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Gulf Stream North
Captain Crother, the white owner of the fishing ship Moona Waa Togue, and his Black crew struggle to earn a living catching herring in the waters of the North Atlantic
248 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1980
11 people want to read
About the author
Earl Conrad
26 books4 followersAmerican journalist and author with an interest in Hollywood and African-American issues.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 12, 2026
I’m often stopped on the street—careerist hobos; elegant bachelors; reborn MAGA moms pushing baby and the Lord in a Silver Jews girl-shirt; aspiring doctoral candidates; parasol’d redheads; Antifa recruiters; all sorts and shapes and sizes—and asked the burning question: “Cody, what is the legitimate heir to Moby-Dick?”
“Gulf Stream North by Earl Conrad,” I tells ‘em.
“Wha—who’s Earl Cornbread?” they invariably say.
“Conrad” (me again). “The other one.”
“Who’s this Connie and why come I’ve never heard of Golf Force One?”
“Gulf Stream North, not the president’s plane. And you’ve never heard of it because almost no one has. It has been forgotten; what little impact it made has been diluted and swept to sea in the shitslide of fiction since the 1970s, the tech revolution, social media, fucking ‘Bookstagram influencers’ peddling virtue for attention and revenue. It has no place in the algorithm. It’s not hip or clever. It belongs to no ‘school’ beyond big L Literature. Conrad was funny looking. The work exhibits the duality, like Melville’s, of an uncanny ease with the contemporaneous ability of both knuckling out the smallest minutia of life at sea for men of certain breeds, AND these expository insights—sometimes a few pages long—of rumination, celebration, and entire theosophical/metaphysical frameworks that ribbon out of Conrad’s mouth with the fluidity and grace of line from a spinning reel mid-cast. But, really, it is the heir because it is one seafaring novel of the 20th C. that doesn’t seem to exist in Melville’s long shadow. It’s as if Conrad didn’t pretend to be unaware of Conrad and that they parted the same waters—he just seems ambivalent toward it. But I swear to you, [hobo/STP member/cult mom/future doc/daywalker/paid agitator/etc.], though secular, this is holy writing. The wild spirit, the essentialism of the royal Sea somehow pouring out from Conrad’s pen, and his being lucky enough to divine liquid into word-shaped testimonials of every cell of ocean life. What can I tell you? He bottled it, the animating peddle note that drives all life forward until stopped. That sumbitch. It’s eternal work.”
“Hmmm. I see here on my Goodreads app that near no one reads it and the cover’s not just a nebulous mass of swirly colors with ‘Merle Confab’ or that title all big and bold on it. ‘Know what? I’m just gonna reread The Help instead. Or The Kite Runner, maybe.”
And then, with vituperative fury shoving my whole true self forward, I spew the inevitable, "Well, then, like…fuck you, man!" After it seems like something punches my clock—and some length of lost time later—I wake up in one of these hospitals. Yup, that old saw. Like the ocean, you see mine’s a story that presages time itself.
“Gulf Stream North by Earl Conrad,” I tells ‘em.
“Wha—who’s Earl Cornbread?” they invariably say.
“Conrad” (me again). “The other one.”
“Who’s this Connie and why come I’ve never heard of Golf Force One?”
“Gulf Stream North, not the president’s plane. And you’ve never heard of it because almost no one has. It has been forgotten; what little impact it made has been diluted and swept to sea in the shitslide of fiction since the 1970s, the tech revolution, social media, fucking ‘Bookstagram influencers’ peddling virtue for attention and revenue. It has no place in the algorithm. It’s not hip or clever. It belongs to no ‘school’ beyond big L Literature. Conrad was funny looking. The work exhibits the duality, like Melville’s, of an uncanny ease with the contemporaneous ability of both knuckling out the smallest minutia of life at sea for men of certain breeds, AND these expository insights—sometimes a few pages long—of rumination, celebration, and entire theosophical/metaphysical frameworks that ribbon out of Conrad’s mouth with the fluidity and grace of line from a spinning reel mid-cast. But, really, it is the heir because it is one seafaring novel of the 20th C. that doesn’t seem to exist in Melville’s long shadow. It’s as if Conrad didn’t pretend to be unaware of Conrad and that they parted the same waters—he just seems ambivalent toward it. But I swear to you, [hobo/STP member/cult mom/future doc/daywalker/paid agitator/etc.], though secular, this is holy writing. The wild spirit, the essentialism of the royal Sea somehow pouring out from Conrad’s pen, and his being lucky enough to divine liquid into word-shaped testimonials of every cell of ocean life. What can I tell you? He bottled it, the animating peddle note that drives all life forward until stopped. That sumbitch. It’s eternal work.”
“Hmmm. I see here on my Goodreads app that near no one reads it and the cover’s not just a nebulous mass of swirly colors with ‘Merle Confab’ or that title all big and bold on it. ‘Know what? I’m just gonna reread The Help instead. Or The Kite Runner, maybe.”
And then, with vituperative fury shoving my whole true self forward, I spew the inevitable, "Well, then, like…fuck you, man!" After it seems like something punches my clock—and some length of lost time later—I wake up in one of these hospitals. Yup, that old saw. Like the ocean, you see mine’s a story that presages time itself.
April 25, 2013
This book was recommended by the captain of a menhaden fishing crew. After reading H. Bruce Franklin's THE MOST IMPORTANT FISH OF THE SEA, I am convinced that Omega Protein, the company that the captain works for, will wipe out the menhaden if it's allowed to take as many fish as it wants. I said so on Facebook and riled up the captain. He and others employed by Omega Protein said I should learn the other side of the story. So, OK. This book is the MOBY DICK of the menhaden fishery. It tells about the pleasures and perils of the crew of the "Moona Waa Togue," a leaky Civil War-era sailboat that was refitted for harvesting menhaden. It talks about the stink, the heat, the dangers and drudgery endured by the African-American crew--sharecroppers, really--during five steamy days in July 1949. The joking, quarreling and singing are there too. It was a good read, but menhaden fishing is a high-tech operation today. Also, the population of the United States has grown from 152 million in 1949 to 281 million in 2010. The menhaden are still in danger of extinction and this would be an ecological catastrophe.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews