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Trawler: A Journey Through the North Atlantic
Having survived Borneo, Amazonia, and the Congo, the indefatigable Redmond O’Hanlon sets off on his next his own perfect storm, in the wild waters off the northern tip of Scotland. Equipped with a fancy Nikon, an excessive supply of socks, and no seamanship whatsoever, O’Hanlon joins the commercial fishing crew of the Norlantean , a deep-sea trawler, to stock a bottomless hull with their catch, even as a hurricane roars around them. Rich in oceanography, marine biology, and uproarious humor, Trawle r is Redmond O’Hanlon at his finest.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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557 people want to read
About the author
Redmond O'Hanlon
35Ìýbooks110ÌýfollowersRedmond O'Hanlon is a British author, born in 1947. Mr. O'Hanlon has become known for his journeys into some of the most remote jungles of the world, in Borneo, the Amazon basin and Congo. He has also written a harrowing account of a trip to the North Atlantic on a trawler.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
December 30, 2016
This is the strangest of travel books: There are no views. It all takes place aboard a trawler from Scrabster that, alone of the Scottish fishing fleet, goes into the North Atlantic in January in the teeth of a Force 12 Hurricane. Author pays fifty pounds a day for the privilege of assisting marine biologist Luke Bullough with his fish research and, whenever possible, gutting fish.
is perhaps less about travel than about the strange lives of trawler fishermen who get as little as three hours of sleep a night and become talkative and manic as they are deprived of their rest.
The conversations between the author and Luke are interesting, but probably more interesting is how the crew interact with one another under extreme stress. The real travel here is within the human mind and emotions.
This is a fascinating, one-of-a-kind book that deserves to be read.
is perhaps less about travel than about the strange lives of trawler fishermen who get as little as three hours of sleep a night and become talkative and manic as they are deprived of their rest.
The conversations between the author and Luke are interesting, but probably more interesting is how the crew interact with one another under extreme stress. The real travel here is within the human mind and emotions.
This is a fascinating, one-of-a-kind book that deserves to be read.
April 26, 2012
About a decade ago, I read Bill Bryon's A Walk in the Woods, a type of book I suppose I had never imagined existed: it was clever, funny, well-written, and loosely categorized as travel literature, a genre I had never heard of. I read other Bryson travel narratives and a few of his interviews. When asked, during one discussion, which writers he admired, the Des Moines, Iowa-born writer replied Jonathan Raban, Paul Theroux, and Redmond O'Hanlon. The interviewer told the interviewee his writing reminded him of O'Hanlon's and Bryson answered with something like, "Aw shucks."
I went on to read one book by Jonathan Raban and several by Paul Theroux (the godfather of travel literature, surely), but didn't get around to Redmond O'Hanlon until recently. I suppose I should have begun with one of his more famous books, like Into the Heart of Borneo, In Trouble Again, or Congo Journey, but I found Trawler staring at me from a bookstore shelf one day not long after I had thought a good idea for a story would be to go out on a lobster boat in Eastern Canada and write about it. O'Hanlon has saved me the trouble.
I've never read anything like Trawler before. It is highly unique, and for that reason alone it deserves praise. Redmond O'Hanlon, an Oxford-educated academic, joins a Scottish fishing trawler from Aberdeen as it sails into the North Atlantic to go about its business. Yes, there are predictably humourous bits about the author getting seasick and banging his head on things and not being able to get his sea-legs, but this is not an account of a stodgy, over-educated Englishman and his laugh-a-minute travails aboard a working vessel staffed by a no-nonsense, unforgiving Scottish crew. It is more like a running dialogue; like one long, 340-page conversation with a somewhat no-nonsense, occasionally forgiving, extremely brave, superstitious, rather desperate, astonishingly knowledgeable, and slightly mad Scottish crew - members of which are both gracious and hostile, sometimes within the span of seconds.
O'Hanlon provides very little commentary, something I've never seen a travel writer do. Instead, he focuses on relaying what happens and what's said, and if that sounds boring, it isn't, because the experiences and discussions are so authentic and so convincing you feel like you're onboard. When O'Hanlon is gutting fish with his tattered gloves in the fish room, listening to Luke explain how a hagfish evolved and what its defensive mechanism is, with tangents about love, life, hope, and fear, the narrative is oddly moving, mysteriously compelling. To say O'Hanlon has an ear for dialogue doesn't quite capture his talent. Perhaps the author has a photographic memory (my first guess), or maybe there were whole days where he mainly took notes and didn't mention this in his book, or he might have been recording the conversations, or I suppose he could have made much of it up - only the conversations are extraordinary, banal, weird, normal, angry, friendly, asinine, and brilliant. Many are not the type of conversations one would make up. O'Hanlon sometimes says incredibly daft things or rambles (because he's out of his element, because he's sleep deprived, because he's a bookish nerd), which he immediately regrets, yet he records his statements and the responses anyway. Again, it's all so real, and that's what makes it all so strangely riveting. What of interest happens on a Scottish fishing boat? Well, just about everything if presented correctly. There's no gloss, no sheen, no special effects -Trawler is like highly literary investigative journalism, with wonderful vernacular and lots of explanations about natural science and ocean life.
Because the account is exceedingly realistic, there are lots of disturbing bits (trawlermen tend to verbally abuse each other when they haven't had any sleep in four days; and they tend to be unforgiving toward know-nothing landlubbers), but there are also plenty of deeply funny parts, and in addition to being unpredictable (how would you know when one of the crew is going to say something off-the-charts bizarre?) the humour is situational and fantastically awkward. British, in other words.
One part that really got me, that completely had me in stitches, had to do with O'Hanlon's wanting to see a Force 12 hurricane. Apparently, he sort of requested or expressed a wish to see a fierce storm, asking to be woken up if he should be asleep when one occurred. One day he is woken up and sent to the bridge. Presumably, he thinks the skipper, Jason, is going to provide an overview of how a vessel like the Norlantean operates in a tempest. On deck, O'Hanlon is buckled into the First Mate's chair. Jason greets him:
"Good evening, Redmond. Welcome to my bridge."
"Jason," I said, "yeah, good evening. But is this it? Is this a Force 12?"
"Aye," he said, not looking at me. "Maybe. Maybe not. Who cares? Only you! But I'll tell you this, Redmond. In my opinion, and please, feel free to disagree, I'd say it's a stormy, stormy night."
"Jeesus Jason," I said, turning on him, for some reason, with real aggression (and holding tight with both hands to the arms of the chair, despite my chest-harness), "don't you sleep? How can you do this?"
(Jason explains that he sleeps at home and that here he's the ever-alert captain, responsible for everything, before lecturing Redmond on what was wrong with his generation and how it glorified and ruined dope.)
"When you were young, your kicks, real kicks, what were they? Jeesus, you sad old fucks, you lot who thought you were going to change the world (save us!) - you beatniks, hippies, flower-power jerk-offs, gentle layabouts, whatever you called yourselves, what did you really do? Books, fine, I'll give you that. You loved books, and that was great. And you loved your music. But give me a break, look, so what? The fucking sparrows love their music. So you gave up and lay around and smoked dope or cannabis or hashish or gear or grass or hemp in spliffs or joints or whatever you chose to call it - all those words! Worse than winos! And that's right, shit, I remember, that's the word, you smoked shit, in a mental world of hippie shite, real shite, and in the least aggressive possible way you fucked up your own lives, and you took away the motivation for your children. And free love! Spare us! So it was all cool, man, to leave a chick and hang out with another. Except, fuck you, one of those chicks happened to be my mother. Yes, my mother! And to me, not to you, a mother is a serious business. And if you leave her, you ought to be shot!"
