Unsinkable Lights

Dustin D. Hyland

Pen & Sword

£25.00

This biography of Charles Herbert Lightholler is more than just another Titanic book. It opens with a dramatic account of rescue at sea, but this relates to HMS Falcon, a WW1 escort destroyer. In total he survived four maritime disasters: the barque Holt Hill, wrecked in the Indian Ocean, HMS Oceanic on a reef near Foula, HMS Falcon off the English East Coast and the Titanic itself. In life he suffered the death of his mother when he was a month old and abandonment by his father when he was 10. He first went to sea, as an apprentice, aged13. Aged 66 he rescued 127 soldiers from Dunkirk, on a motor yacht designed for a maximum of 20.

An extraordinary, irrepressible life.