Untamed Seas: One Woman's True Story of Shipwreck and Survival

by Deborah Scaling Kiley

One late autumn day in 1982, the fifty-eight-foot yacht TRASHMAN set sail on a routine trip from Annapolis to Florida, with Deborah Scaling and four others aboard. When the boat sailed into a seventy-knot gale, it went down quickly, leaving the crew adrift in the Atlantic in a rubber dinghy that was quickly surrounded by sharks. Five harrowing days and nights later, when a Russian freighter finally came to their rescue, only two crew members remained. Powerful, adrenaline-charged, utterly consuming, UNTAMED SEAS is a brave, unforgettable story that plunges to the depths of the human psyche and surfaces with the strength to survive.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 2001

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story that sucks you need and you will want to keep reading. The author does a fantastic job of making you want to turn to the next page. She does an excellent job of laying out the background and events that lead up to the disaster. I also like that she stuck to what she saw, heard and experienced, that she did not add outside details. It is truly a book of the endurance and limits of the human body and mind.

My only negative of the book is when she is talking about sharks almost immediately surrounding their raft. As an experience scuba diver, I took issue with this for a couple of reasons. First, in open ocean, sharks are far and few in between, not the tens or hundreds that she describes. Second, from the shark presentations I have been to, in stormy weather they go deep. They do not want to get thrown around anymore that we do. Third, she talks about splashing in the water attracting them. They are in the middle of oceanic storm where she describes monstrous waves crashing all around her. Sharks are not picking out the splashing of five people in the water over all that. In the end, it comes across unneeded embellishment.

Overall, it was very good book. The reader will find themselves in agony over the feelings of helplessness and desperation that leap from the book page after page. She builds up the events leading up to the disaster. You can feel the tension growing that each new episode amongst the crew.

Kiley starts and finishes the book with two profoundly different examples of how this all affected her life. They made a perfect beginning and end.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thrilling and riveting first-hand account of a shipwreck in the Atlantic. This book was very exciting and hard to put down - read it in two sittings. Reminded me somewhat of "Into Thin Air" and it was sad and disturbing to read about what happened to the 5 individuals on the ship, and how two were able to survive at sea for 5 days - sharks and all!

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good book about a lost a sea incident...really fast read. True story. Karen

[Julie Lorimer]

This book was good. Not great, however. I was expecting more suspense I guess.