The Sea's Bitter Harvest: Thirteen Deadly Days on the North Atlantic

by Douglas A. Campbell

In the course of thirteen days in January 1999, four commercial clam boats sank in horrifying succession while working the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, taking the lives of ten men. Husbands, fathers, loners, and drug users, each man was lured to the nation’s most dangerous trade by the lucrative wages offered to those who dared to reap the harvest of the ocean. In this compelling maritime tale of risk and danger, acclaimed journalist Douglas Campbell compassionately portrays the destinies of the men who lost their lives to the Atlantic and the lure of profits from clamming. From the tough and sometimes troubled young men on deck to their families on shore, and the courageous people who tried to rescue them, this narrative memorializes a way of life, and exposes the hazards of this dangerous trade.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published December 18, 2001

Reviews

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows how I love to read anything nautical; this book was no exception. Commercial fishing is twenty-eight times as dangerous as the average for all other industries. The opportunities for death are legion: being washed overboard, frozen to death, or "assaulted by their machinery." Pressure on the captains to take their boats out in nasty weather contributes to the hazards, but the clamming industry until 1999 had had six years without a fatality, in part due to changes in the regulatory environment that limited the total amount a boat could dredge in a year and did not suggest when the clams had to be collected.

Still, companies who owned the tags that limited production always wanted to make sure they met their quotas — not to mention the public, whose bizarre taste for clams unfathomably knew no limits. The more clams that could be brought back in a load meant more profits all around, since each crewman was paid a share. A captain could earn as much as a high school superintendent, and an otherwise uneducated crewman as much as a teacher with a master’s degree. Overloading was common. " 'Someone asks you to carry a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man across the parking lot on your back, you can do that. That's a clam boat with a full load of clams. If they ask you to carry a second two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man on top of the first, you can't do it. That's a clam boat with a full load, taking on water,' " recorded one captain.
During a thirteen-day period in January 1999, four clam boats sank. Ten fishermen drowned, and Campbell's book is an expansion of a series of articles that was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The intrigue of books like this is not just the recurring "man against the sea" theme. I love the detail of how things work, how the jobs are accomplished. Two different types of clams are dredged off the Atlantic Coast: quahogs and surf clams. Neither is typically served in restaurants. They are used for chowders, clam strips and other inedible clam dishes (or is that redundant.) The boats, usually less than 200 feet long to avoid the requirement for a licensed master at the helm, carry enormous dredges that scrape along the bottom. Every 25-30 minutes they are brought up, and clams and detritus are dumped on a conveyor belt where the clams are sorted and dumped into large cages for transport back to canning plants in Virginia, New Jersey and Maryland. The cages weigh about 500 pounds empty. When full, they are very heavy and how they are loaded becomes critical important to the stability of the boat. The boats also have several fuel and hydraulic oil tanks that must be watched carefully so the boats, which usually have a very low freeboard, don't develop a list that would cause them to capsize. This is especially likely because, the captains’ tendency to overload their boats with cages raising the center of gravity and reducing stability. In addition, numerous valves that pump out bilges and holds must be well maintained and operated properly, or instead of pumping water out, they will let water in, again reducing a boat's stability and increasing the likelihood of capsizing. So there are lots of things to watch out for and to monitor.

Drug use among fishermen is a huge problem, and fishermen accounted for 30-40 percent of the arrests for heroin usage in the nineties. Since clamming could be very profitable when things were going well -- a hand could easily earn up to $60,000 a year, much more money than could be earned at most other jobs requiring no education -- they often had money to burn. Campbell became close to several of the bereaved families. This and his research into the clamming industry provide a moving and balanced picture. He discusses safety standards, describing negligence both by the companies and the fishermen themselves. Other related books that I have previously reviewed are: The Perfect Storm and; The Hungry Ocean a book on King crab in Alaska. One can never have too many good nautical books.

[Jmlanier1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Douglas Campbell tells the stories of 4 clam boats and their crew after all 4 sank in the Atlantic Ocean within 2 weeks of each other in January, 1999. Mr. Campbell does a great job explaining the anatomy of these clam boats, their operation, and their safety mechanisms. He also does a great job humanizing the people on these boats and their families. Clamming is one of the most dangerous occupations in North America and this book really exposes the hazards in the chase for this valuable catch.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is story of multiple shipwrecks/sinkings that occurred in less than 2 weeks off New England. Any fan of "Deadliest Catch" will enjoy this compelling nautical narrative.

[Jeff Jellets · Rating 4 out of 5]

As one man said, no boat sinks without someone making a mistake. And this fellow, like so many others, believed that he would not make those same mistakes.

Shipwreck stories comprise a hefty part of my bookshelf library and despite improvements in maritime construction, weather forecasting, and safety procedures, they also don’t seem to be in any danger of extinction. Fishing remains one of the world’s most dangerous professions as January 1999 proved when four clamming boats went to the bottom of the Atlantic in just thirteen days.

I liked Douglas A. Campbell’s The Sea’s Bitter Harvest. It not only makes a fitting epitaph for the lost boats Beth Dee Bob, Cape Fear, Ellie B. and Adriatic, but also serves as poignant testimony to the lives of the captains, mates and deckhands who either barely survived the sinkings or were sadly claimed by the seas. Campbell also provides a nice primer on the clamming industry – which is probably opaque to the majority of readers – and as a child of the Jersey coast, the familiarity of the place names (right down to a few of the mentioned restaurants) struck a nostalgic chord.

The block-and-tackle of these types of tales is, of course, in the recreation of the last foundering moments of the boats and the human struggle for survival. Campbell is up to the task, and there’s plenty of drama and pathos as things go dangerously, deadly bad. But where this book is a bit different from other sea stories is in how deep Campbell digs into the lives of the seafarers. Admittedly, out of the gate, I wasn’t quite sure why I should care about who met who at what bar on New Year’s Eve. But you can’t appreciate the emotional punch all those little, accumulating details until the boats go down.

If Campbell’s goal was to make the reader feel like they’d also lost friends on these missing vessels, then mission succeeded.

The Sea’s Bitter Harvest is a good addition to any armchair captain’s library with life lessons larger than those just found on the boats. Recommended!

[Kathleen McRae · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting!

[Alice Medeiros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book about local fisherman, who got caught in a storm. Thirteen days and 10 lives lost. Four Boats Down song written by local singer songwriter, Michael Troy about this tragedy. Hard to put the book down. Highly recommend!

[Geoffrey Hazelton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A modern sea story which will hold your interest. It is about the sinking of a number of clam fishing boats which all sank in the Atlantic during a short period in 1999. The people involved and their families are described in such a way you will feel you know them.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps there has been a little boom on stories about the sinking of ships, but who would expect an interestign story about the sinking of clam boats?

[Ron Witmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

It gave an inside into the life of an ocean going clam boat.