After the Storm : True Stories of Disaster and Recovery at Sea - Hardcover

Rousmaniere, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071377956 ISBN 13: 9780071377959

Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press, 2002

Synopsis

An exploration of loss and survival by one of America's finest nautical writers

After the Storm is John Rousmaniere's most ambitious work ever, the unique expression of a master storyteller and authority on seamanship who has survived storms at sea. Each of the book's stories of seafaring disaster­­many little known, all exciting and of deep human interest­­presents a broad human drama. Rousmaniere tells of the hopes and choices that put these sailors in harm's way. He takes readers into the gales themselves with authoritative knowledge of horrific weather and the split-second decisions that seamen must make. Finally, he explores the consequences of these disasters for survivors, rescuers, families, communities, and in some cases nations. The pursuit of these elusive strands leads the reader deep into our ambivalent relationship with the sea as both "destroyer and preserver."

About this title

About the Author

John Rousmaniere brings together his (and our) deepest concerns about the sea, disaster, faith, and recovery as only a writer with broad knowledge of seamanship, history, and human nature could do.Besides having put more than 35,000 miles of blue-water sailing behind him (including many storms), Rousmaniere has earned graduate degrees in history and divinity and has written nineteen books (including Fastnet, Force 10 and The Annapolis Book of Seamanship) and hundreds of articles about the sea, beliefs, and the past. He and his wife, mystery writer Leah Ruth Robinson, divide their time between New York and Stamford, Connecticut.

From the Back Cover

"A thinking person's Perfect Storm. Rousmaniere extrapolates from individual accounts of horrifying events at sea to trace a history of human interpretations of the meaning of life and death on the vast deep."--Daniel Finamore, Russell W. Knight Curator of Maritime Art and History, Peabody Essex Museum

John Rousmaniere is considered by many to have originated the storm-writing genre with his classic Fastnet, Force 10, which the Los Angeles Times praised as "a narrative worthy of the best sea literature." In After the Storm, his most ambitious work ever, he takes storm stories to a new level of revelation and universality. After the Storm is the expression of a master storyteller and the ultimate consequence of Rousmaniere's own experience in the Fastnet storm. "I can testify that storms change lives," he says in the introduction, "because one changed mine."

In the book's interrelated stories, he tells of the hopes and choices that put sailors in harm's way, and then takes us into the gales themselves with authoritative knowledge of horrific weather and the split-second decisions that seafarers must make in appalling conditions. He explores the consequences of these disasters for survivors, rescuers, families, communities, and, in some cases, nations. And he shows how storm experiences shape reputations and beliefs, often creating myths springing from the hunger for explanation.

The pursuit of these interconnected strands draws the reader deep into our ambivalent relationship with the sea as both "destroyer and preserver." The stories include a tragedy that destroyed a prominent Boston family; the Pacific typhoon that stopped America's first war with Germany; the disappearance of the Portland--"New England's Titanic"; the worst noncombatant disaster in U.S. Navy history; the stormy deaths of a poet (Percy Bysshe Shelley) and a visionary (Margaret Fuller); the gale that redeemed a prophet after nearly destroying him; the storm off Newfoundland that inspired the hymn "Amazing Grace"; and two wrenching tales of derelict ships.

With all the harrowing twists of the best adventure writing and the shattering impact of a storm at sea, After the Storm is a moving, provocative exploration of the roots and consequences of sudden tragedy in human affairs.

"If survival storms have indeed become a genre unto themselves, this is the author who invented the genre with Fastnet, Force 10. Now, more than twenty years later, he's reinventing it all over again, showing us stories of survival and loss we thought we knew in a whole new light, finding others we should never have lost and need to learn again."--Charles Doane, senior editor, SAIL magazine

"Vivid, wise, and heartfelt. The crowning achievement of one of America's foremost sailing writers."--Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Award - winning author of In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

"Among writers who sail and sailors who write, John Rousmaniere is unrivaled in his technical expertise, his breadth of thought and feeling, and in his vigor and lucidity as a storyteller. After the Storm is his best book yet. Because this is Rousmaniere, there are enough finely described high winds and toppling waves here to satisfy the toughest and most fearless armchair adventurers. But the storm at sea is for Rousmaniere only the beginning. His quest for meaning in the chaos of turbulent air and water is conducted on so many fronts that the reader is left breathless and dazzled by this marvelous inquiry."--Jonathan Raban, author of Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings and Bad Land: An American Romance

"No one writes about the violence of the sea better than John Rousmaniere, and he proves it again and again in After the Storm.--Stuart Woods, author of Blue Water, Green Skipper and The Short Forever

"As captivating as it is unusual. Rousmaniere's descriptions of hurricanes and shipwrecks are among the best in the literature of the sea, but his book is far more than a sea story."--Philip Caputo, Pulitzer Prize - winning author of A Rumor of War and The Voyage

"Dynamic, complex, and relentlessly surprising. As Rousmaniere skillfully observes, the most remarkable thing about an offshore tempest is what it does to the people left in its wake."--Herb McCormick, sailing correspondent, New York Times

From the Inside Flap

Few stories have more power to thrill and horrify than those of human struggle against storms at sea--frail sailors in their cockleshell ships fighting a chaotic, overwhelming force that, John Rousmaniere tells us, can be "as indifferent to normal order as a war." When the last survivor is ashore and the last victim is memorialized, we feel horror and also relief. But though the storm may last only hours, the roots of the storm story reach far back in time, and the consequences ripple outward long after the last wave rolls by. The real stories of people and ships, of dreams and seamanship, of loss and recovery are richer, deeper, more complex, and at once more disturbing and rewarding than a mere headline suggests.

