Blood in the sea - Stuart Gill

Over 300 men died when the light cruiser Dunedin went down in the South Atlantic, victim of two torpedoes fired from the German submarine U124. For the 250 or so who managed to escape the ship, the next seventy eight hours were to be a nightmare of torture and slow death. Some men died of their injuries, some died of exhaustion, some went insane, others were drowned, some were bitten and killed by vicious fish. Only six Carley rafts were left afloat when rescue arrived in the form of an American merchantman, who lifted 72 men to safety: five died before they made it to port. This moving, intensively researched book is an account of life and death at sea, and tells also the story of how the Dunedin came to be where she was, looking for a U-boat wolf pack as a result of information received from the Enigma codebreakers in Bletchley Park. Amazingly, the story of the Dunedin has never been told before in any detail. This book has it all.