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Looking for a Ship
On one of the last American merchant ships, second mate Andy Chase and author board the S.S. Stella Lykes, captained by Paul McHenry Washburn. The 42-day journey down the Pacific coast of South America stops for freight at Cartagena, Balboa, Lima, and Guayaquil — notorious for pirates. The crew exchange tales of disaster, stupidity, greed, generosity, and courage.
254 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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About the author
John McPhee
132 books1,852 followersJohn Angus McPhee is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists). In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career". Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 153 reviews
July 18, 2017
John McPhee’s first published book came out in 1965, twenty-five years before this one was published in 1990. McPhee was pretty sure of his effect on readers by then, and he seemed to relax into this description of following a friend in the Merchant Marine find a ship, allowing it the tone and apparent effortlessness of an overlong magazine article. Within he quotes mariners constantly making comment on how the field of ocean shipping is changing. Twenty-five years on some factors have indeed changed, but his work winkling out the feel of a life on board has not changed. Some of this chronicling, like sea stories of old, are as timeless as the sea itself.
The reality of living on the ocean in a ship, no matter the ship is the length of Penn Station, is brought home, McPhee says, by flipping through a stack of the quarterly Mariner’s Weather Log in which the most devastating casualties on the seas are blandly recorded. Ships are regularly cut in half by a rogue wave, or run aground, or collided with, or face some fate never recorded when they disappear without trace. To say that some of the ships are old rust-buckets, names overpainted a dozen times as the ships change hands, their longevity a little more precarious each time, captures only a little of the danger these men face.
The ship McPhee joined was captained by an old salt Captain Washburn, in his fiftieth decade on the sea. He had a few tales to tell, and a personal history that would curl your hair. But what we learn is that an affinity for the seagoing life does not necessarily run in families. There is something about always being on the move that appeals to some folks.
Every ship is marked with ‘Plimsoll marks’ indicating the depth to which a ship can be safely loaded.
Pirates are common and expected: they often come aboard at mealtimes with manifests, walking around looking for the TVs or other easily sold items, but the ship’s men “did not sign anything that said they would defend the ship with their lives.” They do not feel a responsibility to solve this ubiquitous problem. A small pirogue can only take so much stuff, even if it comes thirty times to the ship, off-loading in a protected marsh nearby. The ship may carry four hundred thousand pounds of coffee and a hundred thousand pounds of shrimp, among other goods. The ordinary size of things is diminished.
Stowaways and illicit drug stashes are also a constant problem for the captains are responsible for whatever comes on the ship, intentional or not. Stowaways are charged to the ship, and require lots of paperwork. One must hire guards to see they do not escape before they are safely deported. Of the drugs, perhaps only ten percent of what is shipped is being discovered. When it is discovered, a ship may be impounded and fined. The ships, the length of Rockefeller Center and piled high with containers, might carry a crew of thirty-four aging mariners. There will be no reasonable defense of the ship. It is a sitting duck.
McPhee ends with an engine failure, leaving the ship stranded on the high seas. The temperature in the engine room exceeds 110 deg F as they try to clear water from the oil lines. Water is in the oil lines because the ship is old, and has been ‘stretched:’ the bow and stern are original, but an extra piece has been added to the middle which extends the amount of material the ship can haul. The engine and the rudder were made to steer a much smaller ship, but it is the crack in the side of the ship and in a fundamental oil tank that causes the water in the oil. The ship will probably be repaired, and go on plying the seas until one day it can’t anymore.
As of 31 December 2016, the United States merchant fleet had 175 privately owned, oceangoing, self-propelled vessels of 1,000 gross register tons and above that carry cargo from port to port or more.[8] Nearly 800 American-owned ships are flagged in other nations.[9][10][Wikipedia]
The reality of living on the ocean in a ship, no matter the ship is the length of Penn Station, is brought home, McPhee says, by flipping through a stack of the quarterly Mariner’s Weather Log in which the most devastating casualties on the seas are blandly recorded. Ships are regularly cut in half by a rogue wave, or run aground, or collided with, or face some fate never recorded when they disappear without trace. To say that some of the ships are old rust-buckets, names overpainted a dozen times as the ships change hands, their longevity a little more precarious each time, captures only a little of the danger these men face.
The ship McPhee joined was captained by an old salt Captain Washburn, in his fiftieth decade on the sea. He had a few tales to tell, and a personal history that would curl your hair. But what we learn is that an affinity for the seagoing life does not necessarily run in families. There is something about always being on the move that appeals to some folks.
Every ship is marked with ‘Plimsoll marks’ indicating the depth to which a ship can be safely loaded.
“These levels, worked out specifically for each ship, ‘take into consideration details of length, breath, depth, structural strength and design, extent of superstructure, sheer, and round of beam,’ and are collectively called the Plimsoll mark, after Samuel Plimsoll, a member of Parliament who, in the eighteen-seventies, wrote the act creating them in order to outlaw the greed-driven excessive loading that was the primary factor in the sinking of ships…load lines are set by classification societies, which are private companies that play a checking, testing, and supervisor role in ship construction—services that are optional in the sense that if you don’t sign up for them no one will insure your ship.”There are well known areas of each ocean that hold special terrors for ships, mostly due to the unpredictability and viciousness of the weather. One of those places is about eight hundred miles north of Hawaii, known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Another is the North Atlantic in winter. The lowest Plimsoll mark on a ship is ‘WNA,’ or the maximum depth to which the ship can be loaded in the winter North Atlantic. “The North Sea, the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Horn, and the Gulf of Alaska are the stormiest waters in the shipping world after the winter North Atlantic.”
Pirates are common and expected: they often come aboard at mealtimes with manifests, walking around looking for the TVs or other easily sold items, but the ship’s men “did not sign anything that said they would defend the ship with their lives.” They do not feel a responsibility to solve this ubiquitous problem. A small pirogue can only take so much stuff, even if it comes thirty times to the ship, off-loading in a protected marsh nearby. The ship may carry four hundred thousand pounds of coffee and a hundred thousand pounds of shrimp, among other goods. The ordinary size of things is diminished.
Stowaways and illicit drug stashes are also a constant problem for the captains are responsible for whatever comes on the ship, intentional or not. Stowaways are charged to the ship, and require lots of paperwork. One must hire guards to see they do not escape before they are safely deported. Of the drugs, perhaps only ten percent of what is shipped is being discovered. When it is discovered, a ship may be impounded and fined. The ships, the length of Rockefeller Center and piled high with containers, might carry a crew of thirty-four aging mariners. There will be no reasonable defense of the ship. It is a sitting duck.
McPhee ends with an engine failure, leaving the ship stranded on the high seas. The temperature in the engine room exceeds 110 deg F as they try to clear water from the oil lines. Water is in the oil lines because the ship is old, and has been ‘stretched:’ the bow and stern are original, but an extra piece has been added to the middle which extends the amount of material the ship can haul. The engine and the rudder were made to steer a much smaller ship, but it is the crack in the side of the ship and in a fundamental oil tank that causes the water in the oil. The ship will probably be repaired, and go on plying the seas until one day it can’t anymore.
August 29, 2022
There are things you think you don't need to read about - lacrosse, factcheckers, oranges, the Swiss militia, a bark canoe - until John McPhee writes a book about it; and then you do. So here with the United States Merchant Marines. The title - Looking For A Ship - refers to the difficulty in finding work as a merchant marine. And it turns out that's the easy part. Or, as one of them said:
Out chea, it's a rough life.
McPhee follows one such as he's looking for a ship, and then tags along, the ship carrying an interesting, assorted cargo to South America. McPhee has an ear, surely, and he finds a voice in the captain, who serves McPhee much as Shelby Foote served Ken Burns.
And so I was again highly entertained.
It turns out the United States Merchant Marine is an endangered species. Although he's not specific, McPhee suggests this is caused by labor costs and government regulations. In any event, The Russians are taking over, at least by 1990, the time of this writing. I doubt the situation has improved. In one vignette:
Not long ago, a sailboat on Lake Michigan capsized in a storm and the crew spent seven hours clinging to the hull. They were rescued by a Russian merchant ship.
