Lost at Sea [Hardcover]

Patrick Dillon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1998

On the morning of February 3, 1983, the Americus and Altair, two state-of-the-art crabbing vessels, idled at the dock in their home port of Anacortes, Washington.  On deck, the fourteen crewmen--fathers, sons, brothers and friends who'd known one another all their lives--prepared for the ten-day trip to Dutch Harbor, Alaska.  From this rough-and-tumble seaport the men would begin a grueling three-month season in one of the nation's most profitable and deadliest occupations--fishing for crab in the notorious Bering Sea.  Standing on the Anacortes dock that morning, the families and friends of the crew knew that in the wake of the previous year's multimillion-dollar losses, the pressure for this voyage was unusually intense.

Eleven days later, on Valentine's Day, the overturned hull of the Americus was found drifting in calm seas only twenty-five miles from Dutch Harbor, without a single distress call or trace of its seven-man crew.  The Altair, its sister ship, had disappeared altogether; in the desperate search that followed, no evidence of the vessel or its crew would ever be found.  The nature of the disaster--fourteen men and two vessels,apparently lost within hours of each other--made it the worst on record in the history of U.S. commercial fishing.

Delving into the mysterious tragedy of the Americus and Altair, acclaimed journalist Patrick Dillon vivifies the eighty-knot winds, subzero temperatures, and mountainous waves commercial fishermen fight daily to make their living, and illustrates the incredible rise of the Pacific Northwest's ocean frontier: from a father-and-son business to a dangerously competitive multibillion-dollar high-tech industry with one of the highest death rates in the nation.  Here Dillon explores the lives the disaster left behind in Anacortes: the ambitious young entrepreneur who raised the top-notch fleet in a few short years, the guilt-ridden captains of the surviving sister boats, and the grief-numbed families of the crew.  Tracing the two-year investigation launched by the Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board, he brings to life a heated cast of opponents: ingenious scientists, defensive marine architects, blue-chip lawyers and wrangling politicians, all struggling to come to terms with the puzzling death of fourteen men at sea.  And finally, in his evocation of one mother's crusade to pass the safety legislation that might save lives, Dillon creates a moving portrait of courage and love.


Patrick Dillon grew up among commercial fishermen on an island in Puget Sound.  Formerly an editor and columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, he has won national journalism awards, including a share of the Pulitzer Prize.  His columns and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Fast Company magazine, among other publications.  Married to photographer Anne Dowie and the father of two, he lives in San Francisco.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In February 1983, two crabbing vessels set out from port in Alaskan waters at the peak of crabbing season. Filled to the brim with crab pots, both ships, the Americus and the Altair, were considered state-of-the-art for the industry: each only a few years old, equipped with thousands of dollars' worth of lifesaving equipment. Neither ship returned to port, and none of their 14 crew members was ever seen again. It was the worst commercial fishing accident in America's history.

In Lost at Sea, Patrick Dillon examines how the Americus/Altair disaster is indicative of the problems with American fishing, an industry that annually tops the list of "Most Dangerous Occupations," and what has been done in the tragedy's aftermath. During his research, including a season as a crew member aboard a fishing boat, Dillon encountered a murky sea full of men fiercely opposed to government regulations, an industry that always expects to do business the same way--its own way--and, conversely, an American government that prodded its fishing industry into possibly unsafe practices in order to compete with foreign fishing powers. Dillon interviews dozens of friends, coworkers, and family members of the lost fishermen, and the scenes that describe the small Washington town of Anacortes, which hosted the lost fleet and is almost completely reliant on fishing for livelihood, are touching. In the end, despite years of hearings and probes into the fishing industry, not much has changed, Dillon reports. Every year a certain number of men go out into rough seas, and every year a smaller number of them return home, as the industry remains largely free of regulation. --Tjames Madison

From Publishers Weekly

The Wall Street Journal recently noted that last year "commercial fishing lost its place as the most dangerous occupation." If so, part of the reason must be traced back 15 years to February 14, 1983, when 14 men from the town of Anacortes, Wash., were lost in the Bering Sea. Sailing on the Americus and Altair, two of the most high-tech crabbing vessels of the time, and confident of fairly calm waters, they disappeared without even an SOS. Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and columnist Dillon brings his perceptive journalism skills to reconstructing the lives of the fishermen and their families and motivations?from the need to strike out for more dangerous fishing grounds, because those closer to home were depleted, to simple greed. The residents of Anacortes clearly knew the dangers?an obelisk in the harbor is inscribed with 96 names of fishermen lost over the last 50 years, more than three times the number listed on the memorial to casualties of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Dillon spent time with the families and followed both the subsequent investigation and the efforts to enact and enforce regulations. His prose is more poetic than incisive: At a basketball game at the high school, "the news came in like a draft under the door. When it reached the bleachers, each row stirred in succession, people bent like grass.... They stood, stunned, their faces frozen...trying to conceal their terror." This is a story of individuals, but it is also the story of an old, traditional industry pushed farther and farther offshore by heavy demand from top restaurants paying high prices. Author tour to the Northwest and Alaska.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: The Dial Press (November 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385314213
• ISBN-13: 978-0385314213
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,104,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How tragedy shapes public policy, July 1, 2000

