The Wireless Operator: The Untold Story of the British Sailor Who Invented the Modern Drug Trade

Government agencies and rival factions were closing in.His look-alike had already fallen victim to professional hitmen and his once-powerful allies in Cuban intelligence and the DEA could no longer guarantee his safety.How did a boy from Manchester revolutionise the criminal world and become the largest marijuana trafficker in American history?This is the never-before-told story of Harold Derber, the debonair British Merchant Navy veteran who pioneered the modern drug trade with his groundbreaking invention: the drug mothership.Through his ghost fleet of drug ships, Derber eventually became the chief supplier of marijuana to post-war America.This gripping true tale follows Derber from humble beginnings in Manchester, England, to his assassination in the sun-kissed streets of Miami.Along the way, Derber's story takes in some of the most significant events of the twentieth century - the Second World War's Battle of the Atlantic, the Cuban Revolution and the murky shadows of the Cold War.