This is a wonderful book, one of my best acquisitions of the last year. I was already captivated by its cover, the clean, yet sophisticated graphics, which actually just depicts one of the ships in the book.
The concept is simple, the author took two cruises to write about the contemporary life of cargo shippers based on personal experiences. Befitting a long, weeks-long journey, the pace of the descriptions is pleasantly soothing and peaceful. I fell asleep several times while reading the text, but I was always happy to pick it up again.
In addition to the description of the operation of the equipment, the cargo and the work processes, there is an opportunity to show the personality of the sailors, to explain their motivation and background. The author takes an ironic view of the consumer society, even by simply listing each load, he questions why we need so much stuff (300 tons of logs from Germany to forested Canada, 25 tons of Greek wine, used machinery, etc.). But in addition to the romanticizing tone, he does not ignore difficulties, salary injustices, violence, crime, and dangers.
This documentary book is for those who read a lot of ship stories in their childhood, Verne's adventure books, especially pirates. And for those who are interested in modern shipping, they are used to looking at ships on the Internet and following their journeys (the first ship in the book, the Gerd, is returning from China at the time of writing this, according to vesselfinder).
The only drawback I have to mention is that the author quoted the accounts of medieval sailors in the text a little too extensively, but he also includes descriptions of World War II on the second trip across the Atlantic Ocean, which are more interesting.
Such a good book is rare, I'm glad I found it. The author also wrote an icebreaker ship book, I will get that too.
by besucherke
1 Comment
As someone who grew up reading the Horatio Hornblower books, this may sound right up my alley. Will take a look, thanks!