Farallon: Shipwreck and Survival on the Alaska Shore (Unabridged‪)‬

On a snowy morning in January 1910, the Alaska Steamship Company's Farallon struck Black Reef in Cook Inlet. The vessel carried no wireless radio to broadcast an SOS. Thirty-eight men scrambled into lifeboats, to be cast up on the rugged shore where they huddled under make-shift tents constructed from the Farallon's sails. Exposed to a bitter northern winter with meager equipment and clothing, a disturbing awareness sank in-rescuers may arrive too late.

In a daring attempt to find help, six men launched a lifeboat on the open sea. During two months of relentless travail, the brave mariners were all but given up for lost.

One of the stranded men created a startling record of the shipwrecked party. John E. Thwaites, an amateur photographer and the ship's mail clerk, shot dozens of haunting, stark images of the ice-shrouded derelict, the castaways' barren camp, and frostbitten men with burlap-wrapped feet. Lloyd brings to life a riveting tale of hardy seafaring men and tough sourdoughs who survived cold and despair against difficult odds in Alaska's stormswept wilderness.