Lost at Sea

On February 3, 1983, the men aboard Americus and Altair, two state-of-the-art crabbing vessels, docked in their home port of Anacortes, Washington, prepared to begin a grueling three-month season fishing in the notorious Bering Sea. Eleven days later, on Valentine’s Day, the overturned hull of the Americus was found drifting in calm seas, with no record of even a single distress call or trace of its seven-man crew. The Altair vanished altogether. Despite the desperate search that followed, no evidence of the vessel or its crew would ever be found. Fourteen men were lost. And the tragedy would mark the worst disaster in the history of U.S. commercial fishing. With painstaking research and spellbinding prose, acclaimed journalist Patrick Dillon brings to life the men who were lost, the dangers that commercial fishermen face, the haunting memories of the families left behind…and reconstructs the intense investigation that ensued, which for the first time exposed the dangers of an industry that would never again be the same.

Author Biography

Patrick Dillon is the Adventure and Sailing Events Programming Director at QuokkaSports, Digital Sports Entertainment. He has won numerous awards, including a share of the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. His columns and essays have appeared in many publications throughout the nation, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Fast Company.