Into The Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, And The Sinking of El Faro, Slade - B

                                                      On the evening of September 29, 2015, the forty-year old cargo ship, El Faro, sailed from Jacksonville with a crew of 33.  On the first of October, the US government's hydrophones heard an enormous thud as the ship hit the bottom three miles down. Hurricane Joaquin sank the ship just off the Bahamas as it was on the way to Puerto Rico. The National Hurricane Center had had a difficult time predicting the path of what had been Tropical Depression 11, as it was "weak, meandering and dispersed." Nonetheless, it was a full-fledged hurricane on the 30th and the captain of the ship felt he could steer a course to within 65 miles of the eye. The NHC stumbled tracking the storm and the information making it to El Faro's antiquated printer was hours old or just inaccurate. The private tracking system that the company used was often as much as nine hours late and it relied on the information reported by the government's agencies.  Heading right at the storm continued to be the captain's game plan. The ship was antiquated, the crew inexperienced and unhappy, and most importantly, the captain wasn't very good. He feared for his job in a company that was poorly managed and cutting costs and people left and right. He felt he had to get to Puerto Rico on time and only reluctantly made a modest course adjustment on the evening of the 30th. The captain  ignored the crew's reports and plowed ahead into what he called a low. Just before dawn, the ship listed because it had taken on water and it lost propulsion when the propeller lubrication system failed.  Cargo smashing into the hull caused a significant breach and  flooding. At 7:13 AM, the El Faro activated it's satellite alarm. Approximately twenty minutes later, she went down.
                                                      The search and rescue operation was hindered by the storm, and on day three, Coast Guard pilots saw two debris fields in the water. The El Faro was lost and a full scale Coast Guard and NTSB investigation ensued. US flag carriers of the size of El Faro do not sail into hurricanes and sink. It was the largest loss of life on a US ship since WWII. The voice data recorder (black box) was needed. The ship itself was found on Oct. 31.  At the hearings held at that time, the ship's owner, Tote, adamantly insisted on the correctness of all their maritime procedures, inspections, and personnel policies. In August of 2016, the NTSB recovered  the recorder and which contained the final 26 hours of the El Faro. The final report placed the lion's share of the blame on Captain Davidson. The ship's outdated design that was pushed beyond it's capabilities and Tote's management failures contributed. It certainly appears as if the owners and mangers of the ship allowed a man with limited skills and unlimited hubris to drive 33 people to Davy Jones' locker.

Disappointment River: Finding and Losing The Northwest Passage, Castner - B -

                                                      "From the moment Christopher Columbus realized that he had stumbled on a new continent, rather than China, there was always a tension, among European explorers, between exploiting the riches of the New World and finding a route around it." By the late 18th century, a passage north of Canada was understood to be hopeless. But the trappers and furriers of what had been New France had moved west to the Great Lakes and beyond. At the annual rendezvous at Lake Superior, the managers of the North West Company had heard of a great river heading west from the Great Slave Lake, and in 1788 chose their youngest partner, twenty-six-year old Alexander Mackenzie, to find it. If a passage to the western ocean could be found, it would mean having direct access to the Far East, a vast market for the beaver furs that were desired around the world. From Superior, his small group traveled northwest and reached* Lake Winnipeg. They wintered on the shores of Lac-Ile-a-la-Crosse in the middle of what is now Saskatchewan. The winter was harsh and they did not venture back onto the water until June, 1789. Within a few weeks, they reached the Great Slave Lake, a massive body of water that was still iced over. After a week of waiting, they travelled to the north shore and eventually found the mouth of the river that began to course to the north and west. On open waters, canoers were able to travel 40-50 miles per day. On and on they went, further north than any white men had ever gone. Eventually, they passed through the forested lands they knew, and entered a flatter, barren place without beaver, and Mackenzie realized they were headed to the Arctic and not the Pacific. His sextant calculations confirmed they were above the Arctic Circle, but he powered on to the end. When the Deh Cho River entered the Arctic, Mackenzie could see the ice that blocked the way to the west. His search for the Northwest passage had failed. In his journal, he entered "a voyage down River Disappointment." That said, he had descended the second longest river in North America and the longest in Canada. The river had flowed just over a thousand miles from the Great Slave Lake to the sea. They were well over 2,000 miles from Lake Superior, their starting point the previous summer. Mackenzie later received fame, fortune and a knighthood for transversing the continent a dozen years before Lewis and Clark. The Deh Cho is called the Mackenzie River today.


*I am befuddled by endless portaging, which does not seem to me to presage a route to Asia.

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and The Remaking Of Civilization, Goodell - B

                                                      "Sea-level rise is one of the central facts of our time, as real as gravity. It will change our world in ways most of us can only dimly imagine." Sea levels are categorically rising and did by six inches in the last century. Scientists are uncertain of how fast they will rise but are 100% certain that they will. The rise by the end of this century could easily be three feet and 145 million people live three feet or less above current levels. Many scientists feel it could be seven or eight feet. There are two ground zeros for upcoming woes. Greenland, whose glaciers if fully melted could add twenty-two feet to our oceans. All of the ice in Antarctica could add over two hundred feet. Because the Arctic is warming quickly, the issue in Greenland is surface melting. Whereas in Antarctica, it is quite cold still, but the warming oceans are melting the glaciers in the seas from below.
                                                         Cities by oceans are obviously at risk and in particular, Miami, which is woefully unprepared. A seven foot rise would submerge the majority of the city. Because it is a real estate boom/bust locale and tourist mecca with substantial foreign monies flowing in, there are no institutions looking long term. Additionally, the state's tax money is sparse and only comes from real estate taxes, which will only decline when the onslaught begins. The author refers to owning property on the coast as real estate Russian roulette. Another threatened city is Venice. Founded on, surrounded by and protected by water, it is only 2-3 feet above sea level. After fifty years and $6B, the MOSE system of floating barriers is still not operational and is only designed to protect Venice from about a two foot surge above normal levels in the Adriatic. It's hard to find any reason to be optimistic about the city's future. It is not just other coastal cities, like New York, but also the worlds largest air force and naval bases on the US east coast that face being inundated. Indeed the entire east coast from Florida to New York is at risk and the only thing the author can anticipate working is retreat.
                                                           This is a well-written and researched but absolutely frightening book.

Only Killers and Thieves, Howarth - B+

                                                      This is an absolutely fascinating western novel with ranchers, drought, frontier murders, vigilante justice and an extreme antipathy for the natives. Except it's set in Oueensland, Australia in the 1880's. There is an atrocity at the Mckenzie ranch while the teenage boys are out on the range. Billy and Tommy team up with their much hated neighbor, John Sullivan, call in the Native Police and go off to find the blacks who committed the crime. Nobody really knows who committed the crime, but an assumption is all they need. Of course, assumptions are seldom correct and Tommy exacts the appropriate revenge in due course. This is a very fine book, written by an Englishman who lived in Australia for a few years. I'm not sure if he intentionally draws the parallels, but the similarities between the Australian and American frontiers are uncanny. I can't recommend this enough.