Bett Dorion Fitzpatrick grew up in Newfoundland when there wasn’t a child alive who didn’t know the story about the tragic shipwrecks of the USS Truxton and USS Pollux. In this small mining town along Canada’s craggy shores, local villagers mounted a rescue operation and carried up the cliffs the 186 U.S. servicemen who survived the shipwrecks in the midst of a blizzard in February… [Read More]
In the pre-dawn hours of February 18, 1942, three American warships zigzagged in convoy along the south coast of Newfoundland. Caught in a raging blizzard, the three ships ran aground on one of the most inhospitable stretches of coastline in the world—less than three miles apart, within eight minutes of each other. The Wilkes freed herself. The Truxton and Pollux could not. Fighting frigid temperatures, wild surf, and a heavy… [Read More]
Congratulations to Bett Fitzpatrick whose new book of narrative nonfiction history, Hard Aground, will be released in Spring 2022 by Boulder Books, an independent publishing company in Newfoundland and Labrador. In the pre-dawn hours of February 18, 1942, three American warships zigzagged in convoy along the south coast of Newfoundland, heading for one of the worst disasters in American naval history. The USS Pollux and… [Read More]