Written Over the Waves

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood at the rail of a ship crossing the Atlantic and stared into the water below. The captain had quietly told him: this was the spot. Beneath these waves, four months earlier, his four daughters — Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanetta — had drowned when the ocean liner Ville du Havre collided with another vessel and sank in twelve minutes.…