The Sea's Bitter Harvest: Thirteen Deadly Days on the North Atlantic Hardcover - 2002

From the publisher

In the course of thirteen days in January 1999, four commercial clam boats sank while working the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. They went down, one after the other, taking the lives of ten men and altering the lives of countless others. The tragedy had its own inevitability. Economic necessities forced the men aboard the Beth Dee Bob, the Cape Fear, the Ellie B, and the Adriatic to risk death every time the New Jersey fishermen set off in their unsound craft to their workplace, the sea. Big paydays enabled them to provide for their families, but the eagerness for these profits often made them overlook their own safety. In this compelling tale of risk and danger at sea, acclaimed journalist Douglas Campbell compassionately portrays the destinies of the ten men who lost their lives to the Atlantic and the profits of clamming. With a critical eye toward industry safety standards, the expertise of prominent naval architects, and a sympathetic understanding of the men willing to risk everything to overload the clam holds with their precious cargo, Campbell turns his Philadelphia Inquirer 'Lost at Sea' series into the next Perfect Storm. From the tough and sometimes troubled young men on deck to their families on shore and the courageous people who tried to rescue them, this narrative memorializes a way of life, and does its part to preserve it by exposing its hazards.