"Jason, hang on, what are you talking about? I thought you'd been here for ever. I thought your great-to-the-nth grandfather swam ashore from the Armada..."
"You know what I think? I think there's nothing bad in itself about dope. Not in itself. Of course it does less harm than alcohol. Of course it should be legal. It's piss-nonsense. But you people, you, my dad, the old UK hippies - you invested that shite with wisdom. Just because it made you feel good. A herbal ga-ga tranquilizer. It's a plant, for Chrissake! Harmless. A couple of dreamy relax-me pills. No more, no less. And you made a fucking religion out of it!"
"Jason, hold on. Please - tell me about your dad, tell me about your mother."
"My mother? She's a Costello. Spanish. She was a great beauty in her time. Still is. And one of her very first boyfriends was John Lennon."
"Christ."
And on and on it goes - one conversation blends into another and into another.... It takes a bit of getting used to, but I would say by page 30, you ought to be hooked. Trawler is more than a simulated jaunt on a fishing boat, more than a documentary in print. It's a commentary on the wonders, dangers, and absurdities of life.
Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World
I went on to read one book by Jonathan Raban and several by Paul Theroux (the godfather of travel literature, surely), but didn't get around to Redmond O'Hanlon until recently. I suppose I should have begun with one of his more famous books, like Into the Heart of Borneo, In Trouble Again, or Congo Journey, but I found Trawler staring at me from a bookstore shelf one day not long after I had thought a good idea for a story would be to go out on a lobster boat in Eastern Canada and write about it. O'Hanlon has saved me the trouble.
I've never read anything like Trawler before. It is highly unique, and for that reason alone it deserves praise. Redmond O'Hanlon, an Oxford-educated academic, joins a Scottish fishing trawler from Aberdeen as it sails into the North Atlantic to go about its business. Yes, there are predictably humourous bits about the author getting seasick and banging his head on things and not being able to get his sea-legs, but this is not an account of a stodgy, over-educated Englishman and his laugh-a-minute travails aboard a working vessel staffed by a no-nonsense, unforgiving Scottish crew. It is more like a running dialogue; like one long, 340-page conversation with a somewhat no-nonsense, occasionally forgiving, extremely brave, superstitious, rather desperate, astonishingly knowledgeable, and slightly mad Scottish crew - members of which are both gracious and hostile, sometimes within the span of seconds.
O'Hanlon provides very little commentary, something I've never seen a travel writer do. Instead, he focuses on relaying what happens and what's said, and if that sounds boring, it isn't, because the experiences and discussions are so authentic and so convincing you feel like you're onboard. When O'Hanlon is gutting fish with his tattered gloves in the fish room, listening to Luke explain how a hagfish evolved and what its defensive mechanism is, with tangents about love, life, hope, and fear, the narrative is oddly moving, mysteriously compelling. To say O'Hanlon has an ear for dialogue doesn't quite capture his talent. Perhaps the author has a photographic memory (my first guess), or maybe there were whole days where he mainly took notes and didn't mention this in his book, or he might have been recording the conversations, or I suppose he could have made much of it up - only the conversations are extraordinary, banal, weird, normal, angry, friendly, asinine, and brilliant. Many are not the type of conversations one would make up. O'Hanlon sometimes says incredibly daft things or rambles (because he's out of his element, because he's sleep deprived, because he's a bookish nerd), which he immediately regrets, yet he records his statements and the responses anyway. Again, it's all so real, and that's what makes it all so strangely riveting. What of interest happens on a Scottish fishing boat? Well, just about everything if presented correctly. There's no gloss, no sheen, no special effects -Trawler is like highly literary investigative journalism, with wonderful vernacular and lots of explanations about natural science and ocean life.
Because the account is exceedingly realistic, there are lots of disturbing bits (trawlermen tend to verbally abuse each other when they haven't had any sleep in four days; and they tend to be unforgiving toward know-nothing landlubbers), but there are also plenty of deeply funny parts, and in addition to being unpredictable (how would you know when one of the crew is going to say something off-the-charts bizarre?) the humour is situational and fantastically awkward. British, in other words.
One part that really got me, that completely had me in stitches, had to do with O'Hanlon's wanting to see a Force 12 hurricane. Apparently, he sort of requested or expressed a wish to see a fierce storm, asking to be woken up if he should be asleep when one occurred. One day he is woken up and sent to the bridge. Presumably, he thinks the skipper, Jason, is going to provide an overview of how a vessel like the Norlantean operates in a tempest. On deck, O'Hanlon is buckled into the First Mate's chair. Jason greets him:
"Good evening, Redmond. Welcome to my bridge."
"Jason," I said, "yeah, good evening. But is this it? Is this a Force 12?"
"Aye," he said, not looking at me. "Maybe. Maybe not. Who cares? Only you! But I'll tell you this, Redmond. In my opinion, and please, feel free to disagree, I'd say it's a stormy, stormy night."
"Jeesus Jason," I said, turning on him, for some reason, with real aggression (and holding tight with both hands to the arms of the chair, despite my chest-harness), "don't you sleep? How can you do this?"
(Jason explains that he sleeps at home and that here he's the ever-alert captain, responsible for everything, before lecturing Redmond on what was wrong with his generation and how it glorified and ruined dope.)
"When you were young, your kicks, real kicks, what were they? Jeesus, you sad old fucks, you lot who thought you were going to change the world (save us!) - you beatniks, hippies, flower-power jerk-offs, gentle layabouts, whatever you called yourselves, what did you really do? Books, fine, I'll give you that. You loved books, and that was great. And you loved your music. But give me a break, look, so what? The fucking sparrows love their music. So you gave up and lay around and smoked dope or cannabis or hashish or gear or grass or hemp in spliffs or joints or whatever you chose to call it - all those words! Worse than winos! And that's right, shit, I remember, that's the word, you smoked shit, in a mental world of hippie shite, real shite, and in the least aggressive possible way you fucked up your own lives, and you took away the motivation for your children. And free love! Spare us! So it was all cool, man, to leave a chick and hang out with another. Except, fuck you, one of those chicks happened to be my mother. Yes, my mother! And to me, not to you, a mother is a serious business. And if you leave her, you ought to be shot!"
"Jason, hang on, what are you talking about? I thought you'd been here for ever. I thought your great-to-the-nth grandfather swam ashore from the Armada..."
"You know what I think? I think there's nothing bad in itself about dope. Not in itself. Of course it does less harm than alcohol. Of course it should be legal. It's piss-nonsense. But you people, you, my dad, the old UK hippies - you invested that shite with wisdom. Just because it made you feel good. A herbal ga-ga tranquilizer. It's a plant, for Chrissake! Harmless. A couple of dreamy relax-me pills. No more, no less. And you made a fucking religion out of it!"
"Jason, hold on. Please - tell me about your dad, tell me about your mother."
"My mother? She's a Costello. Spanish. She was a great beauty in her time. Still is. And one of her very first boyfriends was John Lennon."
"Christ."
And on and on it goes - one conversation blends into another and into another.... It takes a bit of getting used to, but I would say by page 30, you ought to be hooked. Trawler is more than a simulated jaunt on a fishing boat, more than a documentary in print. It's a commentary on the wonders, dangers, and absurdities of life.
Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World
March 12, 2025
I have had to think long and hard about what to do with rating and reviewing this one. I finished it and I did not hate it, so definitely more than one star. It had some real, significant problems as a book and I was more often mystified and lost, while reading, than engaged and enjoying myself, so definitely not three stars. At the end of the day, it is pretty well written, so it maybe should nudge it's way over the three star mark, but on the other hand, I spent a lot of time skim reading.
What was this book really about, I kept asking myself. As for the reading experience, I just can't even...
The book I thought I was buying, was as the title and subtitle say: Trawler, a journey through the North Atlantic. And, yes, the author got on a trawler, the Norlantean, sailing out of Stromness in the Orkney Islands and I was wildly excited by this. I love reading marine based books, am interested in trawlers, fishing industries and fish, having done a marine biology degree. I am very interested in the Orkneys and the other northern island groups because they are so remote, I may never get to visit them and not a lot has really been written about them. All that, triple it for North sea trawlers and the fish they bring up! If you are not in the industry it is hard to hear about this sort of stuff. I was super excited to find a book about it. Or rather, I should say, a book I thought was going to be about it.
The author is 'acclaimed travel-writer and expert natural historian' the back tells me, but I think on the whole that this author who I had never before read, is just really, really not for me. I see he mostly writes about the Congo, maybe marine stuff is just not his metier.
To my way of thinking the book lacked structure, it certainly lacked natural history and much information about the Trawler, the fishing industry and the fish it brings up. So, basically, it lacked most of the things I was interested in. It did have many humorous depictions of the author being seasick, lacking sea legs, being incompetent on the trawler and generally self depreciating to the max. I assume it is self depreciation and not an actual depiction, as had it been accurate I doubt the author would have survived. It also had pages and pages of weird rants, but more on that later.
Let me start with the lack of structure. The author somehow got the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen (affiliated with a university perhaps?) to hook him up with a biologist named Luke, working on his Phd through trawler catches. This could have been an interesting element, but it was not really addressed and though we hear this on one the first pages, where Luke is trying to bundle the author on to the Norlantean, we never learn much more about the laboratory, Luke's Phd or the backstory. Once on the Trawler, we learn a bit about the crew, conditions of work, the fisheries regulations and the practices. I quite liked all of that but you had to filter it through a lot of other junk.
There is a dearth of information about the trawler: A little is given in the first few chapters about the trawler, other similar trawlers, the culture an so on. Basically all the things I was pretty interested in all got completely bypassed in favour of making humorous observations about the authors behaviour. Seasickness is a time honoured source of humour after all, but I was over it before it even begun.
Apparently the author is chasing the chance to be at sea in a Force 12 storm. Why? Who knows, it seems to be a bit of a fixation of his, but I don't know why. More to the point, this lack of explanation, this refusal to expand on details (like why he wanted a Force 12) are very typical of this book. It very much fails to create any framework for the reader to follow.
The writing style is not for me either: described as 'humorous' and 'compulsively readable' I have to say that for me it was far more cringe-worthy than funny. Some of the descriptions of fish were cute and occasionally lyrical but these good bits were the exception, cringe was far more common and any good bit descended into rant too swiftly to give me a chance to enjoy the writing. Far from compulsively readable, by the half way mark, I had to resort to skim reading through the peculiar rants to get to the all too brief good bits. I had to resort to google to get any information at all about the fish or ecology. Also, in the first few chapters I had issues with the fact that every time someone talks to the author they use his name Redmond, Redmond, Redmond... up to five times a page (I counted, I was bored, so sue me...). Do people really talk like this? Was it an effort to capture the accent and speaking mannerisms of an Orkney man? Or was it an attempt to boost the word count? I don't know, but it never let up and it was annoying.
Let me just mention; this book is 339 pages of which the majority, BY FAR the majority is a weird, rant, stream of consciousness writing style about an awful lot of things. Sometimes by the author... sometimes by Luke... sometimes by any other member of the crew; but all equally random and meaningless. Many of these rants contain things that might in themselves be interesting; weird, odd and random facts, but they very rarely have anything to do with Trawlers, fish, fishing or any other topic that this book purports to be about. The Congo features often, perhaps Redmond should have just stuck to the Congo. There is also an obsession with alpha males. Whatever.
Now, why the author, a naturalist, chose to give us so little information about all that fascinating life that comes up in deep sea trawlers, I don't know!
Why he barely describes the North sea and it's storms, when he was so keen to embark upon it I don't understand!
However toward the end I did get some glimmer of insight as to what all the long, boring, annoying rants might be about. The author invests quite some time and effort into describing the crew and their lives and their positions on the trawler, that part is extensive. While I found it repetitious, it was at times pretty interesting to hear about these background, even though I would have preferred more about quotas, science and fish - I am probably an outlier. I felt all this 'up close and personal' stuff was to snag the interest of popular readers who were less interested in Trawlers and fishing.
At one point in the later part of the book, one of the crew said that their hope is that the book which I was reading will be able to describe from the inside, what it is like to be out at sea, with the hard work and sleep deprivation. One man suggests that they would like it to be something they can give to their women onshore that will give them insight into what working a trawler is like. (Because, apparently, they can't tell them themselves and of course women never go to sea so they can't find out for themselves... UGH). Ok, yes the sexism is as rampant as the superstition in this book, but I am willing to suspend disbelief and say it is an accurate depiction of the culture as represented to the author at the time.
Now, if that is the case, then all the pages of random rants and bs make sense. The author might be trying to represent the effects of sleep deprivation and the brain fog that it causes. That might be what all the blokey bloke behaviour and pages and pages of random crap are meant to be about. If so, I rather think it failed because I can't see any sensible, matter of fact woman reading all those pages and pages of stream of consciousness with any patience at all.
Not a bad concept for a book. In it's own way I guess it has good writing. Not what I thought it would be, though, not at all and that writing, to me, was neither good nor enjoyable.
What was this book really about, I kept asking myself. As for the reading experience, I just can't even...
The book I thought I was buying, was as the title and subtitle say: Trawler, a journey through the North Atlantic. And, yes, the author got on a trawler, the Norlantean, sailing out of Stromness in the Orkney Islands and I was wildly excited by this. I love reading marine based books, am interested in trawlers, fishing industries and fish, having done a marine biology degree. I am very interested in the Orkneys and the other northern island groups because they are so remote, I may never get to visit them and not a lot has really been written about them. All that, triple it for North sea trawlers and the fish they bring up! If you are not in the industry it is hard to hear about this sort of stuff. I was super excited to find a book about it. Or rather, I should say, a book I thought was going to be about it.
The author is 'acclaimed travel-writer and expert natural historian' the back tells me, but I think on the whole that this author who I had never before read, is just really, really not for me. I see he mostly writes about the Congo, maybe marine stuff is just not his metier.
To my way of thinking the book lacked structure, it certainly lacked natural history and much information about the Trawler, the fishing industry and the fish it brings up. So, basically, it lacked most of the things I was interested in. It did have many humorous depictions of the author being seasick, lacking sea legs, being incompetent on the trawler and generally self depreciating to the max. I assume it is self depreciation and not an actual depiction, as had it been accurate I doubt the author would have survived. It also had pages and pages of weird rants, but more on that later.
Let me start with the lack of structure. The author somehow got the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen (affiliated with a university perhaps?) to hook him up with a biologist named Luke, working on his Phd through trawler catches. This could have been an interesting element, but it was not really addressed and though we hear this on one the first pages, where Luke is trying to bundle the author on to the Norlantean, we never learn much more about the laboratory, Luke's Phd or the backstory. Once on the Trawler, we learn a bit about the crew, conditions of work, the fisheries regulations and the practices. I quite liked all of that but you had to filter it through a lot of other junk.
There is a dearth of information about the trawler: A little is given in the first few chapters about the trawler, other similar trawlers, the culture an so on. Basically all the things I was pretty interested in all got completely bypassed in favour of making humorous observations about the authors behaviour. Seasickness is a time honoured source of humour after all, but I was over it before it even begun.
Apparently the author is chasing the chance to be at sea in a Force 12 storm. Why? Who knows, it seems to be a bit of a fixation of his, but I don't know why. More to the point, this lack of explanation, this refusal to expand on details (like why he wanted a Force 12) are very typical of this book. It very much fails to create any framework for the reader to follow.
The writing style is not for me either: described as 'humorous' and 'compulsively readable' I have to say that for me it was far more cringe-worthy than funny. Some of the descriptions of fish were cute and occasionally lyrical but these good bits were the exception, cringe was far more common and any good bit descended into rant too swiftly to give me a chance to enjoy the writing. Far from compulsively readable, by the half way mark, I had to resort to skim reading through the peculiar rants to get to the all too brief good bits. I had to resort to google to get any information at all about the fish or ecology. Also, in the first few chapters I had issues with the fact that every time someone talks to the author they use his name Redmond, Redmond, Redmond... up to five times a page (I counted, I was bored, so sue me...). Do people really talk like this? Was it an effort to capture the accent and speaking mannerisms of an Orkney man? Or was it an attempt to boost the word count? I don't know, but it never let up and it was annoying.
Let me just mention; this book is 339 pages of which the majority, BY FAR the majority is a weird, rant, stream of consciousness writing style about an awful lot of things. Sometimes by the author... sometimes by Luke... sometimes by any other member of the crew; but all equally random and meaningless. Many of these rants contain things that might in themselves be interesting; weird, odd and random facts, but they very rarely have anything to do with Trawlers, fish, fishing or any other topic that this book purports to be about. The Congo features often, perhaps Redmond should have just stuck to the Congo. There is also an obsession with alpha males. Whatever.
Now, why the author, a naturalist, chose to give us so little information about all that fascinating life that comes up in deep sea trawlers, I don't know!
Why he barely describes the North sea and it's storms, when he was so keen to embark upon it I don't understand!
However toward the end I did get some glimmer of insight as to what all the long, boring, annoying rants might be about. The author invests quite some time and effort into describing the crew and their lives and their positions on the trawler, that part is extensive. While I found it repetitious, it was at times pretty interesting to hear about these background, even though I would have preferred more about quotas, science and fish - I am probably an outlier. I felt all this 'up close and personal' stuff was to snag the interest of popular readers who were less interested in Trawlers and fishing.
At one point in the later part of the book, one of the crew said that their hope is that the book which I was reading will be able to describe from the inside, what it is like to be out at sea, with the hard work and sleep deprivation. One man suggests that they would like it to be something they can give to their women onshore that will give them insight into what working a trawler is like. (Because, apparently, they can't tell them themselves and of course women never go to sea so they can't find out for themselves... UGH). Ok, yes the sexism is as rampant as the superstition in this book, but I am willing to suspend disbelief and say it is an accurate depiction of the culture as represented to the author at the time.
Now, if that is the case, then all the pages of random rants and bs make sense. The author might be trying to represent the effects of sleep deprivation and the brain fog that it causes. That might be what all the blokey bloke behaviour and pages and pages of random crap are meant to be about. If so, I rather think it failed because I can't see any sensible, matter of fact woman reading all those pages and pages of stream of consciousness with any patience at all.
Not a bad concept for a book. In it's own way I guess it has good writing. Not what I thought it would be, though, not at all and that writing, to me, was neither good nor enjoyable.
December 4, 2020
My grandfather was a trawlerman, or deep-sea fisherman as they were called then, in the generation before the boat that Redmond O'Hanlon went on. The book gave me a new appreciation and understanding of his work. He died when I was young, so I never heard much personally from him about how it was. The boats were quite different, I don't suppose they fished through the night with the equipment they had then and I think the fish were gutted after they were landed.
The photo is of the 'Lord Birkenhead', a trawler he worked on.
.
In his younger days he even worked on a whaler and later he was a skipper, according to my mother the youngest skipper in the Grimsby fishing fleet.
I wonder if he was a tough as the fishermen O'Hanlon writes about. Even if he didn't have to work the long hours, I expect the ship was less stable and more primitive that a modern trawler. He was away for weeks at a time, frequently fishing near Iceland. Apparently he could splice a rope so that you couldn't see the join; I wonder if today's fishermen still have that skill.
Turing to Trawler. O'Hanlon writes very entertainingly and brings across his enthusiasm for natural history in an interesting and engaging manner. I enjoyed all the descriptions of the weird and wonderful fish dragged up from the depths and the stories about the biology and evolution. What was less enjoyable was the long recounting of the dialogues that they had when they were all sleep-deprived. It reads rather like a drunken ramble, which I suppose is the point, but I do wish that his editor had made him cut it a bit shorter. O'Hanlon's opinion on women as objects to be hunted are perhaps amusing the first time round, but when he goes on and on about it for page after page, I did wish he would shut up and get back to the fish. This is caused in part by the lack of a plot to the narrative. Normally with a journey this goes a bit by itself, but in this case, once they are on the ship they are in an enclosed world where the route makes little difference. There is a promising map at the beginning, but in the story itself the location of the trawler from one section (there are no chapters, oddly) to the next, makes little difference.
In summary, enjoyable fish stories, fascinating to discover about the working conditions and culture of the fishermen, but a bit heavier editing on the sleep-deprived ramblings would have been welcome.
The photo is of the 'Lord Birkenhead', a trawler he worked on.
.In his younger days he even worked on a whaler and later he was a skipper, according to my mother the youngest skipper in the Grimsby fishing fleet.
I wonder if he was a tough as the fishermen O'Hanlon writes about. Even if he didn't have to work the long hours, I expect the ship was less stable and more primitive that a modern trawler. He was away for weeks at a time, frequently fishing near Iceland. Apparently he could splice a rope so that you couldn't see the join; I wonder if today's fishermen still have that skill.
Turing to Trawler. O'Hanlon writes very entertainingly and brings across his enthusiasm for natural history in an interesting and engaging manner. I enjoyed all the descriptions of the weird and wonderful fish dragged up from the depths and the stories about the biology and evolution. What was less enjoyable was the long recounting of the dialogues that they had when they were all sleep-deprived. It reads rather like a drunken ramble, which I suppose is the point, but I do wish that his editor had made him cut it a bit shorter. O'Hanlon's opinion on women as objects to be hunted are perhaps amusing the first time round, but when he goes on and on about it for page after page, I did wish he would shut up and get back to the fish. This is caused in part by the lack of a plot to the narrative. Normally with a journey this goes a bit by itself, but in this case, once they are on the ship they are in an enclosed world where the route makes little difference. There is a promising map at the beginning, but in the story itself the location of the trawler from one section (there are no chapters, oddly) to the next, makes little difference.
In summary, enjoyable fish stories, fascinating to discover about the working conditions and culture of the fishermen, but a bit heavier editing on the sleep-deprived ramblings would have been welcome.
May 15, 2011
Trawler is the book I read the last from O'Hanlon, but did not really like.
No journey through the jungle or Amazon-river but Redmond reports from a trawler, on the Atlantic Ocean.
Even though O'Hanlon's writing-style is good and with the familiar humour within, this book is too much about fish.