Here's an interesting nugget: The author Alex Haley is noted for riding on merchant ships as a way of isolating himself from distractions and forcing himself to write.
Another story:
While the ship was berthed in Buenaventura, a woman appeared in the thwartship passage with glancing dark eyes that would melt wax. She was a slender mestiza in a green jumpsuit. She was so disconcerting that Andy later described her as tall, and the captain called her "petite." The captain also remarked in praise of her, "Her jumpsuit wasn't sprayed on." Aided by the cargo boss, a port official, she had walked up the gangway past the deck watch and past Colombian guards. The smile she threw at Andy left his shadow on the deck. She had on her mind something like Eurodollars. She spoke through an interpreter (the cargo boss), and the cargo boss said to the captain, "I am here to service your every need." . . . The captain threw her off the ship.
McPhee could be part of the story too:
David and I hailed a taxi in downtown Bonaventura and took a four-hour ride into the mountains, where we were stopped at gunpoint, told to lean-palms flat-against the taxi, and frisked from ankles to armpits with no politesse at the crotch.
This was not one of my favorite McPhees, but, as I said, I was highly entertained.
Out chea, it's a rough life.
McPhee follows one such as he's looking for a ship, and then tags along, the ship carrying an interesting, assorted cargo to South America. McPhee has an ear, surely, and he finds a voice in the captain, who serves McPhee much as Shelby Foote served Ken Burns.
And so I was again highly entertained.
It turns out the United States Merchant Marine is an endangered species. Although he's not specific, McPhee suggests this is caused by labor costs and government regulations. In any event, The Russians are taking over, at least by 1990, the time of this writing. I doubt the situation has improved. In one vignette:
Not long ago, a sailboat on Lake Michigan capsized in a storm and the crew spent seven hours clinging to the hull. They were rescued by a Russian merchant ship.
Here's an interesting nugget: The author Alex Haley is noted for riding on merchant ships as a way of isolating himself from distractions and forcing himself to write.
Another story:
While the ship was berthed in Buenaventura, a woman appeared in the thwartship passage with glancing dark eyes that would melt wax. She was a slender mestiza in a green jumpsuit. She was so disconcerting that Andy later described her as tall, and the captain called her "petite." The captain also remarked in praise of her, "Her jumpsuit wasn't sprayed on." Aided by the cargo boss, a port official, she had walked up the gangway past the deck watch and past Colombian guards. The smile she threw at Andy left his shadow on the deck. She had on her mind something like Eurodollars. She spoke through an interpreter (the cargo boss), and the cargo boss said to the captain, "I am here to service your every need." . . . The captain threw her off the ship.
McPhee could be part of the story too:
David and I hailed a taxi in downtown Bonaventura and took a four-hour ride into the mountains, where we were stopped at gunpoint, told to lean-palms flat-against the taxi, and frisked from ankles to armpits with no politesse at the crotch.
This was not one of my favorite McPhees, but, as I said, I was highly entertained.
April 30, 2021
This is a book that makes you yearn for the restoration of the US Merchant Marine, but also, it will make you wish there were another book featuring Captain Paul McHenry Washburn, one-time golden gloves boxer, former Depression-era rail-riding hobo, high school drop-out, and World War Two merchant mariner. Paul Washburn died just last year at 97, and it's possible he crossed paths with my mother; she and he lived in the same general neighborhood and attended the same high school in Washington DC. Not that Captain Washburn spent much time in school; he dropped out, shipped out, and then spent years reading and educating himself on all sorts of subjects: navigation, engineering, practical seamanship, and history. Lots of history, and literature.
Most of the other members of the crew of the Stella Lykes signed on to that particular ship so as to be with Washburn, who was known as a captain who ran a "happy ship". Some captains have that reputation (Bligh did not have it), and it doesn't mean being lenient; it means being a competent, fair, and cheerful (and in Washburn's case, endlessly entertaining) leader. John McPhee gives us a picture of that ship, and of the US Merchant Marine of the late 1980's, and of its sad and unnecessary decline. There is no reason, by the way, why the US should not have a 200-ship US-flagged merchant marine service, and it would be one of the cheapest things our government could support which would also be a strategic asset to the country. But I digress.
The other members of the crew in all their diversity are painted by McPhee in clear and emphatic prose, and McPhee explains many things about seaboard life and ships, including the Plimsoll line, and how incredibly bad the ocean can get in the North Atlantic and in the Southern Ocean, and how much of what Darwin wrote about South America while traveling on HMS Beagle has stood the test of time.
I have read other books by McPhee that did not engage me; this one grabbed me right from the start, and I was sorry when it was over.
Most of the other members of the crew of the Stella Lykes signed on to that particular ship so as to be with Washburn, who was known as a captain who ran a "happy ship". Some captains have that reputation (Bligh did not have it), and it doesn't mean being lenient; it means being a competent, fair, and cheerful (and in Washburn's case, endlessly entertaining) leader. John McPhee gives us a picture of that ship, and of the US Merchant Marine of the late 1980's, and of its sad and unnecessary decline. There is no reason, by the way, why the US should not have a 200-ship US-flagged merchant marine service, and it would be one of the cheapest things our government could support which would also be a strategic asset to the country. But I digress.
The other members of the crew in all their diversity are painted by McPhee in clear and emphatic prose, and McPhee explains many things about seaboard life and ships, including the Plimsoll line, and how incredibly bad the ocean can get in the North Atlantic and in the Southern Ocean, and how much of what Darwin wrote about South America while traveling on HMS Beagle has stood the test of time.
I have read other books by McPhee that did not engage me; this one grabbed me right from the start, and I was sorry when it was over.
September 29, 2020
I first read this many years ago, and just reread it. John McPhee's writing style suits me very well. McPhee is always interested in people's jobs, especially offbeat and/or outdoor work. The tone of this book is elegiac. The US Merchant Marine was in serious decline in the late 1980s.. The ship he traveled on, a Lykes Brothers container ship, was old and decrepit. Lykes Lines declared bankruptcy in 1995, and eventually became part of Hapag-Lloyd, a large German container-shipping line.
As with many of his books, these essays were first published in the New Yorker, back in the day when the magazine ran long non-fiction pieces. I may have first read some of the book in the magazine. The book held up well to re-reading. Lots of good sea-stories! Such as: Guayaquil, Colombia was then a notorious haven for small-time piracy. A group of pirates came aboard, tied up two sailors, and demanded their watches. They complied. For one watch, they looked at it, then handed it back.
As with many of his books, these essays were first published in the New Yorker, back in the day when the magazine ran long non-fiction pieces. I may have first read some of the book in the magazine. The book held up well to re-reading. Lots of good sea-stories! Such as: Guayaquil, Colombia was then a notorious haven for small-time piracy. A group of pirates came aboard, tied up two sailors, and demanded their watches. They complied. For one watch, they looked at it, then handed it back.
March 15, 2022
McPhee is ideal for readers who’ve outgrown Hunter S. Thompson and seen through Tom Wolfe. Annals of the Former World might be the book that won McPhee a Pulitzer, but I still think this is his best book.
Informative, succinct and written in McPhee's unflashy, elegant style, it places you straight in the head and nervous system of a merchant seaman and imparts a dazzling amount of history in a short space without any apparent effort. Its success at walking in another man's shoes and seeing through another man’s eyes should be the envy of many novelists.
Informative, succinct and written in McPhee's unflashy, elegant style, it places you straight in the head and nervous system of a merchant seaman and imparts a dazzling amount of history in a short space without any apparent effort. Its success at walking in another man's shoes and seeing through another man’s eyes should be the envy of many novelists.
July 24, 2013
“Wing-shooting Achernar, Mars, Sirius, and Venus” (navigating by sextant).
“Plimsoll marks”: TF – Tropical Fresh Water, F – Fresh Water, T – Tropical Seawater, S – Summer Temperate Seawater, W – Winter Temperate Seawater, and WNA – Winter North Atlantic. Painted on the hull of a cargo ship, they indicate the maximum safe loading depth of that particular ship, for the expected weather and sea conditions - Winter North Atlantic being hell. First mandated in Britain to control greedy overloading.
