The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of distinction between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
-- Sir William Francis Butler
In 1983 the Marine Electric, a "reconditioned" World War II vessel, was on a routine voyage thirty miles off the East Coast of the United States when disaster struck: The old coal carrier sank in the frigid forty-foot waves and subzero winds of the Atlantic, and of the thirty-four men aboard, only three survived. Until the Sea Shall Free Them recounts in compelling detail the wreck of the Marine Electric and the legal drama that unfolded in its wake--a lawsuit that led to vital reforms in the laws regarding the safety of ships.