The descriptions of the very hard work, his efforts and the tireness after, were absolutely imaginable.
But it is fish,fish,fish and fish. I know almost nothing about fish, but I can't really care about it either. It was too repeating..
When you are interested in fish, or working at sea on a fishing boat, than you will love it.
Not bad, but not for me.
No journey through the jungle or Amazon-river but Redmond reports from a trawler, on the Atlantic Ocean.
Even though O'Hanlon's writing-style is good and with the familiar humour within, this book is too much about fish.
The descriptions of the very hard work, his efforts and the tireness after, were absolutely imaginable.
But it is fish,fish,fish and fish. I know almost nothing about fish, but I can't really care about it either. It was too repeating..
When you are interested in fish, or working at sea on a fishing boat, than you will love it.
Not bad, but not for me.
September 22, 2020
Three stars offered out of respect for O'Hanlon's acclaim as one of the most accomplished and esteemed travel writers of his generation, and for the respect of the men aboard the trawler pursuing a demanding living.
I can't say I've enjoyed this book . . . in fact, I've tabled it for now after reading 240 of 340 pages. I need a break. This book struck me as something like Finnegan's Wake at sea.
O'Hanlon joins a Scottish trawler fishing the North Atlantic in January, his passage aboard arranged by a doctoral student LUKE, a brave seaman and experienced trawlerman. Presumably O'Hanlon will assist Luke's species research while also pulling his own weight as a working crew member.
Luke is passionate about species research, and O'Hanlon struggles to keep up with Luke's intense observations of the fish they handle. Luke details the unique qualities of a species while O'Hanlon reflects to the reader all his silent insecurities of his ignorance of both the biology and general seamanship . . . O'Hanlon's meanderings are exhaustive, and I've retained little of what Luke teaches O'Hanlon and the reader.
Life aboard a trawler is difficult and dangerous -- ok, we get it.
O'Hanlon reflects in repeated episodes about how the lack of restful sleep leads them to long, meandering philosophical and existential discussions . . . if I were in a neighboring bunk, I'd ask them to please zip it so we can all get some needed sleep. If these episodes were two or three pages, they'd add color to the story . . . but they carry on for 12 or 15 pages and I found myself skimming to the end, seeking the punch line.
There's little in this book to enrich the reader's understanding of the strategies of commercial fishing, and the profiles of the crew are more caricatures than realistic character studies. I learned more about the practical struggles of this life in one episode of Deadliest Catch than a week spent with this book. I promise to finish the book, but for now I have to put it aside.
I can't say I've enjoyed this book . . . in fact, I've tabled it for now after reading 240 of 340 pages. I need a break. This book struck me as something like Finnegan's Wake at sea.
O'Hanlon joins a Scottish trawler fishing the North Atlantic in January, his passage aboard arranged by a doctoral student LUKE, a brave seaman and experienced trawlerman. Presumably O'Hanlon will assist Luke's species research while also pulling his own weight as a working crew member.
Luke is passionate about species research, and O'Hanlon struggles to keep up with Luke's intense observations of the fish they handle. Luke details the unique qualities of a species while O'Hanlon reflects to the reader all his silent insecurities of his ignorance of both the biology and general seamanship . . . O'Hanlon's meanderings are exhaustive, and I've retained little of what Luke teaches O'Hanlon and the reader.
Life aboard a trawler is difficult and dangerous -- ok, we get it.
O'Hanlon reflects in repeated episodes about how the lack of restful sleep leads them to long, meandering philosophical and existential discussions . . . if I were in a neighboring bunk, I'd ask them to please zip it so we can all get some needed sleep. If these episodes were two or three pages, they'd add color to the story . . . but they carry on for 12 or 15 pages and I found myself skimming to the end, seeking the punch line.
There's little in this book to enrich the reader's understanding of the strategies of commercial fishing, and the profiles of the crew are more caricatures than realistic character studies. I learned more about the practical struggles of this life in one episode of Deadliest Catch than a week spent with this book. I promise to finish the book, but for now I have to put it aside.
November 5, 2018
TRAWLER ~ By REDMOND O’HANLON
.
.
Those who like to eat fish, especially if you belong to the fish-craving Bong community, we Bongs love our fishes and that’s not a secret, requires at least one morsel of fish in our meals. But Hey! You fish lusting maniacs�! Do you ever consider about the fishermen before eating a fish? Do you know about the troubles the #Trawler men had to face each time they go out in a sea or Deep Oceans? .
.
One man did and he went out on a trip for two weeks with the crews of The Norlantean K.508, ’the best focking trawler there is�, whose skipper- Jason, is in two million pounds of debt and has a orphic sense of finding the fishes even in a January force 11 storm in the Atlantics.
.
.
Redmond O’Hanlon, the eccentric British travel writer, according to some men on asking about the author’s knowledge of the sea and trawler life they said ‘he doesn’t know his arse from his tit�, didn’t prepare himself for the ordeal he shoved himself in.
.
.
Sea-sickness, extreme cold weather, a force 11 storm, sleep deprivation and sea monsters caught in the nets turned his adventure into a long nightmare, yet the author desperately tries to be one with the crew. Amid trawler-man tales, while gutting tones of fishes, O’Hanlon finds a treasure trove of deep sea mysteries.
If adventure is your thing, and I am not talking about #Jacksparrow kind of adventures but perils of real life Atlantic fishing, then this book is a must for you.
.
.
To tickle a little spark of interest in you I have some questions.
1) What is a Rabbit fish? Or wolf fish?
2) Have you ever seen a Monk fish? Or a Lump sucker fish?
3) Do you know what it’s like inside a Force 11 storm at sea?
4) Did you know oceans are so deep that the whole Mount Everest could drown in it and you wouldn’t even notice it? And there are numerous unknown life forms down there, 8 000 meters and more, waiting to be discovered!
.
.
Those who like to eat fish, especially if you belong to the fish-craving Bong community, we Bongs love our fishes and that’s not a secret, requires at least one morsel of fish in our meals. But Hey! You fish lusting maniacs�! Do you ever consider about the fishermen before eating a fish? Do you know about the troubles the #Trawler men had to face each time they go out in a sea or Deep Oceans? .
.
One man did and he went out on a trip for two weeks with the crews of The Norlantean K.508, ’the best focking trawler there is�, whose skipper- Jason, is in two million pounds of debt and has a orphic sense of finding the fishes even in a January force 11 storm in the Atlantics.
.
.
Redmond O’Hanlon, the eccentric British travel writer, according to some men on asking about the author’s knowledge of the sea and trawler life they said ‘he doesn’t know his arse from his tit�, didn’t prepare himself for the ordeal he shoved himself in.
.
.
Sea-sickness, extreme cold weather, a force 11 storm, sleep deprivation and sea monsters caught in the nets turned his adventure into a long nightmare, yet the author desperately tries to be one with the crew. Amid trawler-man tales, while gutting tones of fishes, O’Hanlon finds a treasure trove of deep sea mysteries.
If adventure is your thing, and I am not talking about #Jacksparrow kind of adventures but perils of real life Atlantic fishing, then this book is a must for you.
.
.
To tickle a little spark of interest in you I have some questions.
1) What is a Rabbit fish? Or wolf fish?
2) Have you ever seen a Monk fish? Or a Lump sucker fish?
3) Do you know what it’s like inside a Force 11 storm at sea?
4) Did you know oceans are so deep that the whole Mount Everest could drown in it and you wouldn’t even notice it? And there are numerous unknown life forms down there, 8 000 meters and more, waiting to be discovered!
