Death Raft: The Human Drama of the Medusa Shipwreck

'This most notorious of sea stories is calmly and chillingly retold by Alexander McKee ... cool, taut, and impossible to put down' - Kirkus Reviews

'First-rate' - Newsweek

'A weird and tragic narrative ... a spellbinding human drama that made its mark on history and art ... haunting' - Publishers Weekly

The shocking true story of the Medusa shipwreck and a desperate struggle for survival at sea.

Perfect for readers of David Grann, Piers Paul Read, Joe Simpson and Jonathan Franklin, and for fans of true-life survival dramas.

In July 1816, 150 souls on a makeshift raft were deliberately set adrift in the Atlantic. After thirteen days of mutiny, murder, suffering and finally, cannibalism, only fifteen were left alive.

How did a simple accident at sea turn into the most terrible shipwreck of the nineteenth century?

When the French frigate Medusa, bound for St. Louis in Senegal, ran aground on a sandbank off the west coast of Africa, those aboard were forced to abandon ship. While the captain and a select few claimed the lifeboats, 150 people were herded onto an overloaded raft cobbled together from parts of the frigate. Finding it impossible to tow the raft, the tow rope was cast off.

Set adrift upon a gale-lashed sea, with no provisions and no hope of rescue, the exhausted, dehydrated and sea-drenched castaways fell prey to hysterical violence. They were eventually forced to survive by consuming the bodies of the dead, until only fifteen remained to be rescued.

Drawing on the published accounts of survivors, Alexander McKee powerfully reconstructs the ill-fated voyage of the Medusa, describing in dramatic detail the actions of an incompetent captain, the full horror of the tragedy, and the ensuing political scandal that threatened the French government and which inspired an epic painting that hangs in the Louvre.

A remarkable story of ineptitude and betrayal, courage and bravery, Death Raft is the authoritative account of one of the most harrowing maritime disasters of all time.

'Fascinating reading' - Hammond Innes

'One of the strangest and most horrifying true stories ever told.' - John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant's Woman