Ice Escape: Beatrice Hale

Posted: Wednesday Mar 02, 2022

Beatrice Hale has relaunched her children’s book, Ice Escape, with The Kellas Cat Press, Aberdeen.

ICE ESCAPE is a children’s story based on the real-life courageous rescue by the crew of Aberdeen trawler Lord Talbot of the visionary American Flying Family. Their Sikorsky Amphibion crashed on the Greenland coast in 1932 while on a pioneering flight round the world. What was it like on the boat as it made its way towards the stranded aviators? What was it like on the coast, as the Flying Family did its best to survive, waiting for help that might not come? Ice Escape tells the story, imagined through the eyes of the children involved.

MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY. This is flight Foxtrot, Alpha, 092 calling Angmassalik …

1932

John wants to be part of the first family to fly around the world. Colin wants to stay at home, not sail out on a fishing trawler into the Arctic Ocean where his father drowned.

But one little accident leads to disaster, and that means the boys have to overcome their fears to meet far from home, in one of the coldest, harshest places on earth.

Torry-born author Beatrice Hale, now living in Dunedin, grew up inspired by her grandfather, Tom Watson, the skipper of the Lord Talbot. She has drawn on her rich family history for stories of adventure for all ages. ‘My Grandfather was the Skipper on the Lord Talbot,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t believe it when in later years in America I phoned the two children – old ladies by then – who had been stranded on that icy coast. And they said if it hadn’t been for my grandfather and the crew, they would have died.’

Copies of the book are available on Amazon.

There is further material on the rescue in Aberdeen Maritime Museum (www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/aagm).

There is further information on the Flying Family, the plane and the flight in the Sikorsky Archives (www.sikorskyarchives.com).

Beatrice Hale has just been signed by The Kellas Cat Press and further stories based on her family history are likely to be available soon.