Seized: A Sea Captain’s Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World’s Most Troubled Waters
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Product Description
Seized throws open the hatch on the dark 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 take in 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 additional 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 lacking clearance. Seized is adventure nonfiction at its best.
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And that’s how the storytelling reads for me. Like I stumbled into a bar and some ‘ancient timer’ ongoing telling his tales. Straightforward, riviting, nearly unbelievable ( more believable to me from all the Somali pirates in the news these past years ). I mean the stuff that Captain Max did and survived is told in such a droll manner….well, it’s seems like a guy you’d meet in a bar!
And that wouldn’t be a yuppie bar either. This was a very different type of book for me to read and it really held my interest. It might appeal more to men, but I also loved it.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Captain Max has penned a swashbuckling account of his high seas adventures and has done pretty well lacking the help of a ghost. The Captain’s memory is remarkable as he recalls ships and docks, faces, ports, and even how many beers or vodkas he drank in a particular bar long ago. Now most of us don’t have this kind of recall, but Captain Max specializes in freeing ships held captive in dubious circumstances, and his memory for all things nautical is immense as he crawls into double-hulls to fix a leak, or repairs a generator while drifting in treacherous waters. The Captain is admittedly somewhere in the cheaper end of the spectrum, as he is frequently searching for ships for Haitian buyers, and several vessels he deals with end up in Davy Jones’ Locker at the bottom of the ocean. Sea tales are sea tales, and perhaps the Captain’s record is the essential gut check, he could have told every tale with a pleased ending, rather than a couple of fizzles, several deaths, and another ship that washed up on the rocks, a rusting hulk that still taunts him whenever he visits the port, even twenty years later. These are some fantastic yarns from an very ancient mariner, and anyone in the mood for tales from the high seas will find themselves well satisfied.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Max Hardberger, the leader of “Seized” has some appealing and exciting tales to tell but since he’s not a very skilled writer the first part regularly confused me rather than engaged me and I establish myself skimming some passages to get to the “excellent stuff” which I rarely do. Hardberger seems to assume his readers know something about maritime crimes and ships in all-purpose before beginning this book though I for one knew next to nothing building the entire book to some extent tough going for me. To be honest he does clarify reasonably a bit of what at first seems incomprehensible in the context of the tales but there are more accessible and entertaining books about modern adventures on the high seas available so unless the reader has a huge interest in the theme this is not a book I recommend.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Captian Hardberger has lead a fasticanting life and the book has lots of wonderful tales in it,,, most technical details are clarified.
But my first thought on reading it was it needed a excellent quality ghost writer, the leader spent his life chasing ships, and while he writes a fantastic book, he did not spend 20 years effective on writing skills.
For the non critical style reader this is a fine and enjoyable read, additional wise I suggest waiting for a better edtion.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Rather than repeat the dead-on comments by some additional reviewers here (disjointed prose, ethical lapses, respect for the leader, a depressing personal life) I’d add that
SPOILER ALERT
the whole scene between Max and”Julie” was a bit cringy. Are we really to judge that there wasn’t an affair going on here? That his wife (or ex-wife and/or her lawyers) would not end up reading the book so the leader needed to dance around the issue? I’d say either include the right tale or place it out, this “romance” was otherwise awkward and unnecessary and broke me out of the narrative.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5