Richard Hughes

(1900 - 1976)

Richard Hughes’ play The Sisters’ Tragedy was performed in the garden of poet John Masefield in 1922, the same year that Hughes published his poetry collection Gipsy-Night and graduated from Oxford University. In 1932 the Phemius, a Holt Line steamship, was caught in a hurricane for six days. Hoping that his captain’s report could be turned into something, the chairman of the shipping line sent a copy to Masefield and then to Hughes, whose first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica, had been set at sea. In 1938 Hughes used the incident as the basis for In Hazard, his second novel.