By Paul Darroch. Published by Seaflower Books – 2019
The story of Jersey is shaped by the sea. The treacherous Channel waters drowned the King of England’s son in the White Ship and plunged his realm into chaos. Jersey legends tell of the waves that swept away the doomed manor of La Brecquette and sprung the fearsome trap of the Golden Chair.
Yet the ocean’s call of adventure inspired the mariners of Jersey to traverse the world. It tempted Sir Walter Raleigh, Jersey’s fallen Governor, into his fatal quest for El Dorado, and drove local boy Tom Davis to build a fortune in Africa. The same pioneering spirit led Lilian Grandin, Jersey’s first female doctor, to set sail for China, where she would sacrifice her life.
Jersey: Secrets of the Sea is their story, imagined in their own words. Step onto the bridge of RMS Titanic with her Jersey quartermaster just as the deadly iceberg looms into view, while Islander Lucy Duff-Gordon slumbers in her first-class suite below. Discover the story of her sister Elinor Glyn, who found fame at the peak of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Stand with the Jersey Company volunteers as they leave St Helier for the Great War; and watch the lone boatman in 1941 slipping away from the shadow of the German Occupation. Jersey: Secrets of the Sea is the panoramic story of an Island forged by the seas, set at the crossroads of maritime history, and told through the voices of the Jersey seafarers who made it.
Jersey: Secrets of the Sea is available in all good bookstores and also at Amazon UK – link below. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made through the links on this page.
What’s the story behind the fiery cover of my second book, Jersey: Secrets of the Sea?
The painting 
is a detail from “SS Amazon on Fire in the Bay of Biscay” (1852) by Jersey artist Philip John Ouless (1817-1885). Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections. Here is the tale behind the tragedy
The SS Amazon 
was a wooden-hulled paddle steamer on a voyage from Southampton. The ship was a tinderbox; stuffed to the brim with barrels of coal and bales of hay. Fatally, it also carried five hundred bottles of mercury, bound for the mines in Mexico.
Somewhere, west of the Scillies, the ship ignited. 
The fire was cataclysmic and over a hundred souls perished. Ouless’s masterpiece covets the sheer power of the inferno: the ship’s funnel glowing red-hot in the night, a lifeboat slipping away in the fiery waves; and the cold moon hanging pitilessly over the scene. 
Ouless became one of Jersey’s most prolific maritime artists.