“The Bowditch,” the bible of celestial navigation, the catalogue of star positions.
“Marlinspike seamanship.” No it’s not from the fish’s nose. It’s the art of basic seamanship named from its most fundamental task: splicing rope or wire (“marling” or "marlin'") by using a steel pin.
The ship’s captain says, “You used to be able to eat on the structure of the Panama Canal and there were no mosquitoes [before ceding it to Panama]," but the Japanese banks will save it because while "we can live without it, Japan and Russia cannot."
Loading 228 cows in Baltimore and unloading 327 head in Gdansk, after calving 107, even though one cow and seven calves were lost in a storm.
It is inane to say a hurricane turned and went “safely out to sea” where it will put ships and crews on the bottom.
The sophistication of South American pirates who take five minutes in port to empty the container with the TVs -- but that no one outsteals Boston longshoremen who consider it part of their pay.
This and much more in the life of a merchant seaman awaits in this book. As always, McPhee educates before you even realize it, you were just enjoying the stories so much.
“Plimsoll marks”: TF – Tropical Fresh Water, F – Fresh Water, T – Tropical Seawater, S – Summer Temperate Seawater, W – Winter Temperate Seawater, and WNA – Winter North Atlantic. Painted on the hull of a cargo ship, they indicate the maximum safe loading depth of that particular ship, for the expected weather and sea conditions - Winter North Atlantic being hell. First mandated in Britain to control greedy overloading.
“The Bowditch,” the bible of celestial navigation, the catalogue of star positions.
“Marlinspike seamanship.” No it’s not from the fish’s nose. It’s the art of basic seamanship named from its most fundamental task: splicing rope or wire (“marling” or "marlin'") by using a steel pin.
The ship’s captain says, “You used to be able to eat on the structure of the Panama Canal and there were no mosquitoes [before ceding it to Panama]," but the Japanese banks will save it because while "we can live without it, Japan and Russia cannot."
Loading 228 cows in Baltimore and unloading 327 head in Gdansk, after calving 107, even though one cow and seven calves were lost in a storm.
It is inane to say a hurricane turned and went “safely out to sea” where it will put ships and crews on the bottom.
The sophistication of South American pirates who take five minutes in port to empty the container with the TVs -- but that no one outsteals Boston longshoremen who consider it part of their pay.
This and much more in the life of a merchant seaman awaits in this book. As always, McPhee educates before you even realize it, you were just enjoying the stories so much.
June 22, 2025
Absolutely excellent. Borrowed from my grandpa and couldn’t put it down. Easy five stars for McPhee at his finest — perfect for anyone interested in anything.
September 18, 2017
Pirates, storms, shipwrecks, oh my! The first two chapters detail just how hard it is to get a berthing on an American Merchant ship. The author and second mate Andy Chase who the author stays with as they await a ship. They wind up on the S.S. Stella Lykes and meet Captain Washburn. A lot of stories about the Merchant Marine are told, most exciting is the chapter on storms and the effects on ships. After the author gives numerous examples of the devastating effects on shipping and crews, the TV Weatherman states the "Storm has passed, and is safely at sea", not so safe for the sailors.
May 31, 2018
After an ambivalent reading of John McPhee's The Control of Nature, I decided to dig up this review for Looking for a Ship, originally written for Amazon in 2010, and repost it here, probably out of guilt for not liking The Control of Nature more than I did. Anyway...here it is:
After leaving the Marine Corps, one choice for employment that I considered was the U.S. Merchant Marine. I realize now that I knew even less about what was involved in the Merchant Marines than I had known about the Marine Corps before enlisting--and I had been ridiculously ignorant about the Corps. My Merchant Marine career never took off though; as it turns out, a relative happened to be working for a barge company on the Mississippi at the end of my enlistment, and he got me hired on with him instead. I didn't necessarily give up the Merchant Marine idea, but I thought it prudent to see whether I would even enjoy living and working on a boat/ship prior to taking off on a trip that could last for months. Since then, I've never felt the need to leave the barge line, and after reading John McPhee's excellent account of the Merchant Marine, I feel I should count my blessings to have fallen into the job that I did.
I apologize for the biographical data, but since both my current occupation and the descriptions Mr. McPhee gives us of the Merchant Marine share some similarities (not as many as one might think), I wanted to qualify a few of my comments below. First though: Looking for a Ship is Mr. McPhee's account as he sails aboard the S.S. Stella Lykes as a Person in Addition to Crew, and of the officers and sailors he meets aboard the vessel's forty-two day run down to South America and back. Despite any preconceptions I might have had about a piece originally published in The New Yorker, Mr. McPhee's story is not only intelligent and engaging, but his style is salt of the earth--McPhee may not wish to become a merchant mariner, but he admires the hell out of those who are.
It's believable that Mr. McPhee could have handled any period in the Merchant Marines history as capably as he does here, but there is an extra twist in that he has captured a time when the slow dissolution of the industry lends the story a lonesome, melancholy tone. (The book was published in 1991 but surely gathered together in the late '80's as there's no mention of the Gulf War and its massive movement of equipment.) It is an interesting, indicative snapshot--people don't seem to remember, or may be too young to know, that the end of the eighties was a very difficult time all around in this country, especially for those jobs that actually produced material things. The Merchant Marine evidently suffered under the same malaise as the rest of the country, precipitously falling to less than five hundred ships, and a fantastic addition to a twentieth anniversary printing of this book (approaching 30 now) would be an afterward by Mr. McPhee, bringing his readers up to date on the state of the fleet. As it is, he leaves his readers with a bleak assessment of the future of U.S. flagged ships and their crewmen--and a cursory search over the internet seems to confirm that it hasn't changed.
One small nit-pick, which will affect each reader differently, is the illumination of the personalities involved. The majority of these sketches were appropriately clever and insightful--and recognizable. But there was a moment, mid-way through the book's examination of the captain, where I was reminded of the front seat interviews of police officers on patrol during the television show Cops, or of the interviews with the fishing vessel captains on The Most Dangerous Catch. If you've never cringed at how un-self-aware some of these interviewees appear to be as they reveal their outsized egos, then you will probably not mind the same thing in print. To further cement the connection, I've worked with several un-self-aware personalities whose voice sounds remarkably similar to that of Captain Washburn, the captain of the Stella Lykes. Except Mr. McPhee presents Captain Washburn as an effective officer and a man the entire crew enjoyed sailing for--but, unfortunately, once I latched onto the resemblance between Captain Washburn's interview and those of Cops, I couldn't get it out of my head.
Honestly, this objection is less than minor. Even if a deep-sea vessel and a towboat paddling up and down a river are worlds apart, there is plenty enough similarity to know that Mr. McPhee has a sharp eye for detail and tradition--and for people. It isn't the job or the events or the situation that makes this a captivating book--as exotic as they are--nor does the author rely on these specifics to drive his story. It is, instead, like all successful dramas, entirely dependent on the ability of the author to convey the personalities of the cast. Thus, there is little need to have an overwhelming interest in the Merchant Marines to enjoy or appreciate this book. In fact, it might actually disappoint if that was what the reader was looking for, as it covers the facts in broad strokes and downplays the minutia. Rather, all that's necessary is that the reader share at least a little of the fascination Mr. McPhee has for that curious relationship between a person and their occupation, and some of the respect he has for dedication to a skill. Genuine and un-patronizing respect.
After leaving the Marine Corps, one choice for employment that I considered was the U.S. Merchant Marine. I realize now that I knew even less about what was involved in the Merchant Marines than I had known about the Marine Corps before enlisting--and I had been ridiculously ignorant about the Corps. My Merchant Marine career never took off though; as it turns out, a relative happened to be working for a barge company on the Mississippi at the end of my enlistment, and he got me hired on with him instead. I didn't necessarily give up the Merchant Marine idea, but I thought it prudent to see whether I would even enjoy living and working on a boat/ship prior to taking off on a trip that could last for months. Since then, I've never felt the need to leave the barge line, and after reading John McPhee's excellent account of the Merchant Marine, I feel I should count my blessings to have fallen into the job that I did.
