The destructive power of a typhoon is awesome, but the Derbyshire was no small and ageing tramp, running red rust with a crew of deadbeats culled from the backwaters of the world. She was just four years old; a huge bulk carrier of 169,044 tones deadweight, 970 feet long and 145 feet in the beam, manned entirely by competent British seaman and maintained to the highest standards. She matched the best afloat in her day.

How, then, could this great ship have disappeared so quickly and completely, with not even a faint cry for help, and leaving only a thin film of oil on the sea to mark her passing?

In the eighteen years since the Derbyshire slipped out of sight, more than 300 of her like -- many of them bigger than the legendary Titanic -- have gone down, taking with them over 1,300 lives. Even today, on average, at least one of these ships is lost every month.

The circumstances attending the sinking of no two ships are exactly the same, but there are clear links common to all these deplorable maritime disasters not difficult to perceive. This is all the more worrying in the light of the fact that, except for rare exceptions like the Derbyshire, these juggernauts of the sea lanes go down with so little publicity. At best they rate a passing reference in the little-read inner pages of a few national dailies, more often they gain no mention outside the dealing rooms of Lloyd's.

In this powerful book, Bernard Edwards, master mariner turned writer, offers a controversial solution to the Derbyshire mystery, and at the same time takes the lid off ofthe on-going scandal of the disappearing bulk carriers.