6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Readable and entertaining series of yarns, March 5, 2010
This review is from: Seized: A Sea Captain's Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters (Hardcover)
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Captain Hardberger is a very unique and driven man! He is licensed to serve as Captain on any oceangoing merchant ship, he's a flying instructor, and has passed the Bar Exam in California, certainly a unique set of credentials. Based on this book, he applies the energy and dedication it would take to acquire such a varied skill set to every task he undertakes as a professional. The book reads as a series of stories about different situations, mostly involving something to do with a ship being held in port illegitimately or through corruption (one story involves slipping several dozen cropdusting planes out of East Germany in the chaotic days just before German reunification). He gives us a lot of insight into the details of how merchant ships do business in a wide variety of ports, and the problems this creates both for the ships and for the merchants and service providers who tend to their needs. These are very readable, and really do seem like something from Mission Impossible in some cases.
Less obvious is the darker side of his life--The relationships in his life suffer because he is continually traveling overseas, and is frequently in imminent peril of being imprisoned. And often he has difficulty getting paid or the men his clients hire to help him don't get paid, or get paid a pittance after risking death or imprisonment to get someone else's big-money asset out. A significant number of the ships he rescues are lost at sea or otherwise go out of service only a couple of years after his involvement with them.
It wasn't "Gripping" in the sense that I was lost in his world hanging on every word, but it is well-written and I kept reading. I finished the book in one evening with a couple of short breaks. Usually he explains technical or professional matters adequately, but in a handful of cases he referred to things where I didn't know what he was talking about (and as a naval history buff I'm more attuned to nautical matters than most landlubbers).
Strongly recommended as an entertaining read, but it won't rock your world.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Most Unusual Specialty - Stealing Ships, April 28, 2010
This review is from: Seized: A Sea Captain's Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters (Hardcover)
Max Hardberger's Seized, a Sea Captains Adventures - Battling Scoundrels and Pirates while Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters is a fascinating account of one man's remarkable career and personal journey. In addition to working professionally as a crop-duster, school teacher, lawyer, and ship's captain, Max Hardberger developed the rather unusual specialty of returning stolen property, very large stolen property. He steals back ships wrongly seized in foreign ports and returns them to their owners.
There is a cliche that petty thieves steal with guns while the big thieves steal with pens. Hardberger's career as a "ship extractor" began when as captain of the bulk carrier, Naruda, which had just discharged a cargo of rice in Haiti, a claim was filed against the ship for a short discharge. The claim was false and even if valid, should have been filed against shipper and not the ship. Nevertheless an unscrupulous merchant, paying off a corrupt judge in a third world port, just might have succeeded in stealing the ship. With guile, stealth, liquor for the guards, and a bit of bribery Captain Hardberger succeeded in slipping the ship out of Cap Haitian. It was the beginning of a highly varied career as a ship thief.
In Seized, Captain Hardburger describes sneaking ships out of Venezuela, Haiti, Trinidad, Belgium, Honduras, Mexico and Greece, as well as flying forty seven crop dusters out of East Germany. In the process he had to cope with corrupt officials, the Russian mob, political unrest, and a mixed bag of scoundrels, pirates and con men.
He describes the difficulty of sneaking ship out of port. Most ships have diesel engines which can make a lot of noise in the dead of night when trying to slip out of a port unnoticed. In one case, Captain Hardberger merely slipped the lines and let the ship drift out with the wind and current to a waiting tug. In another case, he arranged for a very noisy party at a neighboring waterfront whorehouse to mask the sound of the ship's engines starting up. The range of trickery, diversions and deceptions used to extract ships from ports around the world is highly entertaining.
What makes this memoir something more than a group of sea stories loosely strung together is that we also follow Captain Harberger's personal journey. This includes the highs and lows, from his passing the California bar exam to become an attorney (after completing a law school correspondence course,) to the end of his marriage and the tragic loss of a daughter to heart disease. The memoir ends in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina where he has lost most of his worldly possessions while still in mourning over his daughter's death. Nevertheless, it is clear that he will carry on. There is still work to be done and just possibly more ships to save.
Seized, a Sea Captains Adventures - Battling Scoundrels and Pirates while Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters is a gripping story of real-life adventure. A highly enjoyable read.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nautical Repossessions, March 26, 2010
This review is from: Seized: A Sea Captain's Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Captain Hardberger's book introduced me to a world that I knew nothing about. I am not a seaman and certainly have no experience with repossessing ships. As a result, I found the book to be extremely interesting. The writing is simple, straightforward, and basically just tells the story. It is as if you are just listening to his yarns.
The author has experience as a ship captain, airplane pilot, lawyer, teacher, adventurer, and raconteur. His experiences in this book deal with recovering stolen freighters for a living - Central and South America, Greece, Russia, The Netherlands. The man gets around. Usually his repossessions involve outsmarting the other guy or finding a way to remove the vessel in the middle of the night without drawing the attention of the authorities. The situations are almost always nip and tuck, and certainly call for an ability to think on your feet.
I found the book to be highly entertaining and would recommend it to anyone interested in ships or looking for some adventure stories.
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