May 29, 2009
Being the Walter Mitty that I am, I thought it would always be fun to sail through a Force 12 storm (but only on an aircraft carrier or battleship or maybe the QM 2 being also a major chicken). Well, O'Hanlon had the same wish only he wanted to experience it on a fishing trawler in the North Sea. He was invited on the Norlantean by a fishing biologist friend. Jason, the captain, is very good at what he does -- he has to be since he took out a 2,000,000 pound loan to refit the ship. Talk about pressure to perform. Lots of really interesting details such as most of the ocean (99%) remains unexplored and is below 2 km deep. This is a deep trawling vessel so many of the fish that get pulled up are interesting, if not bizarre, something that truly excites O'Hanlon's friend.
O'Hanlon rather vividly describes what it is like to get seasick (no thanks, I remember being seasick - it's a state where you wish you would die, but unfortunately also realize you won't.) Not to mention, the terror of that 1 in 100,000 "lump," what we might call a rogue wave that towers about the normal huge waves in a storm. The crew, in the meantime, during the harsh weather is gutting fish with razor sharp knives.
I would have given this book more stars had he not spent so much time on the idiosyncratic characters. I prefer more detail about the technology and the social and cultural issues faced by the crew.
O'Hanlon rather vividly describes what it is like to get seasick (no thanks, I remember being seasick - it's a state where you wish you would die, but unfortunately also realize you won't.) Not to mention, the terror of that 1 in 100,000 "lump," what we might call a rogue wave that towers about the normal huge waves in a storm. The crew, in the meantime, during the harsh weather is gutting fish with razor sharp knives.
I would have given this book more stars had he not spent so much time on the idiosyncratic characters. I prefer more detail about the technology and the social and cultural issues faced by the crew.
May 24, 2017
Redmond O’Hanlon, a fifty something Oxford educated travel writer and danger junkie, manages to get himself aboard a North Sea trawler for a voyage in search of deep water fish and a force 11 or 12 gale. In January. His mate is his friend Luke Bullough, a young marine biology doctoral candidate and volunteer lifeboat crewman. Luke is a crew member on the trawler with the additional responsibility of weighing, sexing and determining the age of the more unusual creatures that come up in the net as part of his academic research. Redmond’s job is to try not to disgrace himself, to do a fair share of the gutting and weighing, and to document what goes on on the voyage.
The narrative is a manic stream of consciousness account of a harrowing, extremely dangerous and frequently hilarious trip. The sleep deprivation leads the men into ever more bizarre monologues, discussions on the meaning of life, the dangers of the sea, natural history, love, sex and death. And fish of course, and the economics and psychic perils of running a trawler. The descriptions of some of the odder creatures that live in that cold water at that depth are fascinating and unforgettable. I wish there were more pictures, though the drawings and photos that are there are great.
The narrative is a manic stream of consciousness account of a harrowing, extremely dangerous and frequently hilarious trip. The sleep deprivation leads the men into ever more bizarre monologues, discussions on the meaning of life, the dangers of the sea, natural history, love, sex and death. And fish of course, and the economics and psychic perils of running a trawler. The descriptions of some of the odder creatures that live in that cold water at that depth are fascinating and unforgettable. I wish there were more pictures, though the drawings and photos that are there are great.
December 8, 2014
Oh my gosh!
This book is either one of the best written books in the world or it is absolute crap.
To give the author the benefit of the doubt, when I read books by the "greats", such as Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare, I get the same feeling that I got when reading Trawler. That is, what a lot of words talking such absolute crap in such a round-about boring way. So call me a philistine and call Redmond O'Hanlon a truly great writer.
But if you want to read a book that is gripping, easy to read and makes you think then stay well away from this book. You'd do better to watch afternoon TV.
This book is either one of the best written books in the world or it is absolute crap.
To give the author the benefit of the doubt, when I read books by the "greats", such as Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare, I get the same feeling that I got when reading Trawler. That is, what a lot of words talking such absolute crap in such a round-about boring way. So call me a philistine and call Redmond O'Hanlon a truly great writer.
But if you want to read a book that is gripping, easy to read and makes you think then stay well away from this book. You'd do better to watch afternoon TV.
March 5, 2018
This is the latest O'Hanlon book, I think. I've read quite a bit of him, but nothing comes close to his journey into Borneo (that actually inspired me to write my first novel). If you're into fish, than this might be for you, as that's what they're doing--in the middle of a Force 12 hurricane. The dialog sequences are astounding; O'Hanlon can write multiple pages on one conversation. I hate to say it, but it got tedious. I suppose there's only so much you can do on a trawler that doesn't slide into fiction.
May 24, 2009
The Deadlist Catch of books.
June 2, 2023
This book is an account of the fulfilment of naturalist Redmond O’Hanlon’s wish to put to sea in a trawler in a Category 1 Force 12 hurricane to discover something about the wonders of the North-East Atlantic deep. He is accompanied and watched over by Luke Bullough, ‘A biologist at the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen, a member of the Aberdeen lifeboat crew [and] a man with a vast experience of the real sea: as a research diver in Antarctica; as a Fisheries Patrol officer in the Falklands; on trawlers and research ships in the North Atlantic�. His vessel will be the ‘Norlantean�, a trawler converted for deep-sea fishing and skippered by Jason Schofield who is now £2 million in debt.
O’Hanlon is, of course, comprehensively sea-sick, but, having recovered, is fine for the rest of the tempest-tossed voyage and shares in the communal task of gutting and, towards the end, a muscle-busting stint in the fish-room shifting boxes of fish across a floor of pebbled ice. He is also at Luke’s beck and call for the times Luke is doing his academic work studying the rarer fish brought up in the nets because he is Luke’s photographer. In between times, there is a lot of talk among the crew and a lot of information about fish and fishing, the deep sea and deep sea species, geology, the market for fish and lifeboating among other topics. The work is exhausting and everyone is sleep-deprived � it simply goes with the territory of trawling - and there is an interesting passage in which Jason, the skipper, talks about how he keeps going without sleep for so long.
I ought to have loved it all, but was completely thrown by the style O’Hanlon adopts for most of the book. He chooses to present almost everything in dialogue � very often, in fact, an exchange of long monologues � in which information is delivered in what was for me a totally unrealistic representation of the way people speak. This was certainly true for discussions about fish and wider science, but less disaffectingly so for conversations among the crew about personal experience. Nevertheless, as a whole, I felt myself in a desperately long-winded written world where I just wanted at least a little bit of narrative in a style conventionally used for ‘popular science� writing � efficient without being academical in tone and lexis. ‘Cut to the chase� I kept muttering as I skim-read looking for the detail, and then not taking it in anyway because it was couched as swiftly moving chat.
O’Hanlon may have a good excuse for adopting this style: how can he represent the intense wholeness of his experience when he must have been unable to make many or any notes in the way someone intending to write a book would normally do? The text feels unsatisfactorily constructed, neither fish nor fowl, and it’s no good expecting me to grasp what the machinery of trawling is from a single paragraph of unexplained technical terms. So: the style didn’t work for me.
But the book was not without its moments. O’Hanlon appears to be unflinching in his depiction of how a crew get on, of how they reflect upon their own lives, of how they understand and judge each other � and of how they make sense of him whom they nickname Worzel and which Luke assures him as a sign of acceptance: after all, for a man crippled at first by sea-sickness, O’Hanlon never shirks from doing the fish-gutting and fish-box heaving to the best of his ability. The greatest compliment paid him is by Allan Besant, a man who has torn into him - basically for being different - but who then, after that shift in the fish-room, quietly shakes his hand, an acknowledgement of a man who’s taken it on the chin, but has done his inexperienced damnedest to do the work of a seasoned trawlerman half his age.
