El cazador de barcos

by Justin Scott

El cazador de barcos es una historia cargada de suspense, que Justin Scott nos relata con una vibrante narrativa y un profundo conocimiento del mundo del mar y de los barcos. Desde 1979, año de su primera edición, ha fascinado a millones de lectores en todo el mundo, y se ha convertido en la segunda novela de tema náutico más leída después de Moby Dick. La implacable persecución que Peter Hardinemprende contra el Leviathan –superpetrolero responsable del hundimiento de su barco y de la muerte de su esposa– a través de los mares del mundo, nos embarca en una trepidante navegación, al mismo ritmo que el del pretagonista. La narración que hace Justin Scott de la confrontación final, en aguas del golfo Pérsico, figura ya para siempre como uno de los mejores relatos de la literatura marítima de todos los tiempos.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Suspense, Action, Nautical

468 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Also writes as Justin Scott, Paul Garrison, J.S. Blazer, and Alexander Cole.

Reviews

[Vicki Herbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Small Sailboat
Meets Super Tanker...

THE SHIPKILLER
by Justin Scott

5 stars. A small sailboat meets up with a super tanker in the middle of the ocean. They collide, killing the sailboat captain's wife...

When confronted, the captain of the tanker is cavalier about the tragedy, and his country and company back him up...

What to do?
Get revenge at any cost...

The sailboat captain embarks on an adventurous quest to avenge his wife...

What a story! It can get a little technical at times (describing repairs to the sailboat, etc.), but the basics of the story are easy to follow.

Recommend to anyone who enjoys sailing and has ever lived on a boat!

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a different kind of thriller, yet a very enjoyable one at that. Man versus monster I guess you could call it. Once his sailboat is run over by a huge oil carrier, and with the loss of his wife, this guy sets out on a sea of revenge. I am no sailor and I have not the foggiest notion of half the nautical terms tossed out in this book but that did not matter one fig. I really got wrapped up in how dogged and determined this guy really was to attempt to exact his pound of flesh from the Leviathan. A very good book for those that might be looking for that newest take on the Moby Dick type of sea tale. Just watch out for sea snakes. Those things sound pretty damn nasty.

[Hpnyknits · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book was way too long with way too much sailing info. I suppose its a good book for a sailing nut who enjoys Hollywood endings.
and I could not see glorifying an obsession that would cost human lives as a valid cause. and did I mention the romantic story did not ring true at all?
why would an educated beautiful woman fall for this lunatic?

[Jill · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this by mistake. Don't waste your time.

[Jaime · Rating 3 out of 5]

was cool to read it on a boat but the bits about sea snakes made swimming scary

[Kay Parsons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great adventure yarn, especially if you like your adventures on the high seas. This is a modern David and Goliath story, with a 40-foot sailing yacht vs the largest super tanker on the planet. Some reviewers felt the story was too long, and there was too much nautical terminology. I loved all the detail, and was caught up in the tacking and jibing, fighting swells and storms, surviving being becalmed, conquering fears, to finally get to the oil fields in the Persian Gulf. The love story was incidental, but I felt it was well-written into the overall revenge story. If you are even just an armchair sailor, then this book is for you.

[Jim A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sort of like reading Moby Dick, only the protagonist is not going after a white whale, but a giant oil tanker named Leviathan. Good story but just a bit too long. It could have done with fewer narratives of lowering and raising sails. But, on the plus side, the author is certainly no stranger to sailing.

An important note: This was written before the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was taken over by students in 1979. I had to remind myself of that while reading parts of this book.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellently '70s tale of high seas adventure and comically dodgy stereotyping. Really good in a totally popcorn way.

[Peter Wendt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well worth reading. I read this back in the early 80s. Not a book to read while at sea sailing. Kinda like Jaws on the beach.

