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:
“It was so long since I’d seen masses of young men that I’d forgotten how much pleasanter men of between twenty and thirty were to be around with than older men. It isnt so true of women. When I was in my twenties I thought the grown adults I ran into were a disaster and now I know I was right.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)