Seized: A Sea Captain's Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters
Max Hardberger
Language: English
Pages: 195
ISBN: 2:00063238
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Seized throws open the hatch on the shadowy world of maritime shipping, where third-world governments place exorbitant liens against ships, pirates seize commercial vessels with impunity, crooks and con artists reign supreme on the docks and in the shipyards—and hapless owners have to rely on sea captain Max Hardberger to recapture their ships and win justice on the high seas.
A ship captain, airplane pilot, lawyer, teacher, writer, adventurer, and raconteur, Max Hardberger recovers stolen freighters for a living. In Seized, he takes us on a real-life journey into the mysterious world of freighters and shipping, where fortunes are made and lost by the whims of the waves. Desperate owners hire Max Hardberger to “extract” or steal back ships that have been illegitimately seized by putting together a mission-impossible team to sail them into international waters under cover of darkness. It’s a high stakes assignment—if Max or his crew are caught, they risk imprisonment or death.
Seized takes readers behind the scenes of the multibillion dollar maritime industry, as he recounts his efforts to retrieve freighters and other vessels from New Orleans to the Caribbean, from East Germany to Vladivostak, Russia, and from Greece to Guatemala. He resorts to everything from disco dancing to women of the night to distract the shipyard guards, from bribes to voodoo doctors to divert attention and buy the time he needs to sail a ship out of a foreign port without clearance. Seized is adventure nonfiction at its best.
dim pools of yellow light at regular intervals. An old supply boat at the end hadn’t been there that afternoon. The two guards at the foot of the pier stood talking to a young man on a bicycle. We turned down the side street and I slowed as we reached the lane. It was deserted and had no streetlights. “Come on,” I said, and we walked quickly to the far end. Televisions and radios blared from the open windows on both sides, but nobody looked out. I jumped down to the narrow beach and Otto
Two men near the roll-up quayside door were measuring, in an unhurried way, a length of steel pipe. A small dirty sign said OFFICE, with an arrow pointing up a narrow flight of steel steps. The receptionist was a slim black woman of middle age, with straight orange hair and a lot of faux gold jewelry. I told her I wanted to see the manager. A few minutes later a short, dark Indian man, about fifty, wearing a wrinkled business suit, came out of the door behind her. His name was Captain Rami, and
heads. The deck was littered with bits of rope and pieces of steel left over from cutouts. The ship heaved restlessly against her ropes in the low backswell. I led the Indian boy aft to an accommodations door. It opened with a screech of steel hinges. There was no power on board, but he had a flashlight. I made a cursory inspection of the accommodations, but I was most interested in the engine room. We went downstairs, below the lower deck and into the machinery space, Lal’s flashlight making
month of paid vacation in Seattle for eight months of working in the mines.” “That sounds like a party,” I said. In fact, it already was a party, and some of the men were carrying half-empty bottles of vodka. “Yes,” the man said, craning around to talk between the seats. He was a dapper little fellow with shiny black hair parted in the middle. His English was heavily accented, but good. “The company puts them all in a hotel with guards to keep them in. Otherwise …” He tilted his hand back and
to be posted on the California bar website at exactly 4 P.M. Pacific time on a given date. If your name appeared, you passed. If it didn’t, you didn’t. I was at home in Louisiana on that date. I logged on at exactly 6 P.M. central time, and there was my name. For a long minute I sat there, trying to figure out how the bar could have made such a glaring error. Then it sank in; I’d actually passed the California bar exam on the first try, without a single law school class. I dashed through the