Ever since he was a boy, Christopher McMahon knew that he wanted to go to sea. When young, he puzzled his parents by avoiding more athletic activities and reading classic seafaring novels like Mutiny on the Bounty. During a voyage from Southampton to New York, he fell in love with the experience of being on a boat. After a brief stint aboard a C-4 freighter during the summer before his final year in high school, he enrolled in the United States Merchant Marine Academy. As a merchant marine, he and his crew were responsible for safely transporting cargo across the waters, an experience that left him vulnerable to rough seas and drunken captains but also granted him access to port cities like Houston, San Francisco, and Caracas.

His riveting account of life aboard ship reads at times like some of the more lurid episodes in the novels of Melville and Joseph Conrad. For example, one captain is missing a nose and sometimes holds a flashlight to his face in the hopes of terrifying his crew members into submission. On one occasion, McMahon is nearly killed by a knife-wielding stowaway. He witnesses firsthand the isolation that often drives mariners to drunkenness, though he himself remains admirably free of vice. He refuses to drink and—in a nod to The Odyssey—resists the sexual advances of prostitutes and other women.

McMahon’s prose is tight, methodical, and precise. Line by line, he fulfills Strunk and White’s advice to write detailed, informative sentences with no fat or fuss. His depictions of sea weather evoke the feeling of sitting by the radio listening to the shipping forecast. This is a book not only for those who love the sea but for anyone who appreciates quality writing free of any pretension. This book deserves to stand with the classics.

RECOMMENDED by the US Review

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