58 Degrees North: The Mysterious Sinking of the Arctic Rose - Hardcover

Kugiya, Hugo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582342865 ISBN 13: 9781582342863

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2005

Synopsis

The tragic and mesmerizing story of the deadliest American fishing accident in 50 years, the 2001 sinking of the Arctic Rose.

In the spring of 2001, newspapers across the country reported that an industrial fishing trawler had gone down in the icy waters just below the Arctic Circle, with the boat's position last recorded at 58 degrees north. The Arctic Rose sank so abruptly in the middle of the night that there was not even time to put on survival suits or call for help, and all fifteen men aboard were killed. Journalist Hugo Kugiya's investigation reveals a powerful story of adventure and disaster, illuminating how the modern industrial fishing industry gave rise to these sailors' dangerous and strangely archaic life. He recreates the stories of the fifteen young men, all of wildly different backgrounds, trapped in close quarters and able to call home or mail letters only in their occasional returns to port. And finally he traces the Coast Guard investigation, the most costly in history, as the authorities try to figure out what really sank the Arctic Rose.

About this title

About the Author:

Hugo Kugiya has worked as a journalist for fifteen years, and is currently a national correspondent for Newsday. His 2001 series on the sinking of the Arctic Rose won Newsday's Publisher's Award. He grew up primarily on the West Coast, has lived in Japan and South Korea, and now lives in Brooklyn with his daughter. This is his first book.

From Publishers Weekly:

The subtitle of this Perfect Storm descendant is not entirely accurate: after an exhaustive search and rescue, the Coast Guard found no survivors (and only one body) among the 15 men aboard the Bering Sea trawler, but after an even more exhaustive investigation, they concluded that the probable cause was a combination of poor design, uncertain maintenance and too many inexperienced crewmen. Journalist Kugiya, who covered the 2001 tragedy for Newsday, occasionally aims at a kind of mythic drama (fishermen are "the last hunters, the last cowboys," the kind of men "who wear their own severed fingers around their necks as lucky charms"), but his account, while highly readable, can be a bit jumbled. Narratives of events such as the attempts to examine the wreck with remote-controlled cameras are interspersed with biographies of the crew and facts about the American fishing industry. Even some of the stronger subsections have weak spots, such as the capsule look at WWII in the Aleutians that's squeezed into a fine description of Dutch Harbor, the major Alaskan fishing port. But the portraits of the doomed fishermen—Capt. Dave Randall, Mexican immigrant Angel Mendez (seen mostly through the eyes of his widow), amiable drifter Eddie Haynes—grip and fascinate. The book isn't flawlessly executed, but it's bound to suck in maritime buffs.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1582342865
• ISBN 13: 9781582342863
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320