An incredible story of courage, endurance and luck.
An intense account of the last days and moments aboard the sailing ship Bounty.
Due to its use in the film Mutiny on the Bounty and in two of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, the tall, wooden-hull Bounty was one of the best-known ships in the tall-ship community. She drew large crowds to her decks while in port but only sailed with her crew due to her inability to pass Coast Guard regulations for "safety and seaworthiness." Using exhaustive research and first-person interviews, Freeman (The Last Mission of the Wham Bam Boys: Courage, Tragedy and Justice in World War II, 2011, etc.) places readers aboard the Bounty during her last voyage—straight into the center of Hurricane Sandy. Although the ship was old and full of wood rot, and despite the warnings he received regarding the superstorm, her captain, Robin Walbridge, chose to set sail from Connecticut for Florida, determined that he could outrun the storm and reach their destination safely. Freeman narrates a harrowing account of the next several days aboard the Bounty as the crew wrestled with the bilge pumps, which could not compete against the massive amounts of water entering the hold through cracks in the hull and from the deck due to the storm swells. When the abandon-ship call finally went out, the Coast Guard was quickly on hand, although the airplane and helicopter crews had their own nightmarish rides through turbulence to reach the survivors of the shipwreck. Written almost minute by minute in places, Freeman's rendering of this horrific storm and the courage of the men and women aboard the Bounty and in the Coast Guard will place readers on edge until the last plane lands safely back at base. On a quieter note, the author includes testimony and reports on the ongoing Coast Guard investigation into the last voyage of the Bounty.
An incredible story of courage, endurance and luck.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-451-46576-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: NAL Caliber/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
APPRECIATIONS
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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