacuation of nearly two million Germans who lay in the path of the Russian advance as the eastern front collapsed. On January 30, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff, a Nazi pleasure liner built to hold two thousand, set sail trom the port of Gdynia with approximately eignt thousand aboard. In part to prevent even more of the refugees clamoring at the docks from boarding, the liner departed hastily - without proper escort, suitable crew, or enough lifeboats, and so overloaded that it could not follow the precautionary zigzag course through the mine and submarine infested Baltic. The next night, the Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed. Incorporating horrific accounts by survivors, the authors provide vivid cinematographic descriptions of the desperate crush to board the ship, the pandemonium at sea, and the re- morseless struggle by soldier, sailor, and civilian alike for a place on the lifeboats. Dobson, Miller, and Payne outline the naval and political implications of the events and reveal the suppressed story of Captain Alexander Marinesko, the hard-drinking, flamboyant Soviet submarine ace responsible for the sinking, who was later disgraced and banished to the dreaded labor camp at Kolyma. Here, too, is the mystery of the whereabouts of the famed Prussian "Amber Room" and the extraordinary story of Gauleiter Erich Koch, the Nazi war criminal, whom the authors discovered alive and imprisoned in Poland. The Baltic ordeal was the greatest seaborne evacuation in history, as well as the biggest sea disaster. Incredibly, the story has never been fully told until now. [ps] |
 |
Publishers and Distributors 303 Commercial Road, Yarram, Vic 3971, Australia Phone (03) 5182 5108 International 61 3 5182 5108 Fax (03) 5182 5823 Internationl 61 3 5182 5823 Email: peter@oceans.com.au |
| For
OCEANS ENTERPRISES homepage, link on graphic. |
 |
We are on-line via Netspace in Yarram, Victoria, Australia. Last updated on 10 October 2004.
Best viewed on a screen resolution of 800 x 600 or higher.
Created by FatMan Graphics, Yarram, 3971.