The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey

The term fisherwoman does not exactly roll trippingly off the tongue, and Linda Greenlaw, the world's only female swordfish boat captain, isn't flattered when people insist on calling her one. "I am a woman. I am a fisherman. . . I am not a fisherwoman, fisherlady, or fishergirl. If anything else, I am a thirty-seven-year-old tomboy. It's a word I have never outgrown." Greenlaw also happens to be one of the most successful fishermen in the Grand Banks commercial fleet, though until the publication of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, "nobody cared." Greenlaw's boat, the Hannah Boden, was the sister ship to the doomed Andrea Gail, which disappeared in the mother of all storms in 1991 and became the focus of Junger's book. The Hungry Ocean, Greenlaw's account of a monthlong swordfishing trip over 1,000 nautical miles out to sea, tells the story of what happens when things go right -- proving, in the process, that every successful voyage is a study in narrowly averted disaster. There is the weather, the constant danger of mechanical failure, the perils of controlling five sleep-, women-, and booze-deprived young fishermen in close quarters, not to mention the threat of a bad fishing run: "If we don't catch fish, we don't get paid, period. In short, there is no labor union." Greenlaw's straightforward, uncluttered prose underscores the qualities that make her a good captain, regardless of gender: fairness, physical and mental endurance, obsessive attention to detail. But, ultimately, Greenlaw proves that the love of fishing -- in all of its grueling, isolating, suspenseful glory -- is a matter of the heart and blood, not the mind.

"I knew that the ocean had stories to tell me, all I needed to do was listen." -- Svenja Soldovieri

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 05/12/1999
ISBN: 9780786864515
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.08lbs
Size: 8.66h x 5.72w x 0.98d
Award: Alex Awards - Winner

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 04/12/1999 pg. 62
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/1999 pg. 598
New York Times 05/09/1999 pg. 23
Library Journal 05/15/1999 pg. 116
Booklist 05/15/1999 pg. 1652
Outside 07/01/1999 pg. 125
Time 08/23/1999 pg. 67
School Library Journal 01/01/2000 pg. 161
Booklist 04/01/2000 pg. 1449

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 41138 / Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey
Reading Level: 7.3 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 13