Death in the North Channel
a book by Stephen Cameron
Death in the North Channel is a new book that tells the well known tale of the sinking of the car ferry Princess Victoria on the 31st of January 1953. The tale of how the Princess Victoria left Stranraer on that fateful Saturday in 1953 bound for Larne and later was to face the full fury of hurricane force winds before sinking within sight of safety is not only well known but there are plenty of other books that have dealt with the story before. So what makes this new book so different?
For one, it tells the story of the Princess Victoria in great detail and much greater detail than I have seen before. Practically every minute on board the doomed ship is documented. The struggle to shut the stern doors, the frantic rescue attempt and the agonising wait for the survivors to be picked up are all given a personal dimension that makes it seem so real.
Another nice touch is the inclusion of a short paragraph or two on every crew member and passenger on board explaining who they were and what took them aboard the Princess Victoria that fateful day. It all adds some humanity that is often missed as all too often these sorts of books get caught up in the details of the sinking that they forget to tell us the price that the human cargo had to pay.
Also dealt with in detail is the inquiry into the sinking and the subsequent appeal by the British Transport Commission trying to overturn the court's ruling that they were to blame. Not only are the near misses and design flaws in the Princess Victoria highlighted but also the relative unsuccessful rescue attempt is also called into question. The fact that the Princess Victoria was equipped with wireless telegraphy and that every rescue ship except HMS Contest had radio telephone meant that she couldn't communicate directly with the rescue vessels. All the messages had to pass through the Portpatrick wireless station a rather slow and cumbersome arrangement which no doubt slowed down the arrival of help to the Princess Victoria.
Everything is brought totally up to date by the inclusion of the story of how the Cromarty Firth Diving team found the wreck in September 1992.
I really enjoyed this book and despite a couple of mistakes in one paragraph in the introduction when the author tries to explain the North Channel shipping scene and gets most of it totally wrong, but then the North Channel has always been a complicated shipping scene very often if you blink, you get a totally new scene when you open your eyes again. This is all forgivable and with a wealth of photographs that I have never seen before all included with 144 pages of painstaking research this book is worth its £13.99 price.
The book was written by Stephen Cameron, a retired station commander in the Northern Ireland Fire Brigade now living in Bangor, County Down. The book is published by Colourpoint books to commemorate the 50th anniversary.
Links:
Larne Ferry Web Princess Victoria features:
Princess Victoria Memorial
Service
Princess Victoria 50th
Anniversary Remembered
Photo Transport (Ray Ward) Princess Victoria feature
Irish Sea Shipping (John Luxton) Princess Victoria feature
Colourpoint Books: Death in the North Channel
Updated: 11/11/03