About Ship of Lost Souls:

In January of 1906, off the coast of Vancouver Island, BC, almost everyone aboard the steamship Valencia died, including every single woman and child, when the vessel crashed into the jagged rocks just off of the island. Some 170+ souls perished within a couple hundred yards of land, and in spite of the fact that ships had been dispatched to rescue them. This is the story of that disaster, about who was at fault, and about the lessons we may or may not have learned from the tragedy.

“Riveting! A stranger-than-fiction tale that memorializes the Valencia among the great lost steamships of history—and one lost in the most jaw-dropping of ways.” —Daniel Stone, national bestselling author of Sinkable: Obsession, The Deep Sea, and The Shipwreck of the Titanic

“A fascinating story of tragedy, terror and drama that has been well researched and passionately told. Hard to put down once you start reading.” —Richard M. Jones, author and historian

Author bio:

Rod Scher began his working life teaching English in high schools in California and Oregon; he continued teaching at the post-secondary level until 2016. In between, he worked as an editor for textbooks and magazines, and also as a software developer, writing software for StudyWare, the educational software company he and two partners founded in 1986. In 1992, that company was purchased by Cliffs Notes, which is how he found his way to Nebraska, where Cliffs Notes was located. (It turns out that if you live long enough, you get to have multiple careers. Go figure.)

Now back on the West Coast, Rod has built a "retirement" career as an experienced writer/editor who has annotated or edited many books and written countless magazine articles—mostly on technical or computer-related topics. 

His love of sailing, though, has especially attracted him to books of a nautical nature, resulting in annotations of Joshua Slocum's classic Sailing Alone Around the World and Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. That's one reason he was excited about the opportunity to write Sailing by Starlight, the story of Marvin Creamer's early-80s circumnavigation in his 35' sloop, Globe Star. The voyage was completed without the use of instruments of any kind: no sextant, no compass, no radar . . . not even a wristwatch.