By 

Mr Mondo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost At Sea (Paperback)

This book is inevitably bound to be missed in all the hoopla attending the release of the film version of Sebastian Junger's "The Perfect Storm." That's a true shame, because Dillon's account of the dangers of commercial fishing in the Bering Sea is not only poignant, but an incisive look into how the loss of human life can bring about public policy changes that will save other lives in the future.

If you read the Junger book, you'll like this one, too. Dillon doesn't quite have the flair for characterization or drama that Junger wields, but he does manager to convey the horrors of a sudden capsizing in the frigid sea, a common event which few fishermen survive. The story focuses on the trawlers Americus and Altair, which disappeared in February, 1983, less than 25 miles off the coast of Unalaska Island in a heavily-traveled sea lane. The ships disappeared in relatively calm water. The capsized hull of Americus was spotted a few days later, but sank in 4,200 feet of water before divers could enter the hull and search for survivors or bodies. Altair was never found, save for some small bits of debris. Fourteen men, most of them under the age of 25, died in the sinkings.

Dillon covers the disaster's awful impact on the dead men's survivors, then moves on to a careful account of the Coast Guard investigation into the disaster. He fairly gives us hints in the narrative leading up to the sinkings that should tip even the most non-mechanically inclined reader to what probably caused the ships' losses. When it becomes clear later on what that cause was, Dillon's little trick allows us to feel the same sense of dawning horror that the ships' owner, a conscientious and decent man, and architect must have felt when they realized what had happened and that it had been preventable.

Finally, Dillon covers the political fall-out of the sinkings, which helped spur Congress to pass the first federal legislation mandating safety precautions on commercial fishing vessels. He tells it straight up -- how the victims' families and the families of other lost fishermen organized to get the law passed, how special interest politics slowed -- and nearly stopped -- its passage and how the persistence of these ordinary citizens and a few legislators finally carried the day.

This is a great book for those who love sea disaster stories. Dillon obviously has a great sympathy for the men who fish the Bering Sea and a keen perception of the brutal environment in which they must work and how dangerous their jobs are. He also does a fine job of documenting how the families left behind in Anacortes, Washington, (the home port of the two lost trawlers) lived with the inevitability that tragedy would find its way to their own doorsteps and dealt with the overwhelming sorrow and loss once it did.

But this book's real value lies in the account it gives of the political machinations required to pass even the simplest safety legislation. Public policy instructors would be well-advised to read this book and consider it for use in their own courses. It's "sausage making" at its most gut-wrenching worst.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fishing the last frontier job., August 1, 2000

By 

G. Powell (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost At Sea (Paperback)

After reading the Perfect Storm by S. Junger, I was casting about in the sailing/adventure section and found this gem. I remembered vague readings from the newspapers about the sinking of these ships and that it seemed a really dangerous business, crabbing in the North Bering Sea. Mr. Dillion explains it better than any other article I've read. He puts a human face on those missing fisherman. The book isn't quite as much as a thriller as "Perfect Storm" is but I was hooked and stayed up most of the night to read the first half.

The second half of the book is the formation of public policy and the making of the laws regarding safety at sea. Its a bit dryer but since I voted for some of these politicans I'm glad that they did their job. That aspect of the story wasn't reported very well in the local news. It is interesting but not the page turner that the first half of the book is.

Still whenever I buy King Crab legs in the grocery store I say a prayer for the saftey of the fisherman.

Anyway if you liked the "Perfect Storm", or any of the other disaster at sea books, "Fastnet Force 10" etc., you'll like this one.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Glad We Didn't Read This Before...., December 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lost at Sea (Hardcover)

Both my sister and I read this book. We're glad we didn't have it to read years ago, since we would have been even more apprehensive of our brother's safety these last sixteen years (his first year fishing north was the year the Americus and Altair capsized). Gratefully, he is alive with all his parts intact, is still is in the comm. fishing business and still goes up to Dutch Harbor each year, but at least safety standards are better now, thanks to the work of the persons Mr. Dillon writes about. While the book may not be technically perfect, it is clearly a window on an industry too many are almost unaware of. I would definitely encourage persons to read the book; it's gripping, combining "true-life" adventure, great human loss, detective work and frustrating politics.