Showing results by author "G W Shaw" in All Categories

Kai, a carefree once-successful musician is invited by his new Russian girlfriend, Zina, to join her family's Caribbean holiday. Impulsively accepting he learns that Zina is the daughter of a Russian oligarch, Stepan Pirumov and that the trip is aboard his yacht, the Zinaida, moored in St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. The crew consists of Captain Marius Falk, the first mate, Erin Wade, and a hastily assembled staff, including a chief stewardess Marissa from Miami, a chief engineer from Lagos and a personal trainer from Los Angeles. All know how to behave around the very rich.

Jacob Meaney makes so little money as a translator that his girlfriend has given up on him. Then Eloise, an Australian digital marketer, appears out of the blue, offering him unheard of sums for a couple of weeks' work. A private plane and helicopter take him to a showcase villa in Carinthia and all the luxury he would ever want. Unwillingly Jacob has become part of an organised crime conspiracy, held captive there by armed guards.

This is the story of how, in Titanic's loss, 1500 souls were sacrificed to the "settled science" and "scientific consensus" of marine engineering. It is also the story of how the US and British loss enquiries were shaped by party politics, corrupted by corrupt politicians and the Marconi Scandal, tainted by the politics of Irish Home Rule, and - finally - salvaged by Oliver Wendell Holmes and the US Supreme Court, and by Lord Mersey's judgement in the Board of Trade Enquiry and the subsequent International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea.