Breaking Seas, Broken Ships covers British shipwrecks from 1854 to 2007, with HMS Victoria as a central case. Victoria collided with another British warship in the eastern Mediterranean on 23 June 1893 after an impossible maneuvering order. The disaster killed 363 men and left 291 survivors. Ian Friel tells the story through both Vice Admiral George Tryon and stoker James Curran, placing the top and bottom of the command chain in the same event. A contemporary account of grieving relatives waiting at the dockyard gates extends the loss beyond the fleet and makes the book a work of social as well as operational history.
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Breaking Seas places people around the loss of HMS Victoria
Ian Friel's book connects a fatal 1893 collision with senior command, lower-deck survival, and the families waiting for news ashore.