It's Here!

Roll Back the Clouds is now available at Amazon, both as an ebook and in print. A large print version will come in a day or two. And on Friday, Barnes & Noble will offer the print book.

The timing works well for those who suddenly find themselves with time on their hands with all the closures and isolation demands. Now you can sit back and read without feeling guilty.

Join Geoff & Rosaleen for the Lusitania’s final voyage.

Lusitania Passengers: the Crompton Family

Roll Back the Clouds, my new novel about the Lusitania, releases on March 17. Many of the passengers aboard the ill-fated, final voyage appear alongside main characters, Geoff and Rosaleen Bonnard. I’ll be profiling several of them here. This week, meet the Crompton family.

       

            Paul and Gladys Crompton married in 1900 and had six children. Because Paul traveled frequently for the Booth Group (parent company of the Lusitania) and usually took his family with him, the children were born in different places around the world.

In 1915, while living in Philadelphia, Paul was offered a position with Booth Steamship Company, and the family planned to move to England. The Lusitania was their usual mode of transportation. Along with nurse Dorothy Allen (for eight-month-old Peter), the family occupied staterooms D-56, D-58, and D-60. The children made so much noise that the passenger in D-54 requested another cabin.

As the Lusitania sank, another passenger said he saw Paul Crompton fastening a lifebelt to baby Peter, and he himself helped one of the daughters adjust her belt. None of the family survived. The bodies of the three sons, Stephen, 17, John, 6, and Peter were recovered.

In Roll Back the Clouds, Rosaleen meets Gladys and several of her children. She later gives Peter a bottle in the nursery, and identifies John and Peter in a morgue.

Lusitania Passenger Father Basil Maturin

Roll Back the Clouds, my new novel about the Lusitania, releases on March 17. Many of the passengers aboard the ill-fated, final voyage appear alongside main characters, Geoff and Rosaleen Bonnard. I’ll be profiling several of them here. This week, meet Father Basil Maturin.

     

   Basil Maturin was born in 1847 in Ireland. After receiving an education at Trinity College in Dublin, he was sent to Philadelphia to be the rector at St. Clement’s Episcopalian Church. He became a Catholic in 1897.

In 1913, he became Catholic chaplain at Oxford University. He embarked on a preaching tour in the United States in 1915, and was returning to England on the Lusitania. While in New York, he spoke to several Irish-Americans and was surprised, but relieved, to discover they were not pro-German.

As the Lusitania sank, he administered absolutions to several people, and was seen placing a child in a lifeboat. He did not wear a lifebelt, and was lost in the disaster. His body was recovered by two elderly fishermen and identified by his papers, silver watch, banker’s drafts for ₤2,000. He was buried in England.

In Roll Back the Clouds, Father Maturin meets the Bonnards in the first-class lounge, where they partook of afternoon tea.