Bath author Irene Drago novel explores Thomaston shipwreck, Maine-Ireland history

Bath author Irene M. Drago is steering her newest novel through a story that begins in Thomaston’s shipbuilding past and ends in the shadow of wartime intelligence. Irish Timber, a standalone historical-fiction novel and follow-up to Lavinia Wren and the Sailmakers, is rooted in the 1888 loss of the Alfred D. Snow, the 2,075-ton, three-masted timber sailing ship built by Samuel Watts in Thomaston in 1877.

The local connection runs deep. Archival material describes the vessel as 232 feet long, with a 42-foot beam, and Capt. W. J. Willey of Thomaston was in command when the ship was lost with all hands off Waterford, Ireland. One account says the Alfred D. Snow left San Francisco on July 20, 1887, carrying wheat and lumber after earlier voyages in Pacific and Atlantic trade routes, then was driven into Waterford Harbour by a southeast gale on January 4, 1888. The wreck claimed 29 lives.

Drago uses that maritime tragedy to frame a broader story that moves from the Maine coast to Ireland and into Dublin. In the novel, Susie Rowley travels to Ireland in the summer of 1931 with a group of Yankee scholars, becomes drawn into the mystery of the wreck and falls for Hugh Larkin, a young medical student from County Wexford. The story later shifts to Dublin, where Susie works at the national library for Dr. Richard J. Hayes, a real figure who was born in Abbeyfeale, County Limerick, in 1902 and became director of the National Library of Ireland in 1940.

Hayes also secretly worked as a code-breaker for the Irish army during World War II. The National Library of Ireland says Hayes and his team cracked the Nazi Görtz Cipher, and the library opened the Richard Hayes Room on Aug. 23, 2024, to honor him. Drago’s novel threads that history into a plot that also reaches the Palace Bar, the quay at Passage East and Muscongus Bay.

Maine Authors Publishing lists Irish Timber at 371 pages with ISBN 978-1-63381-488-2 and notes that Drago lives in Bath, the City of Ships. The publisher says she grew up hearing sea stories from her father, a chief petty officer who served on U.S. Navy ships from 1940 to 1980. Drago will discuss the ship’s history at Mockingbird Bookshop in Bath on April 24, and her website also lists a separate launch celebration for May 13 at 5:30 p.m. For a town built on timber, trade and tidewater memory, the book lands close to home.