The Mary Stanford Disaster
In November 1928 Edwards witnessed the capsizing of the supposedly unsinkable Mary Stanford Lifeboat in Rye Bay with the loss of all aboard.
The unprecedented mass funeral, which was attended by representatives of King George V, the Government and the Armed Services, was conducted by her father, the Reverend Harry Newton.
Edwards knew all seventeen crew-members personally but was especially close to Charlie Southerden. In a letter to a school friend in January 1930 she described Charlie, who was six years older than she was, as her "boy friend" although the relationship was not public knowledge because of the difference in their age and social class. Much later she wrote a fictional account of the lifeboat disaster in Storm Ahead, published in 1953.
Read more about this topic: Monica Edwards
Famous quotes containing the word disaster:
“The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth.”
—Ben Elton (b. 1959)