I apologize for the biographical data, but since both my current occupation and the descriptions Mr. McPhee gives us of the Merchant Marine share some similarities (not as many as one might think), I wanted to qualify a few of my comments below. First though: Looking for a Ship is Mr. McPhee's account as he sails aboard the S.S. Stella Lykes as a Person in Addition to Crew, and of the officers and sailors he meets aboard the vessel's forty-two day run down to South America and back. Despite any preconceptions I might have had about a piece originally published in The New Yorker, Mr. McPhee's story is not only intelligent and engaging, but his style is salt of the earth--McPhee may not wish to become a merchant mariner, but he admires the hell out of those who are.
It's believable that Mr. McPhee could have handled any period in the Merchant Marines history as capably as he does here, but there is an extra twist in that he has captured a time when the slow dissolution of the industry lends the story a lonesome, melancholy tone. (The book was published in 1991 but surely gathered together in the late '80's as there's no mention of the Gulf War and its massive movement of equipment.) It is an interesting, indicative snapshot--people don't seem to remember, or may be too young to know, that the end of the eighties was a very difficult time all around in this country, especially for those jobs that actually produced material things. The Merchant Marine evidently suffered under the same malaise as the rest of the country, precipitously falling to less than five hundred ships, and a fantastic addition to a twentieth anniversary printing of this book (approaching 30 now) would be an afterward by Mr. McPhee, bringing his readers up to date on the state of the fleet. As it is, he leaves his readers with a bleak assessment of the future of U.S. flagged ships and their crewmen--and a cursory search over the internet seems to confirm that it hasn't changed.
One small nit-pick, which will affect each reader differently, is the illumination of the personalities involved. The majority of these sketches were appropriately clever and insightful--and recognizable. But there was a moment, mid-way through the book's examination of the captain, where I was reminded of the front seat interviews of police officers on patrol during the television show Cops, or of the interviews with the fishing vessel captains on The Most Dangerous Catch. If you've never cringed at how un-self-aware some of these interviewees appear to be as they reveal their outsized egos, then you will probably not mind the same thing in print. To further cement the connection, I've worked with several un-self-aware personalities whose voice sounds remarkably similar to that of Captain Washburn, the captain of the Stella Lykes. Except Mr. McPhee presents Captain Washburn as an effective officer and a man the entire crew enjoyed sailing for--but, unfortunately, once I latched onto the resemblance between Captain Washburn's interview and those of Cops, I couldn't get it out of my head.
Honestly, this objection is less than minor. Even if a deep-sea vessel and a towboat paddling up and down a river are worlds apart, there is plenty enough similarity to know that Mr. McPhee has a sharp eye for detail and tradition--and for people. It isn't the job or the events or the situation that makes this a captivating book--as exotic as they are--nor does the author rely on these specifics to drive his story. It is, instead, like all successful dramas, entirely dependent on the ability of the author to convey the personalities of the cast. Thus, there is little need to have an overwhelming interest in the Merchant Marines to enjoy or appreciate this book. In fact, it might actually disappoint if that was what the reader was looking for, as it covers the facts in broad strokes and downplays the minutia. Rather, all that's necessary is that the reader share at least a little of the fascination Mr. McPhee has for that curious relationship between a person and their occupation, and some of the respect he has for dedication to a skill. Genuine and un-patronizing respect.
September 13, 2008
I first read an essay, The Search for Marvin Gardens, by John McPhee in a collection, and then asked about him in my essay writing class. Soon, I was on a hunt for his books - but just the right ones. Not the geology. Not collections of essays, which were easy to find but just looked... old. Yes, I judge books by their covers - but also by their tables of contents and flipping through and reading a few lines here and there - and I wasn't sold.
Finally, I wandered into a secondhand bookstore in the West Village one day on my way to meet a friend who was moving away (for her, in a different store, I found E.B. White on the beloved city). I asked about McPhee, and soon the man was up on a ladder, handing books down to me as he removed the front row of books, revealing a row behind them on the floor-to-ceiling shelves. And there, next to the ubiquitous book of essays, was Looking for a Ship, exactly what I wanted!
It was a $30 hardcover first-edition.
I pondered damping down my excitement, handing it back to the man, and leaving without buying anything.
I bought it and surprised Sarah with it, because she sails.
Anything is justifiable when bought for a friend.
The book proves that real people are, written well, infinitely more interesting than fictional characters. McPhee shipped out with the Stella Lykes, one of the last of the US Merchant Marine (unless they've made a comeback since this 1990 book). He is a master at bringing together big picture and minute detail to tell a riveting story. The book wanders all over the place but never loses momentum. It's a fast, funny, indignant, oddly heartbreaking read.
Finally, I wandered into a secondhand bookstore in the West Village one day on my way to meet a friend who was moving away (for her, in a different store, I found E.B. White on the beloved city). I asked about McPhee, and soon the man was up on a ladder, handing books down to me as he removed the front row of books, revealing a row behind them on the floor-to-ceiling shelves. And there, next to the ubiquitous book of essays, was Looking for a Ship, exactly what I wanted!
It was a $30 hardcover first-edition.
I pondered damping down my excitement, handing it back to the man, and leaving without buying anything.
I bought it and surprised Sarah with it, because she sails.
Anything is justifiable when bought for a friend.
The book proves that real people are, written well, infinitely more interesting than fictional characters. McPhee shipped out with the Stella Lykes, one of the last of the US Merchant Marine (unless they've made a comeback since this 1990 book). He is a master at bringing together big picture and minute detail to tell a riveting story. The book wanders all over the place but never loses momentum. It's a fast, funny, indignant, oddly heartbreaking read.
January 26, 2024
My favorite creative non-fiction book ever written. No one does it like John McPhee. If you're worrying, "why would I be interested in Merchant Mariners from the 1980s?" don't be. His writing will suck you in, and is there a better character anywhere than Captain Washburn?
I don't know what it is about McPhee's writing I find so intoxicating. It's like he tells you so much, but also there's something completely and meticulously perfect in what he chooses to leave out. It's as if he's mastered the art of understanding that less is more and that the picture his readers will ultimately paint in their heads will be more complete if he gives you less to work with. He also somehow opens your eyes to the magic that exists in totally real, otherwise mundane things (like a big shipping vessel).
If you're interested in "stuff" you'll enjoy anything you pick up by McPhee. He's the best to ever do it.
I don't know what it is about McPhee's writing I find so intoxicating. It's like he tells you so much, but also there's something completely and meticulously perfect in what he chooses to leave out. It's as if he's mastered the art of understanding that less is more and that the picture his readers will ultimately paint in their heads will be more complete if he gives you less to work with. He also somehow opens your eyes to the magic that exists in totally real, otherwise mundane things (like a big shipping vessel).
If you're interested in "stuff" you'll enjoy anything you pick up by McPhee. He's the best to ever do it.
December 8, 2008
This is McPhee's report of his voyage on a freighter, the Stella Lykes. Another thing I really want to do before I croak. He travels for 42 days, through the Panama Canal and down the coast of South America delivering containers. The are attacked by pirates, navigate around storms, and discuss the decline of the American Merchant Marine. My father actually took a trip on one of the Lykes container ship and was stuck for several weeks on the west side of the Panama Canal during our invasion of Panama. Highly recommended for nautical buffs.
October 16, 2024
Wish I had the stomach for the high seas. Alas
July 3, 2024
I've read a couple of McPhee's pieces "in the wild" (i.e. in magazines) over the years, but I really came to respect his work when reading Draft No. 4. And then again when reading it a second time. At which point I decided it was ridiculous that I didn't have any of his works on my shelf.
I put a paper bag over my head to avoid detection, and bought this volume and Uncommon Carriers as a start on the path to reform.
Very early in this book I found a line that would be brilliant in fiction: "We are a brotherhood, so we hate each other." Loved the line, but let me quote the whole exchange, because it sets up one of the major tensions of the book:
....He [Thomas] went on to say that he had been surprised as he shook my hand, because "there seemed to be some sincerity" in the warmth of my hello. Andy told him I was no threat.
