Billy G. Smith's "Ship of Death," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Ship of Death: A Voyage That Changed the Atlantic World by Billy G. Smith.

The entry begins:

The Hankey, a relatively large oceangoing wooden vessel, with square sails on foremast, mainmast and mizzenmast at the back, became the Ship of Death when it spread yellow fever around the Atlantic world in 1793. A replica ship might have a leading role in the film as was portrayed in Master and Commander (2003).

I would cast Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) as Philip Beaver, the British naval officer and idealist who was one of the organizers of the short-lived attempt to found a West-African colony on land purchased from Africans and using hired rather than enslaved African labor. As conditions worsened at the colony, he took control of the venture and was the last person to abandon the colony. Cranston would be able to perform both aspects of Beaver’s personality, the visionary, self-righteous abolitionist and the...[read on]

Learn more about Ship of Death at the Yale University Press website.

My Book, The Movie: Ship of Death.

--Marshal Zeringue