While being gracious, it was also reminding me that the survivors of Wuphon's Dream owed a debt-our very lives.

The survivors owed their lives to a combination of luck and bonds of friendship so strong, as one of the women remembered it, "that to die oneself would be no worse than to see one of the others die."

Another survivor, who was brought up in Leith, where she went to Bell's School, owed her introduction to printing to a neighbour "a Miss Taylor", who told her widowed mother that young Jenny would be "just suited" to the printing trade, and herself took her up for interview.

The survivors owed their rescue in large measure to the tireless, efficient and in many cases heroic action of the people of Lawn and St. Lawrence, Newfoundland.

Two of the rescued soldiers died, but the survivor owed his life to Capt. Pless and his crew.

Only one person was able to climb up the lowered scrambling nets - 25-year-old Angus MacDonald, the ship's carpenter in charge of the boat, and due to whose magnificent seamanship all the survivors undoubtedly owed their lives.

It's the debt that all survivors owe the dead.

Braddock's the man to whom the survivors owe their lives.