Book Review: Back from the Dead

Author

Kingsley Perry

Subjects

Ship histories and stories, Book reviews

Tags

None noted.

RAN Ships

None noted.

Publication

December 2025 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)

Back from the Dead

By: Piia Wirsu
Published by: Harper Collins, 2025

This is a true story – so astonishing that it could not possibly be made up. It is the story of the Blythe Star disaster in 1973, based principally on the experiences of Mick Doleman who was an 18-year-old deckhand, the youngest in the crew of ten.

MV Blythe Star was an Australian coastal freighter on a routine trip from Hobart to King Island. The trip was to be in a clockwise direction, heading up the west coast of Tasmania. On the morning of the second day, the ship began to list and before long it capsized and quickly sank. The crew man-aged to escape in an emergency life raft, all ten of them in a rubber raft the size of a 3-person tent. They had very limited food, drink, clothing and equipment. And so began ten days of battling raging seas and the roaring forties, and the threat of annihilation on one of the great rocky islands and headlands on the edge of the south coast of Tasmania. Their days and nights were full of unending wet and cold discomfort, sickness, hope, despair, fatigue, delirium and disappointment, all described in detail. One of the crew died at sea.

After ten days the starving and ill men managed to get ashore in a small and desolate bay a short distance north of Tasman Peninsula on the south-east coast. The ship’s sinking had led to a huge search, but by this time the search had been abandoned and the crew had been given up for dead.

Two of the crew died shortly after arriving at the bay, at a time when any prospects of rescue were quickly disappearing. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to find a way out, on the twelfth day three of them set out in a deter-mined effort to be found. And indeed, they were. How this occurred and how their families and the public reacted makes an exciting, interesting and heart-warming episode of the story.

It is a story that is told with reference in part to the families of the crew, as well as to what could have been done to avoid the sinking of the ship and to improve what had been unsatisfactory search efforts.

While perhaps not strictly a naval historical event, as maritime history it does remind of the outcome of many unfortunate naval activities, particularly in the Second World War when so many ships were sunk leaving desperate men and women similarly floating helplessly around the oceans. The book is enlightening and engaging, and easy to read. It includes a generous selection of photographs and maps. The author, Piia Wirsu, was the producer and narrator of ‘From the Dead’ which was an award-winning season of an ABC Podcast. Mick Doleman is the only surviving crew member of the Blythe Star.

Reviewed by: Kingsley Perry