[Mr Natural · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to this book as it came highly recommended. I know nothing about sailing and I find the thought of being in the middle of an ocean on a 30’ boat frankly terrifying. However, I like gadgets and love engineering, so the super ultra hyper mega tanker bit appealed too. But… the obsessive descriptions of every nut, bolt, cleat, spar, stay, winch, wind, wave, sail, etc, etc rapidly became boring.
Our protagonist, a wealthy doctor who made a fortune by inventing an early digital thermometer, is sunk by the tanker while sailing his boat from America to England. His wife drowns & he miraculously (first of many miracles) washes up on a beach in England. There he is tended by a beautiful Nigerian doctor. As soon as he is well, he does what any rational man would do, and hatches a plot to sink the tanker using a man portable guided missile. This doctor/sailor is an expert in just about everything from boats to weaponry, to radar… In no time he has a new boat, a gun and a guided weapon (miracle) - and the gorgeous doctor along for the ride.
Naturally, she falls madly in love with him & offers to help (miracle) Off into the South Atlantic they go, where, naturally, they find the tanker, but are capsized in a mighty storm. They survive (miracle).
The other players are cartoon stereotypes, from the martinet tanker captain through an odd collection of “spooks”. His boat is fixed, he gets even more weaponry (miracle) he survives attacks by the Iranian navy, and on and on. He sinks the tanker, gets the girl & presumably lives happily ever after with no thought of the death & destruction he has wrought.
The book is far too long (I speed read & skipped through the last 3rd), the plot is ridiculous, the characters are caricatures and the love story/sex scenes just are plain weird.
But, I did learn a lot about sailing a small boat, which only confirmed that crossing an ocean in one is a mad thing to do. The technical detail of the tanker was far and away the most interesting. That’s what got it 2 stars.

[Mark White · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent thriller and another old favourite from the shelves. Shipkiller is a cut above the usual thriller fare. It's a kind of modern day Moby Dick, the white whale replaced by an oil tanker that ran down Peter Hardin's boat and killed his wife, and that is now an obsession that dominates his life.

Peter Hardin is super competent and super wealthy so no brake on his activities there, but I guess that's how you have to be to be a hero in a thriller. However the biggest failing is the totally unbelievable romantic sub plot. On the other hand Justin Scott has either spent a lot of time sailing or done some excellent research - the scenes aboard the yacht are first rate, equal to any real life sailing story but without the boring bits. In another nod to keen sailors he has chosen as Hardin's yacht the iconic Nautor Swan 38 - to this day a boat lusted after and held in the highest regard for its blue water performance.

It's logically necessary for the plot but Hardin does violate what was given to me as the first rule of small boat sailing: stay away from that Southern Ocean. I have no experience in the type of storm that forms one of the key passages in the book but I can say that for the most part the description follows true life narratives.

It's an old book now and a bit dated but the sea and sailing remain much as they always were and that's the true heart of this story. All in all a superior example of the thriller genre.

[Jeannette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shipkiller is geschreven in 1978, maar is in 2020 nog steeds spannend om te lezen. Afgezien van het feit dat er geen mobiele telefoons en satellieten in voorkomen, merk je niet dat het boek al meer dan 40 jaar oud is. Een echte page-turner, realistisch, en heel spannend. Goede research gedaan over het zeilen en de zeilwereld.

Het verhaal gaat over een plezierzeiljacht dat zonder pardon overvaren wordt door de grootste mammoettanker ter wereld. Een van de opvarenden van de zeilboot, Carolyne overleeft dit niet. Haar man, Peter Hardin zint op wraak. David tegen Goliath, nee Leviathan: het grootste zeemonster.
Of het Peter lukt om wraak te nemen zal ik niet verklappen. Hij doet er in ieder geval heel veel moeite voor. Uiteraard met behulp van een lieftallige jongedame waar Peter niet op verliefd wil worden, maar dan toch...

Toevallig struikelde ik over dit boek. De schrijver Justin Scott schreef ook een kort verhaal in een ander boek dat ik laatst las, ‘Manhattan Mayhem’.
Gelezen in Amerikaans-Engels.

[Mark Stangroome · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story in this novel is far-fetched but makes for an enjoyable read, the love interest though is a bit too left-field and is bordering on utterly ridiculous. The idea that a man who loses the love of his life and seeks revenge is age-old but for me a novel involving the global shipping trade shed a different if not new light on an established premise.

But there are some issues with the novel, the characters are very stereotypical, the captain of the ship has no redeeming features at all, an archetypal baddie who goes through life seemingly hating everybody including his own crew. His incorrigible bad manners and bad temper eventually take on an almost humourous air; a cartoon creature.

The other thing is the sailing detail. While I have no reason at all to doubt the authors' knowledge/research did there really need to be so much? I am sure that the author knew what he was writing but I had no idea what I was reading.

