The Comeback Kid

Review by Paul Molyneaux

Seaworthy – A Swordboat Captain Returns To The Sea

By Linda Greenlaw
Viking, 242 pages, $25.95

Everybody loves a story of a successful comeback, and Linda Greenlaw’s latest book, Seaworthy, hooked me from its beginning, with the author’s musing behind the locked door of a Canadian jail cell. Greeenlaw is, in the tradition of American adventurer authors like Jack London, a great storyteller. Her unabashed candor and determination in the face of the internal and external challenges confronted when returning to an old passion, make you want to hang in there with her, just to find out if she is still “America’s greatest swordfish captain.” But this is more than just a fish story; it’s a confession, a lesson in self examination that offers insights on aging, identity, and fishing culture within the context of Greenlaw’s humbling return to swordfishing and subsequent arrest for fishing in Canadian waters.

The fact that Greenlaw doesn’t offer excuses, or blame anyone but herself for her predicament, promises the reader that this is not going to be a “my side of the story,” diatribe. For the most part she bears the brunt of her mistakes, and reassesses her view of herself as a law-abiding fishermen. “For someone who professes never to have crossed the line in word or deed, I sure seemed to be coming up with a lot of evidence to the contrary,” she writes.

Questions of knowing oneself and one’s capabilities are what drive Greenlaw’s newest book. Before taking command of the Seahawk (a.k.a Shithawk), Greenlaw wonders if at age forty-seven, she still has the physically capacity to stand on deck all day hauling aboard fish that often weigh twice as much as she does; she worries about whether she still has the knack for filling a boat with fish. She takes on these doubts as frankly and courageously as she does the veritable slab of a boat she’s agreed to captain to the Grand Banks. In a series of triumphs over an often comical, sometimes dramatic, litany of tragedies that surround her brief detainment by the Canadian authorities, Greenlaw and her stalwart crew display the qualities that separate fishermen from “normal” people; namely a willingness to take big risks and persevere, not just to earn money, but to be on the edge.

Greenlaw contemplates the changes in her own mentality after a ten-year hiatus from blue water fishing. She wonders at the split personality she’s developed: the charming author vs. the screaming captain hell bent on having her way, and willing to play any mind games necessary to get it. She is a self-described “goody-goody” who has been branded by one environmental group as a “serial killer of swordfish,” and the line between the two is never clear.

Lloyds of London, the famous maritime insurer, defines “captain” as “master, under God,” and Greenlaw makes no apologies for her love of that role. The fact that she does not try to hide her faults and uncertainties makes us root for her when she finally gets sprung from jail and heads back to the Grand Banks, “hungry,” as she says, “for fish.” Once she gets fishing, Greenlaw describes the methods she uses to manipulate her fellow boat captains and her crew, revealing a level of psychological intensity experienced aboard boats ever since Ulysses sailed for Troy. But even in the so-called totalitarian environment of a vessel at sea, captains must be responsive to the feelings of the crew, also known as hands—her hands. It’s a neural network of control, and Greenlaw mentions twice the need to work with her crew, rather than have them work for her.

While she omits mention of the camera crew that accompanied her on her voyage, it’s the accuracy with which Greenlaw illuminates the details of the inner struggles experienced by, and among, fishermen that makes this book such an honest testament. There is something elemental in the way she and her crew persevere in the face of physical pain, rough seas and personal ambivalence toward each other and the venture. “We share the good, and we share the bad,” Greenlaw reminds us in one of her frequent references to the share system by which fishermen get paid—an egalitarian system where everyone, including the captain, earns an equal share of the boat’s catch.

On this trip full of disasters, they share mostly bad, and the profit, subsequently, is the learning experience. Getting back to the dock alive is always a plus, as Greenlaw mentions, as is her realization that in spite of being ten years older, she can still handle the physical and emotional work load. But the big lesson here is Greenlaw’s self-acceptance, which allows her to say goodbye to her youthful zeal, the good and the bad of it, and to embrace fishing on a deeper level. The result is a tale of humility, triumph and fishing.

Paul Molyneaux is a former commercial fisherman who has harpooned swordfish on Georges Bank. He is a professional journalist who has written for the Fishermen’s Voice, The New York Times, and National Fisherman. The recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including a Guggenheim, he is the author of books on fishing and aquaculture, available at www.doryman.com

He lives with his wife and two children in East Machais, Maine.