Looking for a Ship [Paperback]

John McPhee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1991

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

McPhee joined a friend, merchant mariner Andy Chase, on a 42-day voyage from Charleston, S.C., through the Panama Canal, down the Pacific coast of South America. A gem of a book, this leisurely, unpretentious log is a paean to the United States Merchant Marine, a declining institution battered by international competition and lowered cargo rates. The ship's New England captain "couldn't find his way around a traffic circle" but manages to outmaneuver a tropical storm. Porpoises and albatrosses accompany the SS Stella Lykes on a cruise laden with much talk of stowaways, collisions and cocaine smuggling, of pirates both legendary and contemporary (the modern variety carry bolt-cutters and walkie-talkies). McPhee's ( The Control of Nature ) clean, lean prose displays his sharp eye for telling detail and arresting incident.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Known for his books on natural history, such as The Control of Nature (LJ 4/1/89), Basin and Range (LJ 4/1/81), etc., McPhee brings his considerable storytelling ability to bear on the plight of the U.S. merchant marine. Accompanying Second Mate Andy Chase on a 42-day run down the west coast of South America aboard the S.S. Stella Lykes , McPhee provides the reader with stories and tales of modern seafaring life and the problems of making a living as a merchant mariner. This book is both an engrossing tale of the sea, with excellent detail and humanity, and a disturbing portrait of the merchant marine--a once-great American institution that made its presence known around the world. Highly recommended for public libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/90.
- Harold N. Boyer, Marple P.L., Broomall, Pa.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374523193
• ISBN-13: 978-0374523190
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #292,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. The same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The Pine Barrens (1968), A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles (collection, 1969), The Crofter and the Laird (1969), Levels of the Game (1970), Encounters with the Archdruid (1972), The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973), The Curve of Binding Energy (1974), Pieces of the Frame (collection, 1975), and The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975). Both Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cleanse your reading palette, November 3, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Honolulu, HI, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Looking for a Ship (Paperback)

Found in the clearance bin of the local bookstore, the title intrigued me, so I bought it. Rarely have I had such luck resulting from an impulse buy. _Looking for a Ship_ seems to take its pace from the slow and stately progress of any seagoing cargo craft. And yet the reader feels not the plodding, monotonous roll of a modern roll-on/roll-off, but instead is a passenger on the proverbial slow boat to China. You are on vacation, with a known destination, and little to do along the way but enjoy the scenery, the daily routine, and the satisfaction that mundane tasks are complete until the morrow.

We follow the author's first-person perspective as he in turn follows his friend, a sailor in the United States Merchant Marine, on the never-ending quest of finding work. McPhee enters a world known only vaguely beforehand, and as his adventure progresses, we learn along with him what life is to a Merchant Mariner.

I say "adventure" somewhat tongue-in-cheek; there is very little such in this book. Do not expect swashbuckling tales of derring-do. The only scene of pulse-quickening, a pirate raid while in a South American port, has not a whit of heroism, unless one agrees that saving one's own skin is of greater heroism than saving someone else's cargo.

Yet McPhee weaves a compelling tale from his real life experience. The people we read about are well described, fully characterized, and vital. Everyday problems still require solutions, and the Merchant Mariner must be as adaptable and wise in solving them as any of us, if not more so in the current climate of too little work for too many sailors.

Yes, I was able to put this book down. No, I didn't lose sleep while reading it. But when I closed the back cover, it was with somewhat melancholy satisfaction, as I recognized that yet another romantic calling has died at the hand of modern technology. The book ends suddenly, almost prematurely. I had found myself very interested in the lives I was introduced to, and wanted to know more.

After you've finished your latest powerful read, and before you begin your next, I highly recommend that you cleanse your palette with this simple and fulfilling study of the modern Merchant Marine. I doubt you'll be disappointed. An "8" rating may be high when comparing this book with some of the classics, but _Looking for a Ship_ is not trying to be a classic. Its aims are limited, yet few books hit their intended mark as cleanly as this one does. I give McPhee great credit for so elegantly doing exactly what he set out to do.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True to life? Yep., January 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Looking for a Ship (Hardcover)

One of the characters in this book, Capt. Paul Washburn, captained the Genevieve Lykes several years before taking the Stella. My father also skippered the Genevieve, and knows most of the officers portrayed in this book. The stories he tells of characters like Dirty Shirt George Price, and of incidents at sea and in port--for instance, standing off pirates (in Vietnam) with fire hoses--mesh perfectly with McPhee's account. Anyone who is interested in the actual American Merchant Marine, rather than a romantic preconception, should read this book, and carefully. But paying careful attention to John McPhee is no more difficult than paying careful attention to a bottle of Dom Perignon.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars McPhee is amazing, August 9, 2000

By 

jerseymca "jerseymca" (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Looking for a Ship (Paperback)

McPhee joins a merchant marine as he tries to find a ship to work on - hence the title - then journeys with him as the boat does its work. I picked this book up because I've read other books by McPhee that make subjects that I would normally not even think about fascinating. This book was no exception. For readers who have read his geology series (compiled into Anals of the Former World) and found it a bit too technical and dry, this book will be a refreshing change. I never would have thought I'd be interested in this subject, but McPhee made it interesting.