[Irene Domenech · Rating 3 out of 5]

Está bastante bien. Es correcto en su manera de escribir, pero se me ha hecho largo, aunque entiendo que sea así como tiene que ser, para transmitir mejor tanto las emociones como las vivencias en el mar. Lega un momento en que el que cuente cada maniobra marítima, especialmente en el tramo final de la tercera parte, se me hizo pesada. Entra, también, esa categoría mía de libros de "hombres obsesionados con ser el hombre que les obsesiona ser", es decir, que con tal de cumplir con lo que llegan a la conclusión que deben hacer, son incapaces de reflexionar más allá. Aún así, lo recomiendo.

[VV · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was recommended to me some time ago when I was looking for something with thorough and meticulous sailing prose--it's a 6/5 in that regard. Past that, the main character is a total Mary Stu and the love story is unbelievable and laughable. Badass doctor that's an expert on sailing, women, navigation, engineering, rocket launchers, deception, and more--he wins dive-bar fistfights, outmaneuvers global corporations, the Iranian navy, and the mossad-- it could've been more fun in a schlocky, pulp way, but nope.

[Vermillion · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the summary and thought I was going to hear about a man with a broken heart and a just cause. Instead it rather quickly becomes apparent that the main character is boorish (if not the author himself). The loss of his wife is barely a thing to the protagonist, because almost immediately we are set up for him to hop into another woman’s arms. It is no real wonder why he was already on his third “marriage”. I was so disgusted by this man that I decided this title wasn’t worth finishing in the midst of chapter 14.

[Rubén Sánchez Fernández · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta novela marcó mi adolescencia, mi juventud y mi madurez. Ocupa un lugar preferente en mi biblioteca y la releo de vez en cuando.

Una historia como el propio océano sobre el que se desarrolla: inmensa, profunda, oscura, emocionante y asfixiante a ratos, y que nos deja una gran lección de vida: «En el mar puedes hacerlo todo bien, según las reglas, y aun así el mar te matará. Pero si eres buen marino, al menos sabrás dónde te encuentras en el momento de morir».

[Jed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I enjoyed this book.

Plenty of nautical details to hold my interest, decent plot. Another ’unlimited funds' protagonist who can do whatever he sets his mind too and an old school oil shipping Captain who obeys only God and the Sea.

Somewhat predictable, but for 1978, likely a bit prescient for the times. Recommended beach read.

[Nancy Silk · Rating 5 out of 5]

"An Outstanding Novel"

This is a super thriller which I read years ago and now enjoyed reading it again on my Kindle. It's nerve wracking to know how even today petroleum kingpins still stress our world. Author Clive Cussler writes the preface, so you know this is a very worthy story to read. I enjoyed it again! Please read!

[Nora Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best suspense books I've ever read. I haven't thought about this book in years, but I'm determined to re-read it. My overriding memory was that I didn't put it down until I got to the end. Wow.

[Mrs.Lady]

Oh geez I was living aboard a sailboat when I read this so this book so it scared the crap out of me. I am sorry to say that some friends of ours did get run down by a ship. It happens, it is one of the hazards of offshore sailing. But don't let it stop you from sailing away ......

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this a very long time ago. An engaging revenge story in the David & Goliath / Moby Dick mold.
A little by the numbers plot wise but enough extra detail and descriptive narrative to hold the reader inside its world.

[Rachel Hackney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another old book — published in 1978 — that has aged extraordinarily well. I'm a sailor, so I especially appreciated Scott's excellent descriptions of being out on the water, especially in a terrible storm. This is one of those books you cannot put down.

[Unai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es lo que es ...y me explico. Te tiene que gustar la temática marina, sino no es tu libro. A veces se enrolla mucho describiendo escenas que no aporta mucho. Ahora bien, si eres marino, todo lo que sucede te sonará.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: the freighter Leviathan bore down on Peter and Carolyn's ketch; soon it was shattered and his wife gone. Peter vowed revenge.

[Bob Box · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in 1980. An exciting story of revenge and love set on the open seas.

[Peter Morell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring, boring, boring... With so many nautical expressions that a non-sailor do not understand a big part of the book.

[Tessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved it I appreciated the vast amount of detail Scott goes into both on the boat and the ocean and weather and the state of mind of the characters this was an amazing read

[Douglas R · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when it first came out back in the late 70's and I still recall much of the story. A riveting adventure, sort of a Moby Dick of the late 20th Century.

[Francisco Ormad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I