The remarkable story of Lanier Phillips and the shipwreck that changed his life. On February 18, 1942 the US Navy destroyer Truxton was shipwrecked off Newfoundland. 110 men died; of the 46 who survived one was black. The rescuers, never having seen a black man before, tried to scrub his skin clean and white. This is a story about growing up with fear in Klan-dominated Georgia, enlisting in a segregated navy, facing death in the icy North Atlantic, and a rescue which galvanised a man to fight racial discrimination.