John Rousmaniere is considered by many to have originated the storm-writing genre with his classic Fastnet, Force 10, which the Los Angeles Times praised as "a narrative worthy of the best sea literature." In his new book, his most ambitious work ever, he takes storm stories to a new level of revelation and universality. After the Storm is the expression of a master storyteller and the ultimate consequence of Rousmaniere's own experience in the Fastnet storm. "I can testify that storms change lives," he says in the Introduction, "because one changed mine."

In the book's interrelated stories, he tells of the hopes and choices that put sailors in harm's way, and then takes us into the gales themselves with authoritative knowledge of horrific weather and the split-second decisions that seafarers must make in appalling conditions. He explores the consequences of these disasters for survivors, rescuers, families, communities, and, in some cases, nations. And he shows how storm experiences shape reputations and beliefs, often creating myths springing from the hunger for explanation.

The pursuit of these interconnected strands draws the reader deep into our ambivalent relationship with the sea as both "destroyer and preserver." The stories include a tragedy that destroyed a prominent Boston family; the Pacific typhoon that stopped America's first war with Germany; the disappearance of the Portland--"New England's Titanic"; the worst noncombatant disaster in U.S. Navy history; the stormy deaths of a poet (Percy Bysshe Shelley) and a visionary (Margaret Fuller); the gale that redeemed a prophet after nearly destroying him; the storm off Newfoundland that inspired the hymn "Amazing Grace"; and two wrenching tales of derelict ships.

With all the harrowing twists of the best adventure writing and the shattering impact of a storm at sea, After the Storm is a moving, provocative exploration of the roots and consequences of sudden tragedy in human affairs. It keeps searching after other storm books end.

"A thinking person's Perfect Storm. Rousmaniere extrapolates from individual accounts of horrifying events at sea to trace a history of human interpretations of the meaning of life and death on the vast deep."

--Daniel Finamore, Russell W. Knight Curator of Maritime Art and History, Peabody Essex Museum

"If survival storms have indeed become a genre unto themselves, this is the author who invented the genre with Fastnet, Force 10. Now, more than twenty years later, he's reinventing it all over again, showing us stories of survival and loss we thought we knew in a whole new light, finding others we should never have lost and need to learn again."

--Charles Doane, senior editor, SAIL magazine

An exploration of loss and recovery by one of America's finest nautical writers

"Among writers who sail and sailors who write, John Rousmaniere is unrivaled in his technical expertise, his breadth of thought and feeling, and in his vigor and lucidity as a storyteller. After the Storm is his best book yet. Because this is Rousmaniere, there are enough finely described high winds and toppling waves here to satisfy the toughest and most fearless armchair adventurers. But the storm at sea is for Rousmaniere only the beginning. His quest for meaning in the chaos of turbulent air and water is conducted on so many fronts that the reader is left breathless and dazzled by this marvelous inquiry."

--Jonathan Raban, author of Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings and Bad Land: An American Romance

"No one writes about the violence of the sea better than John Rousmaniere, and he proves it again and again in After the Storm.

--Stuart Woods, author of Blue Water, Green Skipper and The Short Forever

"As captivating as it is unusual. Rousmaniere's descriptions of hurricanes and shipwrecks are among the best in the literature of the sea, but his book is far more than a sea story . . . "

--Philip Caputo, Pulitzer Prize - winning author of A Rumor of War and The Voyage

"Dynamic, complex, and relentlessly surprising. As Rousmaniere skillfully observes, the most remarkable thing about an offshore tempest is what it does to the people left in its wake."

--Herb McCormick, sailing correspondent, New York Times

Reviews

In his latest, Rousmaniere (Fastnet, Force 10; The Annapolis Book of Seamanship) reconstructs 12 tales of sea wrecks and near-misses from captains' logs and eyewitnesses, which are as sad as they are compelling to read. The poet Shelley's romance with the sea (and his life) comes to an end from careless sailing and a black squall; an African-American church congregation is decimated when the side-wheeler Portland rolls in Massachusetts Bay; during the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, sailors of the supply ship Pollux teeter between heroism and madness while their ship breaks apart on a rocky shelf. But as the title indicates, this book is more than a simple curio of casualty. Having survived his own brush with a watery death in 1979, Rousmaniere arrays in these remarkable stories a study of the reactions to sudden calamity, be they acts of sheer heroism, mute observation or a helpless slide into panic, and the lasting misfortune of those who survive the dead. The book is not without religious overtones, and peppered throughout are insightful digressions into biography, literary criticism and the composition of popular hymns. At once ominously desperate and unerringly hopeful, this book is a wise, generous read. Photos and maps not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Rousmaniere, the author of 18 books, sailed in the 1979 Fastnet Race in which five boats were sunk and 15 sailors died in a storm near England. He has gathered here 10 electrifying true stories that describe disasters at sea. They contain what he identifies as the five elements of a storm: its demanding weather; the seamanship needed to cope with it; the intense stress it places on victims and survivors; the beliefs that play a part in it at every stage; and the consequences of storms for the victims' community. Included are the chronicle of the schooner Ariel, on which Percy Shelley was killed in 1822; the story of the passenger steamer Portland, which sunk in 1898 in Massachusetts Bay, killing almost 200 people; and the wreck of the supply ship Pollux off the coast of Newfoundland during World War II. Every item is engrossing reading. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0071377956
• ISBN 13: 9780071377959
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352