Thomas said, "There is so much hunger for work that no one is happy to see anybody else. We are a brotherhood, so we hate each other."
Andy said, "Nobody ever does anybody a favor. You can't beg a job off of somebody. It just isn't done."
Even though the book is 34 years old, much of what it describes is quite relevant today, since things have mostly gotten worse. But the characters are so well delineated (especially the captain who was a no-good rider of the rails until he found that ships provided that same ability to keep moving, and learned the trade), the situations so odd to the rest of us, and so riddled with real-world conflicts that it's pretty much a novel.
I love some of the list paragraphs that one can get away with in non-fiction:
We picked up three thousand cases of wine, two tons of button-down short-sleeved shirts, seven hundred bags of pentaerythritol, three hundred and fifty pounds of Chilean bone glue, and a hundred and thirteen thousand pounds of candy. We picked up eight hundred and seventeen desks and eight hundred and seventeen chairs. We picked up eighty-five cartons of umbrellas (on their way to Los Angeles), seven thousand spare tires (New Orleans), six thousand four hundred and eighty toilet pedestals (Chicago), and a hundred thousand pieces of kiln-dried radiata pine (destinations everywhere). We picked up nine tons of fruit cocktail, sixty-three tons of peach chips, sixty-seven tons of raisins, two hundred and thirty thousand gallons of concentrated apple juice, four hundred thousand fresh lemons, four hundred thousand fresh onions, five hundred thousand fresh apples. And then we departed.
McPhee gets to quote Charles Darwin from The Voyage of the Beagle, which is almost cheating, and he reveals a very good eye for the juicy bits to be found there. [If you haven't read The Voyage of the Beagle, you bring shame on your family and upon your whole town or city, so get cracking.] He boils down massive problems like the decline of American shipping and the Merchant Marine, rampant piracy, technological failures, world trade disruptions, and the poor maintenance of the Panama Canal at the time - boils them down, I say, to just a few tightly-constructed paragraphs. Then he'll add bits in later chapters, to show the ramifications. It's excellent storytelling, and leaves whole books' worth of explication out.
There are lovely bits like this one, which one is tempted to read aloud to the spouse:
...The development of satellite navigation has brought some embarrassment to the hydrographic charts of the world. For example, we happen at the moment to be on the "Pisco to Arica" chart of the waters of Peru and Chile, which dates to the British survey conducted in 1836 by Captain Robert Fitzroy, of the Beagle, with additions and refinements through 1958. As a result of satellite navigation, a large purple box has been added to this chart warning that a stretch of coastline near Punta del Infiernillo is almost two miles closer to Australia than its charted position. New York is where it thinks it is, but, until recently, if you looked at the chart of the "Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea" you discovered that the entire island of Antigua was "reported to lie one and a quarter miles northward of its charted position." When Andrew Marvell, in the sixteen-fifties, reported that "the remote Bermudas ride in the ocean's bosom unespied," he was singing the song of SatNav, which showed that Bermuda was not in its charted position. Satellite measurements found that several of the Caroline Islands were misplaced by as much as three miles. Cartographers have had to move Africa.
I must mention how the book ends, without spoiling. This is the story of a voyage, following a primary character, and then visiting several of the crew at home, afterward. But it is not told entirely linearly, and McPhee chooses to pick the best metaphorical moment for his ending, rather than the temporal moment of the ending. I found this brilliant.
So, yeah, if you're interested in how the world works, this book is recommended. If you're a student of effective non-fiction writing, ditto. If you're any kind of writer studying how to introduce a whole new world or subset of a world without endless pages of explanation, well, you could do worse than starting right here.
I put a paper bag over my head to avoid detection, and bought this volume and Uncommon Carriers as a start on the path to reform.
Very early in this book I found a line that would be brilliant in fiction: "We are a brotherhood, so we hate each other." Loved the line, but let me quote the whole exchange, because it sets up one of the major tensions of the book:
....He [Thomas] went on to say that he had been surprised as he shook my hand, because "there seemed to be some sincerity" in the warmth of my hello. Andy told him I was no threat.
Thomas said, "There is so much hunger for work that no one is happy to see anybody else. We are a brotherhood, so we hate each other."
Andy said, "Nobody ever does anybody a favor. You can't beg a job off of somebody. It just isn't done."
Even though the book is 34 years old, much of what it describes is quite relevant today, since things have mostly gotten worse. But the characters are so well delineated (especially the captain who was a no-good rider of the rails until he found that ships provided that same ability to keep moving, and learned the trade), the situations so odd to the rest of us, and so riddled with real-world conflicts that it's pretty much a novel.
I love some of the list paragraphs that one can get away with in non-fiction:
We picked up three thousand cases of wine, two tons of button-down short-sleeved shirts, seven hundred bags of pentaerythritol, three hundred and fifty pounds of Chilean bone glue, and a hundred and thirteen thousand pounds of candy. We picked up eight hundred and seventeen desks and eight hundred and seventeen chairs. We picked up eighty-five cartons of umbrellas (on their way to Los Angeles), seven thousand spare tires (New Orleans), six thousand four hundred and eighty toilet pedestals (Chicago), and a hundred thousand pieces of kiln-dried radiata pine (destinations everywhere). We picked up nine tons of fruit cocktail, sixty-three tons of peach chips, sixty-seven tons of raisins, two hundred and thirty thousand gallons of concentrated apple juice, four hundred thousand fresh lemons, four hundred thousand fresh onions, five hundred thousand fresh apples. And then we departed.
McPhee gets to quote Charles Darwin from The Voyage of the Beagle, which is almost cheating, and he reveals a very good eye for the juicy bits to be found there. [If you haven't read The Voyage of the Beagle, you bring shame on your family and upon your whole town or city, so get cracking.] He boils down massive problems like the decline of American shipping and the Merchant Marine, rampant piracy, technological failures, world trade disruptions, and the poor maintenance of the Panama Canal at the time - boils them down, I say, to just a few tightly-constructed paragraphs. Then he'll add bits in later chapters, to show the ramifications. It's excellent storytelling, and leaves whole books' worth of explication out.
There are lovely bits like this one, which one is tempted to read aloud to the spouse:
...The development of satellite navigation has brought some embarrassment to the hydrographic charts of the world. For example, we happen at the moment to be on the "Pisco to Arica" chart of the waters of Peru and Chile, which dates to the British survey conducted in 1836 by Captain Robert Fitzroy, of the Beagle, with additions and refinements through 1958. As a result of satellite navigation, a large purple box has been added to this chart warning that a stretch of coastline near Punta del Infiernillo is almost two miles closer to Australia than its charted position. New York is where it thinks it is, but, until recently, if you looked at the chart of the "Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea" you discovered that the entire island of Antigua was "reported to lie one and a quarter miles northward of its charted position." When Andrew Marvell, in the sixteen-fifties, reported that "the remote Bermudas ride in the ocean's bosom unespied," he was singing the song of SatNav, which showed that Bermuda was not in its charted position. Satellite measurements found that several of the Caroline Islands were misplaced by as much as three miles. Cartographers have had to move Africa.
I must mention how the book ends, without spoiling. This is the story of a voyage, following a primary character, and then visiting several of the crew at home, afterward. But it is not told entirely linearly, and McPhee chooses to pick the best metaphorical moment for his ending, rather than the temporal moment of the ending. I found this brilliant.
So, yeah, if you're interested in how the world works, this book is recommended. If you're a student of effective non-fiction writing, ditto. If you're any kind of writer studying how to introduce a whole new world or subset of a world without endless pages of explanation, well, you could do worse than starting right here.
February 16, 2021
"In this business, you don't write 'Aground.' You never write 'Aground.' You say, 'We have touched bottom.' If you hit a dock, you say, 'We touched the dock." If the side is stove in and the hatches are buckling, you say, 'We touched the dock—I think.'"
Granted COVID is keeping my list of victims pretty short, but I think I’ve told every person I’ve spoken to in the last month about the “tropical fresh” Plimsoll line. That the same writer can enlighten me about ship hull markings—“enlightened,” as in buoyed, as in aglow, being literally how I feel when presented with trivia of this kind—and then, pages later, tell me plainly that “Andy has seen rainbows made by the moon” ... perfection! Just as I thought the first time I tried McPhee: what’s the point of reading—or writing—anything else?
