Ruthie pens another chapter in her colourful life
Author, Ruthie Lockyer, has written the lastest book about her unusual childhood, to help raise money for charity.
The writer and artist has combined her talents for the book, My Island in the Sun, which explores her time spent living in Antigua.
Launched at an event in Ellesmere it is the sequel to The Shipwreck of RMS Hildebrand III.
That book tells of how she and her family set off for a new life in the Caribbean on the Hildebrand III only for it to be shipwrecked and them have to be rescued.
Ruthie said all the profits from the book would go to Alzheimer's Research.
"We all know someone who had suffered from or has a relative with dementia," she said.
"When I moved to Ellesmere I wanted to get involved in the community and there was a group that was fundraising for the charity. The launch of the book included an afternoon tea to help boost the fundraising."
Ruthie had a colourful childhood across the other side of the world.
In September 1957, when she was eight years old, Ruthie Lockyer set off with her parents on what turned out to be even more of an adventure than they could have imagined.
Her father was a Methodist minister, preparing for a five-year missionary posting to Antigua, taking his wife and young daughter along as he fulfilled his calling. At Queen’s Dock, Liverpool, they boarded an ocean liner – the RMS Hildebrand III – for what was expected to be a comfortable cruise: a couple of stops in Europe before the long voyage to the West Indies.
But they ran into poor weather off the coast of Portugal before an impenetrable fog descended.
And as the Hildebrand attempted to move closer to safe haven near Lisbon, it hit rocks, ran aground and was stuck there, listing heavily as water flooded in. The ship’s 164 passengers – holidaymakers, clergymen, academics and at least two Test cricketers among them, plus some pedigree pigs and a racehorse – were stranded in the wild Atlantic Ocean.
They were rescued by fishing boats with Ruthie having a child's memory of what happened.
Years later she decided she would research everything about the boat and the shipwreck and even divers who had found the wreck. Her research included finding a copy into the formal enquiry into the accident.
She also used her parents' diaries that she found after their deaths.
The sequel tells of an altogether happier time spend as a child growing up on her island in the sun and some of the famous people that lived or visited there.
