The tragic sinking of HM cruiser Curacoa off Bloody Foreland in 1942 was a disaster of stunning proportions. The Cunard liner Queen Mary sliced through the cruiser in broad daylight and 338 men died, most of them within minutes, all of them victims of a series of errors. The full detailed story of this drama is co-authored by the naval historian David A. Thomas, and one of the survivors, Patrick Holmes. Together they have painstakingly reconstructed a minute-by-minute record of the miscalculations, contradictions and errors preceding the disaster. The story is enhanced by dramatic eye-witness accounts and by the moving anecdotes of the survivors. Those who survived the tragedy were left branded with dreadful memories which they could never erase from their minds. It took eminent sea officers, judges and Law Lords long years of debate and dispute over the finer points of maritime law to adjudicate the clash of the captains, who only had fleeting moments of impending tragedy before making their fateful decisions. Public Record Office files and other documents have been analysed with meticulous care. The result is a tragic and yet splendid story which will be welcomed as an epic to rank with the best-told stories of disaster at sea.

In the early 19th century, the only way to transmit information was to send letters across the oceans by sailing ships or across land by horse and coach. Growing world trade created a need and technological development introduced options to improve general information transmission. Starting in the 1830s, a network of steamships, railways, canals and telegraphs was gradually built to connect different parts of the world. The book explains how the rate of information circulation increased many times over as mail systems were developed. Nevertheless, regional differences were huge. While improvements on the most significant trade routes between Europe, the Americas and East India were considered crucial, distant places such as California or Australia had to wait for gold fever to become important enough for regular communications. The growth of passenger services, especially for emigrants, was a major factor increasing the number of mail sailings. The study covers the period from the Napoleonic wars to the foundation of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and includes the development of overseas business information transmission from the days of sailing ships to steamers and the telegraph.