This site, especially the section concerning the terrible hurricane at Samoa and the dramatic escape of HMS Calliope from the harbour at Apia, is respectfully dedicated to my great-grandfather: William Isaac Thorndale.

It is worth recording before anything else that William Isaac Thorndale, or WIT, as he seems to have been known to his peers, left two hand-written books of memoirs, penned when he was in his seventies around 1932. It is from these books that I take the majority of the details which follow, but I have also gleaned much from visits to the Public Records Office at Kew, and from a descendant of WIT’s brother who kindly got in touch via this web-site.