Granted COVID is keeping my list of victims pretty short, but I think I’ve told every person I’ve spoken to in the last month about the “tropical fresh” Plimsoll line. That the same writer can enlighten me about ship hull markings—“enlightened,” as in buoyed, as in aglow, being literally how I feel when presented with trivia of this kind—and then, pages later, tell me plainly that “Andy has seen rainbows made by the moon” ... perfection! Just as I thought the first time I tried McPhee: what’s the point of reading—or writing—anything else?
January 24, 2023
John McPhee is an excellent writer, and this book does not disappoint.
It's primarily about the US Merchant Marine, its history and decline (the book was published in 1990), what the decline has meant for those who have built careers and businesses upon it, and what culture is dying off with the merchant marine. McPhee joins a cargo ship owned by the Lykes brothers and travels around the world as a guest on the ship, spending much of his time with the characters on it.
If there is a protagonist, it's Captain Washburn. I say "if" because the book is not about Washburn, though he appears more than any other crew member. And there's a reason that McPhee himself writes:
Much of the portrain of Washburn is done simply by showing off his actions.
Amazing!
There is a little mini-biography of Washburn about halfway through the book. It's maybe 10 pages or so. He leaves home and rides trains around the country, true, old-school hobo fashion, staying here or there for short periods of time, picking up whatever work.
One of those jobs was working at a circus.
Another was boxing. He boxed all over the US, making money here and there. But he fell in love with the sea.
Finally, he joined the Merchant Marine (which had a higher casualty rate than the Navy in World War 2):
And once at sea, he tended to stay there.
This last is from a period in which McPhee follows Washburn and other crew members ashore. Even ashore, Washburn is interesting.
Other characters are introduced and appear here and there throughout the book's travels. There is no boring character, and McPhee's descriptions of them all are fantastic, often (and these were the best ones) using the words of other crewmembers. Here's a description of a merchant marine not even on the current ship:
McPhee's writing (use of language, description, dialog) is my favorite thing about him. But a close second is his sense of humor. McPhee is frequently hilarious. He has a very dry sense of humor and delivers it excellently on the page:
Or:
Finally, there are bits of information that McPhee picked up on the trip that he found fascinating enough to include. He doesn't do so to instruct, clearly, but rather by way of "isn't this neat?"
One is that modern shipping is STILL, all these years later, deadly. There's an entire chapter about pirates and piracy. There's another on the various ways ships have sunk or just disappeared recently. There's another section on how many ways there are to be seriously injured or die.
This continues for a long, long while.
At every stop McPhee lists just some of the thigs that are delivered or picked up, and the list includes anything imaginable.
It's primarily about the US Merchant Marine, its history and decline (the book was published in 1990), what the decline has meant for those who have built careers and businesses upon it, and what culture is dying off with the merchant marine. McPhee joins a cargo ship owned by the Lykes brothers and travels around the world as a guest on the ship, spending much of his time with the characters on it.
If there is a protagonist, it's Captain Washburn. I say "if" because the book is not about Washburn, though he appears more than any other crew member. And there's a reason that McPhee himself writes:
Washburn will talk to anybody. If he sometimes seems to prefer talking to himself, there's an obvious reason: he's the most interesting person on the ship.
Much of the portrain of Washburn is done simply by showing off his actions.
"Paperwork has become the bane of this job," he says. "If a ship doesn't have a good copying machine, it isn't seaworthy. The more ports, the more papers. South American paperwork is worse than the paperwork anywhere else in the world but the Arab countries and Indonesia." Deliberately, he allows the pile on his desk to rise until a deep roll on a Pacific swell throws it to the deck and scatters it from bulkhead to bulkhead. This he interprets as a signal that the time has come to do paperwork. The paper carpet may be an inch deep, but he leaves it where it fell. Bending over, he picks up one sheet. He deals with it: makes an entry, writes a letter -- does whatever it requires him to do. Then he bends over and picks up another sheet. This goes on for a few days until, literally, he has cleared his deck.
Amazing!
There is a little mini-biography of Washburn about halfway through the book. It's maybe 10 pages or so. He leaves home and rides trains around the country, true, old-school hobo fashion, staying here or there for short periods of time, picking up whatever work.
"Hitchhiking was asking someone for something, riding the rails was taking it. I would rather ride in a freight car than in the comfort of someone's automobile.
One of those jobs was working at a circus.
...had a sideshow freak who walked barefoot over broken glass and could accomodate with impunity any amount of current from an electric chair. This was Paul Washburn.
Another was boxing. He boxed all over the US, making money here and there. But he fell in love with the sea.
He was looking for a ship, but this was before the Second World War, and ships were hard to get. He worked on a tugboat, a towboat, a homemade fishing boat, a paddlewheel steamer called Gulf Mist. And he went on fighting. He had been on boxing teams and had fought in Golden Glove competitions...
Finally, he joined the Merchant Marine (which had a higher casualty rate than the Navy in World War 2):
In 1941, aged eighteen, he obtained his ordinary seaman's papers, and joined the oceangoing ranks of the Merchant Marine.
And once at sea, he tended to stay there.
For home, but not for long. When Captain Washburn looks landward from teh bridge of his ship, he will readily say, "I would rather be here for the worst that could be here than over there for the best that could be there.
This last is from a period in which McPhee follows Washburn and other crew members ashore. Even ashore, Washburn is interesting.
And now, at Baymeadows, seconds before his first tee shot, he mutters, "There is nothing I love as much as I hate this game."
According to Edward Lee, Washburn has long since composed the inscription he wants on his tombstone:
I'd Rather Be Here
Than Playing Golf
Other characters are introduced and appear here and there throughout the book's travels. There is no boring character, and McPhee's descriptions of them all are fantastic, often (and these were the best ones) using the words of other crewmembers. Here's a description of a merchant marine not even on the current ship:
"Rebel Frazier was a husky six-footer, dark visaged -- he scowled. The closest thing to a smile was just not a scowl. He laughed once a month. He was not hostile, but there was no friendship in him. He was an excellent ship's master..."
McPhee's writing (use of language, description, dialog) is my favorite thing about him. But a close second is his sense of humor. McPhee is frequently hilarious. He has a very dry sense of humor and delivers it excellently on the page:
Understand, I am by no means fluent. I have a fairly good Spanish vocabulary, an ear that seems to reject incoming Spanish sound, and grammar tartare.
Or:
Bill Beach has described Buenaventura as "a cesspool of whorehouses and bars." Vernon McLaughlin has called it "*the* romance port."
Finally, there are bits of information that McPhee picked up on the trip that he found fascinating enough to include. He doesn't do so to instruct, clearly, but rather by way of "isn't this neat?"
One is that modern shipping is STILL, all these years later, deadly. There's an entire chapter about pirates and piracy. There's another on the various ways ships have sunk or just disappeared recently. There's another section on how many ways there are to be seriously injured or die.
Men fall down hatches on merchant ships: a hatch cover may be ajar; they walk over an open edge and are killed by the long fall into the hold. On diesel ships, you breather heavy fumes. You fight diesel fires. Near diesel engines, you wear ear covers or you are stone-deaf within a year...
This continues for a long, long while.
At every stop McPhee lists just some of the thigs that are delivered or picked up, and the list includes anything imaginable.
...and are collectively called the Plimsoll mark, after Samuel Plimsoll, a member of Parliament who, in the eighteen-seventies, wrote the act creating them in order to outlow the greed-driven excessive loading that was the primary factor in the sinking of ships. [this continues to talk about various Plimsoll marks, how heavy you can load a ship in the North Atlantic vs. Carribean, and so on, really interesting stuff]
A running them throughout the book is the decline of the Merchant Marine. "Looking for a Ship" implies that ships are hard to find. Crews are based on seniority, and everyone on the ship McPhee ships out on is at least in his 50s. There are fewer and fewer US companies, and fewer and fewer US Merchant Marine ships. And, in the end, the ship that McPhee ships out on has to be broken apart.
