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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.45
EAN num: 9780374523190
ISBN number: 0374523193
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 248
Printing Date: September 01, 1991
Publishing house: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sale Popularity Level: 216807
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Product Description:
This is an extraordinary tale of life aboard what may be one of the last American merchant ships. As the story begins, Andy Chase, who holds a license as a second mate is looking for a ship. In less than ten years, the United States Merchant Marine has shrunk from more than two thousand ships to fewer than four hundred, and Chase faces the scarcity of jobs from which all American merchant mariners have been suffering.
With John McPhee along, Chase finds a job as a second mate aboard the S.S. Stella Lykes, captained by the extraordinary Paul McHenry Washburn. The journey takes them on a forty-two day run down the Pacific coast of South America, with stops to unload and pick up freight at such ports as Cartagena, Valparaiso, Balboa, Lima, and Guayaquil—an area notorious for pirates. As the crew 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 a fascinating calling.
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Rated by buyers 
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This book reminded me a lot of one of my all-time favorites, "Travels With Charlie" by Steinbeck. McPhee's writing style, and his ability to describe in an interesting way the lives of ordinary people, was very similar to Steinbeck's book. Granted, I have always been a sucker for books about life at sea, but I highly recommend this to anyone who would like to learn about an industry upon which we all so heavily depend, whether we know it or not.
The book is set on a voyage from Charleston to Valparaiso, Chile and back through the Panama Canal. The author becomes a "P.A.C." (or "Passenger in Addition to Crew") on a container ship on which his friend, Andy, is a Mate. The book begins with Andy waiting in a union hall in Charleston hoping to land a job on a ship, which gives you a very interesting insight to the recent (book published in 1990) decline in the American merchant marine industry. The author and his friend find a job aboard the Stella Lykes headed for South America, and encounter many interesting situations, such as pirates, mechanical problems, and incompetent pilots, not to mention a host of interesting crew members. Interspersed in these stories are many interesting passages about the merchant marine industry in general, which I found fascinating.
Some of the reviewers criticized the book for not having a set plot or being disjointed. While it is true that the story is not always presented in chronological order, I thoroughly enjoyed the author's style of bouncing around in time to relate a point. Nor does the story have a climactic plot, but that is not really the point of the book. It is simply a well-written story of one person's experience on a 42-day trip.
Rated by buyers -
John McPhee has a unique investigative journalist style that I personally find very enjoyable, and he generally picks interesting topics to "meander" through. Looking for a Ship is not a disappointment in any regards to those who enjoy his writings. His general approach is to almost lazily wander through a topic, exploring it in a fairly free form but adventurous manner and going wherever he wants to within the subject matter. As such we find him glomming on to a merchant marine sailour looking for a ship on the southeastern seaboard and using this as a springboard into exploring the then modern state of the US shipping fleet. An industry in tough times and with arcane union rules, and also one with a storied history (the merchant marine had a higher casualty rate than all the armed services in World War II save the Marines), merchant mariners strike a strange balance between free lance labor and union organization. Finding a vessel to work on is like going to an auction where the auctioneer bids for you and everyone else and it can be both a grating and boring experience for those trying to eke out a living. Finally John McPhee's subject du jour gets a chance to work on a freighter on a South America run. This leads to getting onboard the ship and a myriad list of relatively unconnected sea stories about storms, encounters with US submarines, and experiences in the Merchant Marine academy. Next the author investigates the cargo on the ship, what it is, where it's going, where it came from, how it's sold, how it's loaded, how it's unloaded, and every other detail, including horses that are brought onboard along in a converted 40 foot container complete with a feeder / trainer. As McPhee lazily explores the ship and its agenda of ports he subsequent focuses on the ship's captain and his history, even following the captain back to his home in Florida and staying with him for a few weeks. By the end it's almost like you had gone on a vacation with press credentials to allow you acess to anywhere you wanted and the power to ask people any question you wanted. This literary vacation through the Merchant Marine explores an American Tradition and industry on the severe decline in a globalized world, the generally safe and trim US flag ships being out-competed by third world flagged and multi-lingual crewed ships paying near slave wages. A local harbor master in South America reveals that he can always tell when he's on an American ship because they are the only ones that "smell clean." The worst thing that can happen to a ship in the open water is to lose the powerplant. In an omen for the current and future state of the US Merchant Marine, which played a truly central role in our nation's growth and our victory in WWII, John McPhee concludes his story with the plant actually going out on his host ship. This book, despite it's apparent disorganization and aimless but interesting wandering, is actually a rather poignant elegy for a dying American tradition and the few souls left who carry the torch into a darkening night.
Rated by buyers -
If you've ever wondered how the U.S. Merchant Marine works or just want to read a modern seafaring non fiction book, this is the book for you. Great read, very interesting
Rated by buyers -
An excellant book that is at times laugh out loud funny. One of the main characters, Andy, graduated a couple years behind me and I was aquainted with him so it made the book even more real. The people described are defintely the real deal. It's a book that I reread nearly every year.
Rated by buyers -
I think I was born wanting to go to sea. I had never even seen an ocean as a kid, but I instinctually seemed to have a knowlege and a love of ships and the sea. As I grew older it puzzled me that the Merchant Marine wasn't considered a viable career choice. It also puzzled me that I never met anyone who had worked in the merchant service later than the early 50's. There was also the fact that the world's biggest industrial powerhouse seemed to have so few American flagged vessels..... Well, this book explains things. You can't get a berth on an American flagged ship for the same reason it is becoming impossible to find a factory job inland- the corporations decided that it was cheaper to hire cheap foreign labor and flag their ships in third world countries to get around taxes and decent working conditions.
That is why reading this book is a bittersweet experience. On the one hand it is great reading about famous captains or modern day pirates, but on the other, you realise that you'll never know any part of such a life. Pretty hard to get a sea card when licensed officers are being "shoved down the hawse-pipe" to serve as deckhands....
When I finished this book I dug out my old Bowditch and sextent and thought about what could have been. Maybe I couldn't have cut it, but damn it, I deserved a chance to find out.
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