[.ca] Dead Reckoning: The Dunedin Star Disaster (ISBN 0753820447)

A Magnificent Testimony to Human Endurance:
Dawson has produced a remarkable account of how the passengers and crew of the "Dunedin Star" shipwrecking in 1942 off the coast of southwest Africa heroically survived weeks of fighting the elements to make it back to safety. Without divulging too much of the book's contents, I provide the following list of features that make it a potentially gripping and enveloping read: 1. The author provides an effective to the actual main story. It is the early stages of the war and the British government is in the process of sending war materials to a faraway North Africa via the shipping lanes around the Cape of Good Hope. The Dunedin Star was one of many ships enlisted to transport the supplies. Along with the crew came a group of civilians who were eagerly trying to connect with family members in East Africa; 2. The story covers the highlights of the journey from a number surviving records and personal recollections. The most memorable are obviously the ones dealing with the initial holeing of the ship and its subsequent evacuation under some of the roughest conditions imaginable of the coast of modern-day Namibia; 3. The story goes into elaborate detail on the various rescue missions that were attempted to save the three groups of marooned passengers that had become separated along the way. Dawson allows his readers to catch a glimpse of how this little band of people - with true British grit - pulled together to survive. What once started out as a serious misadventure quickly turned into a heroic adventure, where most of the people learned to live with the uncertainties of the future by dealing with the pressing needs of the present.