Hardberger recounts his adventures repossessing ships and sneaking them out of lawless, third-world countries, often under threat of death or imprisonment. His journeys lead him from corrupt ports in the Caribbean to the ice-bound docks of Vladivostok. His adventures in rescuing ships pit him against a rogue's gallery of antagonists, including Haitian rebels, modern-day Caribbean pirates, and Russian mobsters. Capt. Max Hardberger uses every trick, tool and tactic at his disposal to right wrongs and out-pirate pirates in this action-packed expose of the seedy underworld of international shipping. As a professional ship extractor, he risks death and imprisonment in dangerous third-world ports to steal ships from modern buccaneers and corrupt governments and deliver them back to their rightful owners. In the course of his adventures, he's had to outwit resourceful crime families, subdue armed soldiers, and turn the tables on clever con artists. He's escaped imprisonment in Venezuela and avoided death at the hands of the Russian mafia. Because Max shuns the use of force, the ingenious methods he must use to accomplish his missions are the stuff of legend-he's employed a witch doctor in Haiti, tricked armed guards off a ship in Honduras, and rented a brothel in Mexico, all to thwart the designs of ship-thieves. "Seized!" is an intense, fast-paced window on the underbelly of ocean shipping, where all power comes from the barrel of a gun, and the only law is the law of survival.

Author Biography

Max Hardberger has worked as a ship captain, newspaper reporter, English and history teacher, crop duster, private investigator, maritime lawyer, flight instructor, ship surveyor, commercial aircraft pilot, sailing instructor, insurance adjuster, vessel repossession specialist, filmmaker, oilfield mud engineer, stuntman, ship breaker, drummer in a blues band, and now the subject of a Hollywood film. He is the author of Deadweight: Owning the Ocean Freighter (1994), a textbook on ship ownership, and the novel, Freighter Captain (1998), a semi-autobiographical account of his adventures as a ship captain in the Caribbean. Visit his website at www.maxhardberger.com