March 24, 2011
Evocative.
Captain Paul McHenry Washburn : if he wasn't real you couldn't make him up
Ran away from home at 13
Became a hobo, rode boxcars across America (Great Depression era)
Joined a freak show (SEE the man who feels no pain when shocked)
Joined the Ringling brothers circus
Became an amateur boxer
Hopped aboard a ship, became a sailor
Went to war (WWII)
Worked his way up through the ranks, became a merchant marine captain
Became a great-great grandfather (while young enough to still be a captain; dunno if he ever retired)
McPhee is a great writer, plus the whole of this book appeared in sections in the New Yorker, so it has that extra level of polish that comes from the world's best editors
Gives such a palpable feeling of sea life... pirates, smugglers, union rules, heavy weather, rogue waves, shore leave, boat parking, sextants, shipwrecks, containers, sea legs, ports of call...
Note to self, this is yet another book that big ups Charles Darwin's writing (esp. in his youth, I guess Voyage of HMS Beagle is included). A lot of the writers I like, they like Darwin. Not just as a scientist but specifically as a writer. Got to check him out sometime. (But, how much can I read about rocks and penguins and such... maybe better just to get it from the source)
Merchant marines-- inot the life for me, but quite interesting to read about. This book came out in 1990 though, so I did find myself wondering how different it would be now given the GPS revolution, internet, things like that. Things have changed so fast. Do they have internet on ships now? He would've written a good chapter on Somalian piracy.
Been dreaming of being out to sea. I want to be out there in the middle of the ocean, on a huge listing ship, in stormy weather... for 5 minutes just
Captain Paul McHenry Washburn : if he wasn't real you couldn't make him up
Ran away from home at 13
Became a hobo, rode boxcars across America (Great Depression era)
Joined a freak show (SEE the man who feels no pain when shocked)
Joined the Ringling brothers circus
Became an amateur boxer
Hopped aboard a ship, became a sailor
Went to war (WWII)
Worked his way up through the ranks, became a merchant marine captain
Became a great-great grandfather (while young enough to still be a captain; dunno if he ever retired)
McPhee is a great writer, plus the whole of this book appeared in sections in the New Yorker, so it has that extra level of polish that comes from the world's best editors
Gives such a palpable feeling of sea life... pirates, smugglers, union rules, heavy weather, rogue waves, shore leave, boat parking, sextants, shipwrecks, containers, sea legs, ports of call...
Note to self, this is yet another book that big ups Charles Darwin's writing (esp. in his youth, I guess Voyage of HMS Beagle is included). A lot of the writers I like, they like Darwin. Not just as a scientist but specifically as a writer. Got to check him out sometime. (But, how much can I read about rocks and penguins and such... maybe better just to get it from the source)
Merchant marines-- inot the life for me, but quite interesting to read about. This book came out in 1990 though, so I did find myself wondering how different it would be now given the GPS revolution, internet, things like that. Things have changed so fast. Do they have internet on ships now? He would've written a good chapter on Somalian piracy.
Been dreaming of being out to sea. I want to be out there in the middle of the ocean, on a huge listing ship, in stormy weather... for 5 minutes just
April 12, 2010
This book is 5-stars for me because it's about a great subject, things it says are familiar and true in my own personal experience, and it is an excellent piece of writing. It's a friendly narrative. It finds humor for us. This book tells the story of a way of life, in those days. Very descriptive, with a pleasant sound and the rhythm of the seas carrying it right along. There's no shying away from the one big truth that danger stalks men and ships on the open waters and in the harbors. In that one story, that's not the real name of the ship, but they really did shoot him dead and all the rest. A couple of years later, the sheriff's department Special Investigations Unit was on the local TV news talking about how Interpol had captured two suspects in Canada. I actually was there on that case that night, for the shipowner. And the narrative about stowaways. Some perish. Many are caught. That's the way this book is all throughout. Although generally less dramatic, yet no less engaging. A book of the day-to-day lives of mariners is fantastical because only a certain crazy type people are going to be doing those jobs in the first place, and on top of that, the real world of ships at sea and in harbors is insane. Crazy people in an insane world. Absolutely wonderful, to share the experience of reading their story.
September 4, 2007
If you have ever had a dream of living on the open ocean, this book is a good place to start. It is a first person account of life in the Merchant Marines - one of those institutions I have heard of, but have no idea what it really is. At times, the author seems to be writing almost as a stream of consciousness, skipping from topic to topic and mixing time periods. Most of the time, this style seems to work, but at several points seemed to leave me lost as to who and what the author was talking about. Overall, I would definitely recommend this book as a nice light read that made me wonder about a life on the sea.
March 26, 2008
Clipper ships. I like clipper ships. Actually, this book has nothing to do with clipper ships, but rather is about John McPhee hanging out with the Merchant Marine on one those big tanker/shipping crate ships. Pretty interesting look at commerce and shipping and travel from a different perspective than most travel novels. The book was written in the 1980's, and I'd be very interested to see how it would be different now with the global economy that has expanded much more since then. Still, makes you think about all that stuff in the grocery stores and target and walmart how they got here.
September 3, 2012
McPhee is able to enter the lives of others and open them up to us brilliantly. I read this book after reading an excerpt in The New Yorker, and loved the chance it gave me to feel and see what it would be like to have a life on the sea, knowing I would never likely have a life on the sea. I still think about one captain's remark that he hated when he hear a TV weatherman say that "the storm moved safely out to sea." Nothing safe for those folks out on the sea! A good lesson in perspective.
May 24, 2016
It is the rarest of pleasures - almost extinct, it seems, these days - to read nonfiction into which the writer inserts himself not one single bit. McPhee is a master of it, and his books feel true to life as I understand it. That is, people are stupid and heroic, profound and blinkered, and the narrative of any given day outstrips most adventure novels. Here, the U.S. Merchant Marine is examined through the lens of one ship and her extraordinary captain.
I dare you to read this and not at least briefly consider running away to sea.
I dare you to read this and not at least briefly consider running away to sea.
January 4, 2010
a classic of new journalism and state of usa merchant marine (its pretty much completely dead now, union busted). the ending was disappointing in its abruptness.
October 15, 2018
the story was interesting, but the very minimal conversations made it a slow and grueling read
March 27, 2019
Boring
December 4, 2019
While it was interesting about the U.S merchant marine, the actual tale was lacking and peopled with one dimensional characters.
March 10, 2021
Readable, interesting, but a little tedious
April 25, 2019
When one has read enough books from someone, one can get at least a hint into some interests that the author particularly has, and this book demonstrates the importance of logistics and the people who work in it to the author. There is something melancholy in the decline of the U.S. Merchant Marine, in the way that damaged ships have to be babied because there is little hope at repairing or replacing them, little infrastructure in terms of young people being raised in nautical traditions or in terms of American shipbuilding, and a race to the bottom when it comes to wages and safety and living conditions in the sea. There is a certain elegiac tone to this work and to the author's efforts at writing about the American merchant marine while there is still such a thing to write about. And of course, there is something Nathanish about the way that people who do not fit in on land are drawn to the ocean, and that the company the ship of this book is owned by happens to have been founded by a group of brothers from Hillsborough County, Florida, where I lived for almost a quarter of a century.
Published in 1990, this book of almost 250 pages tells the story of a voyage on an American-flagged container ship. We begin with the author befriending Andy Chase, a merchant mariner who has been without work on the ocean for ten and a half months and following a hunch that it would be easier to get a cruise out of Charleston than out of Boston or New York. The author finds himself in a competitive world where people hope for a killer card that doesn't roll over after a year without work to get on one of the few American owned ships going to a really great destination. Once Andy is able to get on a ship owned by the Lykes Brothers (in this case, the wounded ship named Stella Lykes), the reader gets to know the other people on the boat, including a captain who learned his trade from legendary mariners in the past with colorful nicknames. The author intersperses the story of the ship's journey between the United States and South America in such ports as Valparaiso and Callao (Lima's port) with stories about merchant marines and various problems (like stowaways and drug trafficking) that container ships have to deal with. The book ends, mournfully but appropriately enough, with the broken ship dead in the water while full of a cargo of tropical fruit that is, sadly, going nowhere.
