Until the Sea Shall Free Them
Life, Death and Survival in the Merchant Marine
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- $189.00
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- $189.00
Descripción editorial
A devastating disaster at sea . . . an officer who refuses to hide the truth. . . a courtroom confrontation with far-reaching implications . . . The Perfect Storm meets A Civil Action in a gripping account of one of the most significant shipwrecks of the twentieth century.
In 1983 the Marine Electric, a “reconditioned” World War II vessel, was on a routine voyage thirty miles off the East Coast of the United States when disaster struck. As the old coal carrier sank, chief mate Bob Cusick watched his crew–his friends and colleagues–succumb to the frigid forty-foot waves and subzero winds of the Atlantic. Of the thirty-four men aboard, Cusick was one of only three to survive. And he soon found himself facing the most critical decision of his life: whether to stand by the Merchant Marine officers’ unspoken code of silence, or to tell the truth about why his crew and hundreds of other lives had been unnecessarily sacrificed at sea.
Like many other ships used by the Merchant Marine, the Marine Transport Line's Marine Electric was very old and made of “dirty steel” (steel with excess sulfur content). Many of these vessels were in terrible condition and broke down frequently. Yet the government persistently turned a blind eye to the potential dangers, convinced that the economic return on keeping these ships was worth the risk.
Cusick chose to blow the whistle.
Until the Sea Shall Free Them re-creates in compelling detail the wreck of the Marine Electric and the legal drama that unfolded in its wake. With breathtaking immediacy, Robert Frump, who covered the story for the Philadelphia Inquirer, describes the desperate battle waged by the crew against the forces of nature. Frump also brings to life Cusick's internal struggle. He knew what happened to those who spoke out against the system, knew that he too might be stripped of his license and prosecuted for "losing his ship," yet he forged ahead. In a bitter lawsuit with owners of the ship, Cusick emerged victorious. His expose of government inaction led to vital reforms in the laws regarding the safety of ships; his courageous stand places him among the unsung heroes of our time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Beneath the surface of Frump's overblown, melodramatic writing style lies the intriguing story of Robert Cusick, one of only three crew members to survive the sinking of the Marine Electric, a coal ship that ran aground in the waters off Norfolk, Va., in 1983. Cusick knew that the vessel, a converted WWII rust bucket, was riddled with problems that had not been addressed by its owner. The book chronicles not only its foundering, but also Cusick's fight to expose the system that fostered such an avoidable tragedy, as Frump revisits the story for which he won two national reporting awards when he broke it for the Philadelphia Inquirer. While the account does boast a wealth of facts and details, it is undone by Frump's purple prose. In a typical passage, he writes, "And then, when Kelly could go no higher, as he tried to climb another rail that wasn't there, climb toward the sky away from it all, the sea was upon him. He bellowed into the storm with all his might.... A plaintive, savage, primordial cry, a desperate hollering for help, the sort of sound a zebra might make as the lions bring it down." Frump also employs a staccato, ersatz Hemingway tempo that quickly grows old: "The flames did not care. The steel did not care. Most particularly, the ocean did not care." While Cusick's struggle is noble, it is overshadowed and rendered ineffective by such histrionics.