One of O’Hanlon’s objectives must have been to sing the unstinted praise of the quality of the men who venture out on the sea, whatever the weather. I didn’t feel he was making mealy-mouthed noises about how grateful we should be for trawlermen who bring home our fish, though you can’t but help that thought crossing your mind. (You’d be mean-spirited if it didn’t.) He is much more interested in the crew as individuals with personal qualities, deep-seated motivations, hard-nosed practicality, attachments to family and friends, and a warmth belied by but also enhanced by frankness. They have courage, determination and a joie de vivre that is philosophical in the face of hardship and fearsome conditions, they relish rising to challenges and they look forward to landfall. Above all, they are men doing what men gotta do. They are among the most impressive on the planet.
One small moment of illumination. Luke uses the word ‘lump� to describe waves in heavy seas. The only other place I’ve found it is in George Mackay Brown’s writing, and have always considered it a rather clumsy poetic invention. Evidently not: he’s simply using a commonplace nautical term (OED 4, n1, 4b). Glad to have that sorted.
O’Hanlon is, of course, comprehensively sea-sick, but, having recovered, is fine for the rest of the tempest-tossed voyage and shares in the communal task of gutting and, towards the end, a muscle-busting stint in the fish-room shifting boxes of fish across a floor of pebbled ice. He is also at Luke’s beck and call for the times Luke is doing his academic work studying the rarer fish brought up in the nets because he is Luke’s photographer. In between times, there is a lot of talk among the crew and a lot of information about fish and fishing, the deep sea and deep sea species, geology, the market for fish and lifeboating among other topics. The work is exhausting and everyone is sleep-deprived � it simply goes with the territory of trawling - and there is an interesting passage in which Jason, the skipper, talks about how he keeps going without sleep for so long.
I ought to have loved it all, but was completely thrown by the style O’Hanlon adopts for most of the book. He chooses to present almost everything in dialogue � very often, in fact, an exchange of long monologues � in which information is delivered in what was for me a totally unrealistic representation of the way people speak. This was certainly true for discussions about fish and wider science, but less disaffectingly so for conversations among the crew about personal experience. Nevertheless, as a whole, I felt myself in a desperately long-winded written world where I just wanted at least a little bit of narrative in a style conventionally used for ‘popular science� writing � efficient without being academical in tone and lexis. ‘Cut to the chase� I kept muttering as I skim-read looking for the detail, and then not taking it in anyway because it was couched as swiftly moving chat.
O’Hanlon may have a good excuse for adopting this style: how can he represent the intense wholeness of his experience when he must have been unable to make many or any notes in the way someone intending to write a book would normally do? The text feels unsatisfactorily constructed, neither fish nor fowl, and it’s no good expecting me to grasp what the machinery of trawling is from a single paragraph of unexplained technical terms. So: the style didn’t work for me.
But the book was not without its moments. O’Hanlon appears to be unflinching in his depiction of how a crew get on, of how they reflect upon their own lives, of how they understand and judge each other � and of how they make sense of him whom they nickname Worzel and which Luke assures him as a sign of acceptance: after all, for a man crippled at first by sea-sickness, O’Hanlon never shirks from doing the fish-gutting and fish-box heaving to the best of his ability. The greatest compliment paid him is by Allan Besant, a man who has torn into him - basically for being different - but who then, after that shift in the fish-room, quietly shakes his hand, an acknowledgement of a man who’s taken it on the chin, but has done his inexperienced damnedest to do the work of a seasoned trawlerman half his age.
One of O’Hanlon’s objectives must have been to sing the unstinted praise of the quality of the men who venture out on the sea, whatever the weather. I didn’t feel he was making mealy-mouthed noises about how grateful we should be for trawlermen who bring home our fish, though you can’t but help that thought crossing your mind. (You’d be mean-spirited if it didn’t.) He is much more interested in the crew as individuals with personal qualities, deep-seated motivations, hard-nosed practicality, attachments to family and friends, and a warmth belied by but also enhanced by frankness. They have courage, determination and a joie de vivre that is philosophical in the face of hardship and fearsome conditions, they relish rising to challenges and they look forward to landfall. Above all, they are men doing what men gotta do. They are among the most impressive on the planet.
One small moment of illumination. Luke uses the word ‘lump� to describe waves in heavy seas. The only other place I’ve found it is in George Mackay Brown’s writing, and have always considered it a rather clumsy poetic invention. Evidently not: he’s simply using a commonplace nautical term (OED 4, n1, 4b). Glad to have that sorted.
December 9, 2016
Redmond O'Hanlon is used to hiking through rain forests in the Congo, Borneo or Brazil, but when personal circumstances require him to stay closer to home, he comes up with the idea of writing about the wild places in Britain. Most people would decide that meant hiking in the Pennines or walking the length of the Ridgeway, but to O'Hanlon wild entailed traveling through the North Atlantic. On a deep sea fishing trawler. In January. While a hurricane raged.
Trawlermen are well paid, not just because of the very real dangers they face, but because a fishing trip lasts two or three weeks in which each man will sleep only a handful of hours, while performing dangerous and arduous tasks in very cold weather. O'Hanlon, in his fifties, didn't keep up with the younger men, but he did stretch himself to his limit, gutting fish and packing them in ice alongside the others. He was there to help a graduate student in marine biology working on his dissertation, which made for the most interesting parts of the book. Luke had an exhaustive knowledge of the geography and zoology of the North Atlantic, and his monologues and explanations made for riveting reading. Also compelling were the personal lives of the trawlermen, whose working hours and conditions made it difficult for them to maintain relationships.
The weakness of the book, where it bogged down for me, were when O'Hanlon was monologuing. Extreme exhaustion causes all the men to talk without filters and while the others might go on and on about how working affected their marriages, the wonders of the Wyville Thomson Ridge or the defense mechanisms of the hagfish, this was welcome in a book about the North Atlantic. But O'Hanlon's areas of expertise; native customs of the Congo or famous naturalists he has known, are out of place and took me out of what was going on on the Norlantean. On the other hand, O'Hanlon did a beautiful job of describing what utter exhaustion felt like as well as the fear and violence of a force 12 hurricane.
Trawlermen are well paid, not just because of the very real dangers they face, but because a fishing trip lasts two or three weeks in which each man will sleep only a handful of hours, while performing dangerous and arduous tasks in very cold weather. O'Hanlon, in his fifties, didn't keep up with the younger men, but he did stretch himself to his limit, gutting fish and packing them in ice alongside the others. He was there to help a graduate student in marine biology working on his dissertation, which made for the most interesting parts of the book. Luke had an exhaustive knowledge of the geography and zoology of the North Atlantic, and his monologues and explanations made for riveting reading. Also compelling were the personal lives of the trawlermen, whose working hours and conditions made it difficult for them to maintain relationships.
The weakness of the book, where it bogged down for me, were when O'Hanlon was monologuing. Extreme exhaustion causes all the men to talk without filters and while the others might go on and on about how working affected their marriages, the wonders of the Wyville Thomson Ridge or the defense mechanisms of the hagfish, this was welcome in a book about the North Atlantic. But O'Hanlon's areas of expertise; native customs of the Congo or famous naturalists he has known, are out of place and took me out of what was going on on the Norlantean. On the other hand, O'Hanlon did a beautiful job of describing what utter exhaustion felt like as well as the fear and violence of a force 12 hurricane.
