The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey
by Linda Greenlaw
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Book Summary Information
Author: Linda GreenlawEdition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2000-05-31
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 265
Book Reviews of The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey
Book Review: A woman to be admired
Summary: 5 Stars
Linda Greenlaw captained an American sword boat. By itself, this is an accomplishment worthy of respect. More than that, she became one of the most successful captains in the fleet. And as "The Hungry Ocean" attests, she is also an accomplished writer with a fine eye for detail. I don't say things like this often, but this is a woman who "walks the walk", AND "talks the talk." A woman to be admired.
Forced by international law to fish a thousand miles from their home ports, Americans who go after swordfish need to be tough, self-reliant and resourceful. In their business, things like surface water temperature, thermoclines, currents, and the corners formed by the Gulf Stream currents as they meander, can mean the difference between a morning boatful of worthless sharks and two tons of prime swordfish. Each night, thirty miles of carefully positioned line carrying thousands of baited hooks set to just the right depth are set adrift in the warm waters of the stream - only to be hauled back aboard the next morning, foot by foot, hopefully including a good number of fish.
How did Linda Greenlaw come to captain one of these vessels? As she details life aboard a sword boat, she also describes scenes from her childhood and young adult years - little things that eventually let the reader feel as if we know this woman and wish we were friends.
It's the story of one trip aboard her sword boat that carries the read, however, and in her description of these events she is at her best as a writer. In rich detail, life on the fishing grounds is shown; crew problems, mechanical troubles, the potential pitfalls and snarls. There is no time off. The crew works round the clock for as long as three weeks with hardly a moment to rest.
That's the business of working a sword boat, and it is a fascinating picture indeed. I'd recommend this one to everyone who loves the water.
Summary of The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey
In his number-one bestseller, The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger describes Linda Greenlaw as "one of the best sea captains, period, on the East Coast." Now Greenlaw tells her own riveting story of a thirty-day swordfishing voyage aboard one of the best-outfitted boats on the East Coast, complete with danger, humor, and characters so colorful they seem to have been ripped from the pages of Moby Dick. The excitement starts immediately, even before Greenlaw and her five-man crew leave the dock - and it doesn't stop until the last page. Under way, she must cope with nasty weather, equipment failure, and treachery aboard ship, not to mention the routinely backbreaking work of operating a fishing boat. Displaying a true fisherman's gift for storytelling and a true writer's flair for both drama and reflection, Greenlaw offers an exciting real-life adventure tale filled with the beauty and power of the sea.The term fisherwoman does not exactly roll trippingly off the tongue, and Linda Greenlaw, the world's only female swordfish boat captain, isn't flattered when people insist on calling her one. "I am a woman. I am a fisherman... I am not a fisherwoman, fisherlady, or fishergirl. If anything else, I am a thirty-seven-year-old tomboy. It's a word I have never outgrown." Greenlaw also happens to be one of the most successful fishermen in the Grand Banks commercial fleet, though until the publication of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, "nobody cared." Greenlaw's boat, the Hannah Boden, was the sister ship to the doomed Andrea Gail, which disappeared in the mother of all storms in 1991 and became the focus of Junger's book. The Hungry Ocean, Greenlaw's account of a monthlong swordfishing trip over 1,000 nautical miles out to sea, tells the story of what happens when things go right--proving, in the process, that every successful voyage is a study in narrowly averted disaster.
There is the weather, the constant danger of mechanical failure, the perils of controlling five sleep-, women-, and booze-deprived young fishermen in close quarters, not to mention the threat of a bad fishing run: "If we don't catch fish, we don't get paid, period. In short, there is no labor union." Greenlaw's straightforward, uncluttered prose underscores the qualities that make her a good captain, regardless of gender: fairness, physical and mental endurance, obsessive attention to detail. But, ultimately, Greenlaw proves that the love of fishing--in all of its grueling, isolating, suspenseful glory--is a matter of the heart and blood, not the mind. "I knew that the ocean had stories to tell me, all I needed to do was listen." --Svenja Soldovieri
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