Trawler - Softcover

Ohanlon, Redmond

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140276688 ISBN 13: 9780140276688

Publisher: Penguin UK, 2004

Synopsis

Redmond O'Hanlon describes his extraordinary three-week trip on an Orkney trawler as it journeys far into the north Atlantic in search of its catch. Young skipper Jason Schofield has a 2 million pound overdraft on his boat, the Norlantean, which is why he has to go out in a Category One Force 12 hurricane when the rest of the Scottish fleet has run for shelter. O'Hanlon may not be much help when it comes to seamanship - in the words of one of the crew, he doesn't know his arse from his tit - but he is able to wax lyrical on the amazing deep-sea fish to be found north of the Wyville Thomson Ridge: greater argentine, flying squid, blue ling, the truly disgusting hagfish and many other exotics. Combining humour with erudition, O'Hanlon has written a vivid and compulsively readable account of a journey that for sheer terror beats all his previous adventures.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Having survived Borneo, Amazonia, and the Congo, Redmond O'Hanlon now ventures into his own perfect storm in the wildest waters he could find.
His rendezvous with destiny begins aboard a trawler converted for deep-sea fishing at a cost of $3 million-which is why its young skipper's setting out from Scotland's northern tip when the rest of the fleet is running for safe harbor. Equipped with a fancy Nikon, an excessive supply of socks and no seamanship whatsoever, O'Hanlon joins a crew of five who stock a bottomless hull with the catch, day after sleepless day, even as the hurricane threatens to wash them overboard. While he helps inventory the creatures of the deepest North Atlantic-from jellycats to the wormlike hagfish, unchanged since its evolution more than 500 million years ago-his shipmates exchange manic monologues that range from their woeful longing for loyal women to trade laws and complex fishing quotas.
Rich in oceanography, marine biology and men's lives, "Trawler reveals once again the inimitable spirit of the man Bill Bryson has called "probably the finest writer of travel books in the English language, and certainly the most daring."

"From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author:

Redmond O'Hanlon has written three bestselling, highly acclaimed travel books: Into the Heart of Borneo, In Trouble Again and Congo Journey. For fifteen years he was the Natural History editor of The Times Literary Supplement. He lives outside Oxford with his wife and two children.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin UK
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0140276688
• ISBN 13: 9780140276688
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352