January 17, 2018
"Trawler," by Redmond O'Hanlon. O'Hanlon, a naturalist who has written about treks in the Amazon, the Congo, in Borneo, etc., spends a few days aboard a Scots trawler off the Orkneys in January during storms ranging from Force 9 to Force 12 (hurricane). It's a lunatic adventure---the crew gets literally no sleep for about 10 days. They essentially go nuts, and so does O'Hanlon, who at 52 or so is 20 years older than anyone else on board. And they catch a lot of fish. The writing is a cross between precisely scientific and Ken Kesey. It's all about the unbelievable hardships of life aboard such a trawler, also touching on the lifeboatmen, evolution, creatures below 800 fathoms, how to find the perfect wife, alpha males, extreme seasickness, the writing of doctorates, Congolese aphrodisiacs, etc. British readers will probably enjoy all the Brit-Scot-Hebridean-Irish etc byplay. I was happy just to read about places with such names as Unst, Yell, Muckle Roe, Thorsno and Cape Wrath. Norlantean, the ship, sails from Scrabster.
April 7, 2025
This is a 300 page book, of which maybe one third was interesting and covered the subject material. Unfortunately, the vast majority of this book is incredibly long, boring, conversations held between two parties.
Whole chapters, page after page, of conversations. But not interesting conversations. And strangely, the author seems to be aware of the lack of interesting material in these conversations.
Several places in the text the author discusses how the conversations are nonsensical due the parties' inability to think clearly. Mostly do their constant overwork, lack of sleep, and environment.
I agree, and it is interesting to know what effect those conditions have on one's ability to converse clearly, but I don't see the value in reading every spoken word.
This book reads like attending a sewing circle about fish, women, naturalists, fatherhood, etc. The topics swirl and blend with no coherent theme.
Whole chapters, page after page, of conversations. But not interesting conversations. And strangely, the author seems to be aware of the lack of interesting material in these conversations.
Several places in the text the author discusses how the conversations are nonsensical due the parties' inability to think clearly. Mostly do their constant overwork, lack of sleep, and environment.
I agree, and it is interesting to know what effect those conditions have on one's ability to converse clearly, but I don't see the value in reading every spoken word.
This book reads like attending a sewing circle about fish, women, naturalists, fatherhood, etc. The topics swirl and blend with no coherent theme.
June 28, 2021
I'm never going to take a plate of cod and chips for granted again. Understanding what's involved � the challenges, sacrifices, risks, and mental anguish � to bring back a cod or any other fish from the deep fishing grounds of the arctic, has given me an deep admiration and gratitude towards trawlermen and what they do. Something I'd never really thought about before.
The book is sometimes a hard read. When people go without sleep for weeks –yes weeks! � it takes a toll on their mental abilities. In short they go full-on bat-shit crazy. O'Hanlon gets this madness across in his writing style, and yes, reading about the ravings of temporary insanity can be hard going. But rewarding nevertheless.
The book is sometimes a hard read. When people go without sleep for weeks –yes weeks! � it takes a toll on their mental abilities. In short they go full-on bat-shit crazy. O'Hanlon gets this madness across in his writing style, and yes, reading about the ravings of temporary insanity can be hard going. But rewarding nevertheless.
August 2, 2023
Hilarious read!
For those thinking, a Redmond o Hanlon book, it must be a travel book, nope. Not this time.
Not a geographical travel at least. However there is a lot of travel through the minds of sleep deprived, single minded fish focused trawler-men. And that is quite the journey as well. At least I thoroughly enjoyed the endless ramblings of these singular man, the near endless list of fish facts from Luke, the ways in which Redmond his mind wandered off in between conversations and the banter, sometimes quite intense, between these men.
A look into a life that often not shared. Besides the banter I am deeply impressed by how tough and literally cold this life is. You must either really like it, or have no other option. When eating my next meal of fish, will have these men in mind.
For those thinking, a Redmond o Hanlon book, it must be a travel book, nope. Not this time.
Not a geographical travel at least. However there is a lot of travel through the minds of sleep deprived, single minded fish focused trawler-men. And that is quite the journey as well. At least I thoroughly enjoyed the endless ramblings of these singular man, the near endless list of fish facts from Luke, the ways in which Redmond his mind wandered off in between conversations and the banter, sometimes quite intense, between these men.
A look into a life that often not shared. Besides the banter I am deeply impressed by how tough and literally cold this life is. You must either really like it, or have no other option. When eating my next meal of fish, will have these men in mind.
May 17, 2021
I thought I could never find a book about the sea I didn't like but I was wrong. After about five hundred my luck ran out with this one. The story is told mostly in dialogue that is so peppered with exclamation points that it set my teeth on edge. The sad thing is, if you can force yourself through his presentation, there actually is a story under it all, and there is a lot to learn. I normally pass my used books along to a friend but this one goes in the trash; I have too much respect for my friend to inflict this on him.
October 21, 2017
Ever been seasick? If so you will be associated back into that particular horror shortly after you start on this book. Welcome to another nightmare journey with Redmond O'Hanlon. You will come away with three things from this book: a deep appreciation of the lives of fishermen in the North Atlantic, fascinating facts about marine biology and vicarious trauma (sort of kidding). If you live in a a dull suburb, doing a dull job with dull people around you sizzle things up and read this book.
April 3, 2024
Redmond joins a trawler during a winter storm to see what its like. His depiction of the work and the crew is interesting and lively. Laugh out loud funny in some spots, with stories that I share with my family. Lots of really interesting fish and fish biology. Because the work is non-stop, though, he suffers from lack of sleep. As a result, there are a lot of looooong sentences that end in ! That gets a bit tiresome, but its worth sticking with to the end.
April 5, 2025
An engaging and absorbing read fully capturing the dangers of such a harsh life, and blending these with the comforting camaraderie of a crew living in intense proximity with each other and a wonder at nature’s miraculous creatures from the deep.
You can almost feel the shivering cold and wet from his writing.
Picked up at random in a second hand shop (having read and enjoyed his other works) and was very satisfied with it.
You can almost feel the shivering cold and wet from his writing.
Picked up at random in a second hand shop (having read and enjoyed his other works) and was very satisfied with it.
July 23, 2020
At age 34 I volunteered to deploy with the good ship Independence. An amazing, if somewhat frustrating journey. Consequently, I'm okay with O'Hanlon's story. I learned a lot about trawler life, Scotland, economics of commercial fishing, weather that I absolutely want to avoid and marine biology. Not for everybody, but good for this armchair traveler.
January 22, 2019
Great book about 10 days writer Redmond o' Hanlon spent on a trawler on the North Sea in January, looking for a hurricane. Gives insight into the extreme life of Scottish fishermen, as in the delirious madness that arises from structural sleep deprivation. Reads like an acid trip on a wild sea.
November 4, 2019
Good read, A story of many layers. Human endurance, working at the limits of safety, Risk taking too keep up the financial side. exploiting new or unregulated resources. Lack of knowledge of the life in the sea or just a simply good story of a landlubber joining up for a mighty storm afloat.
November 8, 2018
Captivating but weird.
May 23, 2020
I hoped to learn about trawling, and I did, so great. But the incessantly intense banter is very hard work.
January 28, 2021
Too long, overwritten, too much stream-of-consciousness with too little context. Like the eggs of his father’s curate, Redmond’s book is good only in parts.
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November 9, 2021Read: Indian Head, MD
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November 17, 2021ναυτία, αϋπνία και θαλάσσια βιολογία.
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