The Lost Story of the William & Mary is about the loss of a ship in 1853, loaded with emigrants to the United States and which ran aground on a reef in the Bahamas.

But the devastating part of this story is not the wreck itself -- although the captain probably should have been able to avoid the reef, it's still inarguable that shipwrecks were still fairly common at the time -- but the immediate aftermath. The captain, Timothy Stinson, and most of his crew abandoned the ship in longboats, leaving the emigrants behind to face their fate alone. Fearful of being overwhelmed, the sailors hacked at desperate passengers with axes to keep them from boarding the boats for a chance at survival.

When they made it to the U.S. alive, Stinson and his men reported the ship and its passengers lost, having gone down before their eyes in stormy, shark-infested waters. But the lie -- and the cowardly actions of Stinson and his men -- soon was revealed, because the ship didn't sink right away, and another heroic captain saved the lives of most of the William & Mary's passengers. (Surprisingly, Stinson never faced a penalty for his actions, although he did retire from the sea.)

Like her previous book on the wreck of RMS Tayleur, author Gill Hoffs provides a lot of detail on the passengers, digging into their lives before embarking on the journey and their plans in America once they arrived. Consequently, you'll get to know a lot of them quite well, and you'll feel their sorrow as so many of them succumb to the perils of the trip even before the ship runs aground.

It's a deeply moving story, and Hoff tells it well. Where details are scarce, she borrows narratives from similar events to fill in the gaps.