Trawler: A Journey Through the North Atlantic

The book follows the author as he braves Force-12 conditions to document life on a trawler fishing off the north of Scotland. The seas in this area present some of the roughest conditions across the globe due to colliding currents and Arctic winds.

I have to say that I really struggled with this book. The setting for the novel would usually lend itself to a story that I'd love. However, O'Hanlon writes in such a unique way that it can be tough going at times. The book is made up of huge slabs of meandering dialogue that are often nonsensical, reflecting the crew's sleep deprived state. While it's effective in representing the psyche of the crew and what they regularly have to push themselves through, it also means that you learn little of the desires, motivations and history of the crew. I can recall three or four memorable exchanges. For a book of near 350 pages, that's little reward. ( )

More testosterone than you'd think would fit on a page.

Exhausting to read, trying portray sleep deprivation via the device of runon sentence. I wanted to know how it felt to work there, and he told me, and I wanted to know a layperson take on the fishery industry, but he was still on at the runon sentence of horror, + I wanted to know about the background of the trawlermen, but we were all still remorselessly immersed in Redmond's psyche.

I am dying to know what his shipmates made of the eventual book. ( )

Each time I (re)read this book it terrifies me. As an ex-seaman I have no difficulty in recalling the necessary details, sensations and vision to “be there” with this fine scientific eccentric and it sincerely scares me. I once narrowly escaped being made a Fleet Auxiliary Officer that would have entailed duties in the very seas O’Hanlon describes – but even back then, forty years ago, I knew enough of “The Fishing” to quickly escape from that particular opportunity!

The book is best described in one of its jacket blurbs – unusually brilliant – “Trawler reads like The Perfect Storm meets Monty Python".

Because of true Sleep Deprivation, a technique known to the author from his training and exploring with the SAS, the on-board conversations of all the crew soon degenerate into pure ‘stream of consciousness’, the ‘crack-up’. But the best cracking is between Redmond, our Mad Scientists and a younger courageous Lifeboatman and Marine Biologist studying for his PhD who unwittingly undertakes to become Redmond’s teacher. Amongst the hilarity there is some true science to be gleaned, about fish, yes of course but from Redmond’s other adventures (Into the Heart of Borneo, Congo Journey) the key to the strength of the Spartans Army through homosexual love, the role of serotonin in the high rate of young American suicides, and how the League of Nations polio eradication efforts may have led to accidental spread of HIV by developing the vaccine locally in green monkeys instead of using the European stream, grown in cattle.

There is a moment of potential embarrassment for LibraryThing members when the two scientists, in mid rave, in mid storm, discuss the ‘bookish’ O’Hanlon. He is accused by Luke, the biologist, of being ‘the kind of freak’ who smells the inside of any new book. Freak!?

The sheer horrific hardships of the Trawlermen's life beggar belief, working conditions none of us would casually accept and even fewer, tolerate. The sleep deprivation is extreme and suffered each trip as the nets are shot and recovered and the fish gutted, sorted and boxed down into ice. Storms – terrifying storms in little ships – cold, lack of sleep, comfort and family, often poor wages, high risk of death .. it is still today the most deadly of all professions.

We must eat more fish, if we have not already allowed commercial meal factories to totally deplete our oceans. We must help “The Fishing’ afford safer and better conditions for these extreme, brave, hunters. This is one of the very best books on fishing, and fishermen.. an exciting read.

At first I thought this a wonderful read, very interesting, very funny, very well written. Towards the end, the long gushing flows of conversation that were so exhilirating in the beginning became really annoying - as they must have been for the people concerned, perhaps? And the lectures on all things fishy got less and less interesting too... Still, I had no trouble finishing the book, and I enjoyed the first 2/3 a lot.” ( )

This is a gritty real-life adventure. Middle-aged author O'Hanlon pits himself against the North Atlantic and the scepticism of the crew members of the Norlantean, a trawler operating in some of the fiercest conditions possible, between Orkney and Iceland.It is touching, informative and very funny and is a fitting tribute to men who risk their lives every time they go to work. ( )