Found At Sea — Christopher Newman

Based on a true story, Found at Sea is the account of how 19-year-old Pete O'Brien, while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, is interrupted on his journey by his arrest on drug charges in Bangkok, Thailand and incarcerated in a prison in the heart of that city, along as what follows when he is eventually deported to the custody of a U.S. Consul in Singapore. Once arrived there, he is offered employment aboard an American merchant vessel as an alternative to a flight back to the United States in disgrace and the day that he boards a consulate launch for a trip out into Singapore harbor to meet the captain and crew of a brand-new super tanker, he has only just turned twenty, weighs 127 pounds after barely surviving a severe case of amoebic dysentery in Afghanistan, and has no idea of what he might be getting into. The consul has informed him that in order to do the job he will be required to join the National Maritime Union as well as sign something called Foreign Articles, a legal document that will require him to remain on board for either a calendar year or until the ship docks at a port somewhere in the continental United States. The year is 1972, the Vietnam conflict is still in full swing, and the SS Spirit of Liberty is operating under a Military Supply and Transfer Service charter, sailing between the Ras Tanura oil refinery in Saudi Arabia and military bases all over the western Pacific, delivering high-altitude jet fuel to the US Navy and Air Force. A majority of the crew ship's crew are World War II vets old enough to be Pete's father, many of them expatriates who have outstanding warrants pending against them and can't return to the United States. Not yet old enough to drink in his native California, Pete quickly finds himself forced to learn how to negotiate this new world of drunken debauchery and sexual depravity while still retaining some measure of his own integrity. Found at Sea, as told to best-selling author Christopher Newman, is a truly unique story of self-discovery and survival; one that will forever change Pete O'Brien's view of the world and set him apart from a vast majority of his peers. Remarkable in in both its frankness and the historical context within which it is framed, this is truly the adventure of a lifetime.