John Marsh

John Henry Marsh (1914-1996) was a South African shipping expert, author and journalist. John H. Marsh was born on 07.03.1914 in Sea Point near Cape Town and showed a keen interest in ships from childhood on. Already as a schoolboy, he possessed a highly regarded collection of photographs of incoming ships and in the following years developed into an expert on ships and shipping. The Cape Argus newspaper took notice of him in 1928 and hired John H. Marsh as editor and photographer for maritime topics in 1933.
John H. Marsh died on 18.02.1996 in his library in Johannesburg and left behind, besides his wife Leona, their four children, Michael, David, Lee and Shayne Marsh.

Books

Skeleton Coast

The dramatic rescue operation of the Dunedin Star

by John Marsh

200 p. • 2023 • ISBN 978-99945-76-86-9 • 148 x 210 mm

The author John Marsh began writing about nautical subjects at the age of fourteen. He wrote in his preface: “This is the most remarkable shipwreck- and rescue story that has come my way in twenty years of waterfront reporting.”

The ship, the Dunedin Star, ran aground at the Skeleton Coast of then South West Africa in 1942/43.

When the call for aid came from the helpless men, women and children, marooned on that desert beach, the men of the South African Naval Forces, the Air Force, the Army and Police and the Administration for Railways and Harbours and even the Royal Navy got together to organize this amazing rescue operation.

An index has been added to this edition to make the publication more accessible to historians.

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