There are a lot of complicated emotions that likely went into the writing of this book. Andy faces the fear of not being able to find work and the worry about making a living as a merchant mariner, as well as concerns about the ability to get to where he is staying on the outskirts of Charleston, where a bridge has a habit of getting stuck in the open position. McPhee, of course, is on the lookout for a good story and finds one in the history and contemporary state of the United States Merchant Marine. The various crew on the ship are not, for the most part, very young at all, and they have their own complex life stories. There is also the danger of harm happening to Americans abroad, whether from the dangerous conditions of places like the North Atlantic or from ships that fail in various ways, or from harm done in ports of call. The ship shows itself to be a group of friendly people able to get hard and work together well in the face of difficulties, and if there is a melancholy tone to the work, it reflects the tragedy of circumstances rather than tragic flaws in the captain or crew themselves.
Published in 1990, this book of almost 250 pages tells the story of a voyage on an American-flagged container ship. We begin with the author befriending Andy Chase, a merchant mariner who has been without work on the ocean for ten and a half months and following a hunch that it would be easier to get a cruise out of Charleston than out of Boston or New York. The author finds himself in a competitive world where people hope for a killer card that doesn't roll over after a year without work to get on one of the few American owned ships going to a really great destination. Once Andy is able to get on a ship owned by the Lykes Brothers (in this case, the wounded ship named Stella Lykes), the reader gets to know the other people on the boat, including a captain who learned his trade from legendary mariners in the past with colorful nicknames. The author intersperses the story of the ship's journey between the United States and South America in such ports as Valparaiso and Callao (Lima's port) with stories about merchant marines and various problems (like stowaways and drug trafficking) that container ships have to deal with. The book ends, mournfully but appropriately enough, with the broken ship dead in the water while full of a cargo of tropical fruit that is, sadly, going nowhere.
There are a lot of complicated emotions that likely went into the writing of this book. Andy faces the fear of not being able to find work and the worry about making a living as a merchant mariner, as well as concerns about the ability to get to where he is staying on the outskirts of Charleston, where a bridge has a habit of getting stuck in the open position. McPhee, of course, is on the lookout for a good story and finds one in the history and contemporary state of the United States Merchant Marine. The various crew on the ship are not, for the most part, very young at all, and they have their own complex life stories. There is also the danger of harm happening to Americans abroad, whether from the dangerous conditions of places like the North Atlantic or from ships that fail in various ways, or from harm done in ports of call. The ship shows itself to be a group of friendly people able to get hard and work together well in the face of difficulties, and if there is a melancholy tone to the work, it reflects the tragedy of circumstances rather than tragic flaws in the captain or crew themselves.
August 10, 2021
Another interesting John McPhee book. In 1990 the author tagged along on a voyage as a "Person in Addition to Crew" to write about the rise and decline of the U. S. Merchant Marines in the commercial world shipping industry. Writing about crew and cargo, culture and commerce, he chronicles the allure, challenges, and reward of civilian sailors, ships, and industry in service to worldwide trade. The book is written in a journalistic style. It is full of salty characters and sea stories aplenty. Along with McPhee's iconic wit, his gift for subtlety, his ability elucidate, educate, and surprise with "perfect" words sprinkled throughout (such as nacreous, politesse, and abristle, among others), the reader will enjoy characterizations of pirates, stowaways, detailed cargo manifests, sailing vernacular, the nature of ships, the nature of oceans, the nature of machines, the nature of standing watch, navigation, work, food, pay, rank, moments of joy, moments of bitterness, moments of irony, and moment to moment appreciation for the ever-present danger that might affect the lives and livelihood of seafarers.
On a personal note, I very much enjoyed the numerous references to one character's devoted fanaticism, mutually shared, of the Washington Redskins Football Team. Further, I acknowledge a certain self-effacing pride and resonance to the mostly truthful description of the radioman below. Lastly, knowing this book spoke of eminent decline that was in-progress over 30 years ago, I feel nostalgic and saddened about the loss of a such an important part of our nation's identity and livelihood. Time and tide etc...
Here are a few quotes:
McPhee wrote (or quoted):
No response [via ship-to-shore radio contact].
"So much for moving ships at this hour in the morning," the captain says. "The port isn't even awake yet. When Ethan Allen was expiring, people said to him, 'Ethan, the Angels expect you,' and Ethan said, 'god damn them. Let them wait. Then he expired." The complete resonance of the captains parable passes above the head of the Person in Addition to Crew. P. 37
"These lizards, when cooked, yield a white meat, which is liked by those who stomachs soar above all prejudices." quoting Charles Darwin P. 106
On through the night we lie at anchor in a pool of festooned light, abristle with shotguns, braced for attack, and awaiting the call to a berth. P. 200
In the Merchant Marine generally, the person they call Sparks is regarded as the occupant of a numbered cloud, the distinct, if not strange, well-paid weirdo. P.208
From jacket flap..."As the crew of the Stella Lykes make their ocean voyage, they tell Sea stories of other runs and other ships - tales of disaster, stupidity, greed, generosity, and courage. Through the journey itself and the tales told emerge the history and character of an extraordinary calling."
On a personal note, I very much enjoyed the numerous references to one character's devoted fanaticism, mutually shared, of the Washington Redskins Football Team. Further, I acknowledge a certain self-effacing pride and resonance to the mostly truthful description of the radioman below. Lastly, knowing this book spoke of eminent decline that was in-progress over 30 years ago, I feel nostalgic and saddened about the loss of a such an important part of our nation's identity and livelihood. Time and tide etc...
Here are a few quotes:
McPhee wrote (or quoted):
No response [via ship-to-shore radio contact].
"So much for moving ships at this hour in the morning," the captain says. "The port isn't even awake yet. When Ethan Allen was expiring, people said to him, 'Ethan, the Angels expect you,' and Ethan said, 'god damn them. Let them wait. Then he expired." The complete resonance of the captains parable passes above the head of the Person in Addition to Crew. P. 37
"These lizards, when cooked, yield a white meat, which is liked by those who stomachs soar above all prejudices." quoting Charles Darwin P. 106
On through the night we lie at anchor in a pool of festooned light, abristle with shotguns, braced for attack, and awaiting the call to a berth. P. 200
In the Merchant Marine generally, the person they call Sparks is regarded as the occupant of a numbered cloud, the distinct, if not strange, well-paid weirdo. P.208
From jacket flap..."As the crew of the Stella Lykes make their ocean voyage, they tell Sea stories of other runs and other ships - tales of disaster, stupidity, greed, generosity, and courage. Through the journey itself and the tales told emerge the history and character of an extraordinary calling."
May 18, 2024
I also shivered in the cool of the morning. At noon that day, one degree south, the Fahrenheit temperature was seventy-eight degrees, the relative humidity seventy-five per cent. At noon that day in New York City, I learned later, the temperature was eighty-five and climbing. The day's high humidity was ninety-one per cent. All through the summer, everybody in New York and its perisphere had been living in the sort of climate that seals the skin and pops veins in the head: They waded in humidity. Every day for weeks, the high temperatures remained between eighty-eight and ninety-seven. Before I shipped out, I met a Liberian who had come to Princeton on a fellowship. I asked him if he liked America. He said, "Everything but the heat. It is intolerable. Never in my country have I experienced such heat." By comparison with New York, Panama was cool. The canal, creeping through the forest, was cool. The evening we left Panama, the temperature in the North Pacific was in the seventies. The weather was almost unnerving. As soon as Stella crossed the equator, you heard people say, "It's winter now"—a technicality that is not persuasive there at the latitude of Borneo, with the hull's velvet slide over that soft ocean. We entered the Gulf of Guayaquil. Just the sound of that name—Guayaquil—spelled coffee and chocolate to me, spelled mangoes, bananas, guavas, and heat. At four that afternoon, though, when the temperature in New York City was eighty-nine, the temperature in the Gulf of Guayaquil was seventy-five. I finally understood where the tropics are, why the nights of the iguana are on Forty-seventh Street, and Broadway steams with rain.
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