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In the tradition of bestsellers such as Dead Wake and In the Heart of the Sea, Adrift tells of thirteen victims and a tragedy at sea where every desperate act could mean life or death

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A story of tragedy at sea where every desperate act meant life or death

The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months of 1856 carried mail, crates of dry goods, and more than one hundred passengers, mostly Irish emigrants. Suddenly an iceberg tore the ship asunder and five lifeboats were lowered. As four lifeboats drifted into the fog and icy water, never to be heard from again, the last boat wrenched away from the sinking ship with a few blankets, some water and biscuits, and thirteen souls. Only one would survive. This is his story.

As they started their nine days adrift more than four hundred miles off Newfoundland, the castaways--an Irish couple and their two boys, an English woman and her daughter, newlyweds from Ireland, and several crewmen, including Thomas W. Nye from Fairhaven, Massachusetts--began fighting over food and water. One by one, though, day by day, they died. Some from exposure, others from madness and panic. In the end, only Nye and the ship´s log survived.

Using Nye´s firsthand descriptions and later newspaper accounts, ship´s logs, assorted diaries, and family archives, Brian Murphy chronicles the horrific nine days that thirteen people suffered adrift on the cold gray Atlantic. Adrift brings readers to the edge of human limits, where every frantic decision and desperate act is a potential life saver or life taker.

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"The dramatic story of Thomas W. Nye, the sole survivor of the John Rutledge´s tragic encounter with an iceberg in 1856, is beautifully rendered, gripping, and emotionally engaging from beginning to end. Murphy and Vlahou perform a literary magic trick of sorts, transporting readers into another era and enabling them to see and feel what it was like to travel across the ice-choked north Atlantic in the depths of winter, and confront the ultimate nightmare scenario--a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean with no help in sight. Adrift is a chilling and searingly memorable tale of unimaginable suffering and one man´s bittersweet triumph over the odds."--Eric Jay Dolin, author of Black Flags, Blue Waters and Leviathan

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Brian Murphy is a journalist at The Washington Post. He joined the paper after more than twenty years as an award-winning foreign correspondent and bureau chief for The Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. He has three previous books, including 81 Days Below Zero. He currently lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and co-author Toula Vlahou, policy editor at CQ/Roll Call, an Economist Group business.

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