OUTDOORS

The Hungry Ocean

Linda Greenlaw (Hyperion)

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by Jeff Merron

Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm is a publishing phenomenon, having been on the New York Times best seller lists for almost three years in first its hardcover and then its paperback version. The real-life ocean thriller captured the imaginations of millions of readers by telling a gripping tale of the Andrea Gail, the ill-fated swordfish boat that disappeared off The Grand Banks in the North Atlantic in the midst of one of the century's great meteorological events.

In The Perfect Storm, one of the many real-life heroes readers are introduced to is Linda Greenlaw, who played a small but critical part in one of the rescues chronicled by Junger. Greenlaw, we learned in Junger's book, is the only female swordboat captain in the world, and one of the best regardless of gender.

In The Hungry Ocean, Greenlaw tells her story, which, she correctly assumed, many Perfect Storm fans would be eager to know. That she makes no bones about this tale of a single month-long trip being a mercenary exercise is mildly commendable, but it doesn't really excuse what she has left out – and boy, has she left out a lot.

Shaping the narrative around a single trip is a clever move – the reader expects to ride along and learn what it is like to work under the tough conditions of the commercial North Atlantic fleet. She begins at the dock in Gloucester, Massachusetts, hurriedly readying the Hannah Boden during a two-day layover between outings. There we learn that, as captain, she doesn't participate in the crew's big paycheck-blowing bender at the Crow's Nest. She's too busy making up shopping lists of equipment-monofilament and Mustad hooks, crimps and bastard files and slime knives and rippers, 8,000 chemical lightsticks, and on and on – stowing everything aboard, taking inventory, making more lists, and then waiting for the crew and wondering if they'll show up again when the time comes to sail.

Of course, they do show up, and it's one of her best crews ever – experienced fishermen who work hard, follow orders, and cause little trouble. Unfortunately we come to know little of Ringo, Peter, Carl, Charley and Kenny, except that one is a good cook, another a great slimer, and all generally genial.

The colorful characters one would expect in a fisherman's tale do make appearances, during brief cutaways Greenlaw calls "Mug-Ups." Unfortunately, her salt dogs – the drunks and losers from the past who make for the best stories – are too clichéd, and the anecdotes, like that of a man who dies on board before the ship even makes it to the fishing grounds, just aren't very interesting.

Because Greenlaw chose to chronicle a trip with a top-notch crew, we rarely get a glimpse of what she thinks of the more loutish behavior of crew members. It's a clean, hard-working ship – no drugs, no booze, and practically no time off for weeks once the lines are set.

At one point in the journey, she crosses paths with two other swordboats captained by drunks, and she makes her disrespect for them clear. When she catches sight of the Maryanne P. and Leslie Lisa, she writes: [indent"> Their captains, George and Tommy, represented the ruffian element in our otherwise quite respectable group of swordfishermen. The boats had obviously never been properly maintained; they were rusty and their rigging was crude. It had been said of the pair that the ends of their trips were never determined by the filling of their fish holds but rather by the depletion of their Budweiser supply. The status of the ships' stores was often the topic of conversation between the two, beer being referred to as "canned goods." [/indent"> Within a few days, George's boat goes miles astray when a crew member literally falls asleep at the wheel, and George, on the radio, calls his crew "these fucking jerks." Next, Tommy's gear is decimated by sharks. Greenlaw's lesson is clear.

Greenlaw lets herself off a lot easier than she would any of her crew. She tells a workmanlike story: this is what I do, and this is how I do it. But the long, drawn-out descriptions of equipment and procedures are filled with mind-numbing technical jargon – it's one of this book's great failings that it comes without photos or diagrams, which might have taken the place of a thousand words here and there (though the book is slender to begin with).

Also, she dismisses critical questions perfunctorily. What's it like to be a woman in an almost all-male profession? It's annoying to be called a fisherwoman – end of discussion. Isn't it hard to be away from home so much, to have little opportunity for a romantic life? Yes, it's difficult, she says, but she loves her work. She briefly rants about limits and bans on swordfishing, displaying some rare emotion in place of a good argument.

This is disappointing. Greenlaw, a Colby College graduate who comes from a family that's lived off the sea for generations, is in a unique position to provide some perspective on these issues. She writes, "In seventeen years of swordfishing, I have seen no evidence of depletion," and she slams a boycott of swordfish by "head chefs of a number of fine restaurants" with a juvenile dig: "In my opinion, little Chef Fancy Pants should work at perfecting his creme brulee and leave fisheries management to those who know more about swordfish than how best to prepare it." A more measured argument would explain why the perception of swordfish overfishing exists in the first place, and then debunk the evidence.

Likewise, Greenlaw begs off any serious attention to her gender. In one magazine article, she is quoted as saying, "I'm not a feminist in any way, shape or form. I didn't have to overcome a lot of barriers because I was a woman." She does admit that her all-male colleagues take note that she is a woman (the crew calls her "ma," for instance), but she insists that once the work begins, her gender has little relevance.

This may be true – and her story supports this view – but it seems remarkable that she doesn't give some thought to how changes in society, and the women's movement, might have enabled her to enter, and then excel in, her profession.

Most disappointing is Greenlaw's dismissal of her role in The Perfect Storm: in two paragraphs, she writes only that she was far from the threatening weather. This is maddening, as she, far more than the landlubber journalist Junger, is in a position to offer some insight, and it's certain that most of her readers are looking for more about that dramatic and mysterious series of events.

Swordfishermen must suffer through weeks on end performing exhausting and dangerous physical work with little rest or comfort if they're to succeed. If you're interested in knowing the technical details of exactly what goes into each 40-mile long "set" of hooks and bait, the hows and whys of finding the perfect fishing grounds, the nuts and bolts of keeping a fishing boat functioning, then you won't come away from The Hungry Ocean disappointed.

But if you're hoping for something more deeply satisfying from this book, something along the lines of, say, what makes Linda Greenlaw tick, don't waste your money.

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