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    Last Man Off
    Last Man Off
    Last Man Off
    Audiobook8 hours

    Last Man Off

    Written by Matthew Lewis

    Narrated by Malcolm Hamilton

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Antarctica, June 6th 1998. 23-year-old Matt Lewis has just started his dream job: an observer aboard a deep sea fishing boat. As the crew haul in their lines for the day, the waves seem bigger than usual - they are casting shadows on the deck. A storm is brewing. What follows is an astonishing story of courage and tragedy. Lewis leads the escape onto three life rafts, where the battle for survival begins.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateAug 7, 2014
    ISBN9781471271182
    Last Man Off
    Author

    Matthew Lewis

    Dr Matthew Lewis is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Until September 2013, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Centre for War Studies at University College Dublin. He completed his PhD at Queen's University Belfast in 2011.

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    Reviews for Last Man Off

    4/5

    60 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Last Man Off tells a harrowing journey of survival of a young marine scientist on a fishing expedition in the Antarctic Seas. Matt Lewis is contracted to work aboard the Sudar Havid, a 34-year old ramshackle hulk that fails to inspire confidence in Lewis. When the unsound vessel is overloaded with fish and fuel, and begins to take on too much water, the officers in charge refuse to take adequate safety measures and what should have been a minor inconvenience ends in a life and death struggle in some of the most perilous waters in the world. Lewis' prose is crisp and suspenseful, the story unfolds in a tense and riveting fashion. A haunting tale of man vs. nature that deserves to be told and retold.
    • 4/5
      The best part of this book are the details about life aboard a tramp fishing boat in the Antarctic ocean ca. late 1990s. Most of the book is a memoir of a young man who shipped aboard to act as an observer of wildlife by-catch, he is outsider on the inside. Since you already know a disaster of some sort is going to happen, everything feels a bit sinister. The ship is poorly maintained, the people responsible behave with no care for anyone but themselves. You can feel it coming. When the disaster happens it reaches a pitch of horror when Lewis feels something biting his toe under the water. This is a first class disaster survival memoir but also fascinating look at the sketchy toothfish industry (never buy Chilean sea-bass) and hard lessons on leadership and empathy.
    • 4/5
      Matt Lewis is a newly graduated marine biologist looking for his first job when he takes a position as an Observer on a commercial fishing vessel in Antarctic waters. He's a little disturbed when he first sees his new home and workplace, the Sudar Havid, an aging and much-modified fishing boat of Dutch ownership and South African crew. In the coming weeks, though, he gets to know the crew, the boat, and the life, and is fully a part of the crew by the time they run into real trouble.

      They're a good half full of fish, and newly refueled off the Falklands, when they run into stormy weather and rough seas. Being so heavily laden gives them less maneuverability, and the captain and the fishing master are reluctant to stop fishing and reorient the boat. As the boat takes on water, Matt and others struggle to get the pumps started, without success. When the captain gives the order to abandon ship, it's late, and a desperate scramble. That's when the real struggle to survive begins.

      Lewis lets us get fully acquainted with the boat, its officers, and its crew before we face the terror and hardship of abandoning ship and trying to survive in poorly equipped life rafts in heavy seas. We also see the rush of competitor commercial fishers--competitors under normal circumstances--to provide rescue in a part of the world where all the authorities are too far away to help. In disasters, the fishermen only have each other.

      Matt Lewis tries to be as honest as possible about both his crewmates and himself, in their strengths, weaknesses, and faults in the crisis. This is both an exciting adventure, and a thoroughly human story, that held my interest all the way through.

      Recommended.

      I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via Penguin's First to Read program.
    • 4/5
      This book describes what happened to Matt Lewis, who at the age of 23 was offered a job as a marine biologist observer on the Sudur Havid, a fishing boat making a routine trip from Cape Town into the Antarctic. He was very excited to be selected and looked at it as his first big opportunity to use his scientific background to chart the various birds and fish that he encountered on his journey.

      It soon became clear that the Sudur Havid was less than seaworthy, thanks both to its owners' unwillingness to spend money on its maintenance and to the tensions between many of the crew members. Several weeks after he boarded, they became trapped by an enormous storm. The captain refused to stop fishing and making money, and in a very short time the boat was flooded. The thirty eight men on board scrambled for the rafts but their lack of preparation forced them into a desperate struggle to survive.

      I often watch the Discovery Channel series, The Deadliest Catch and thought this book did a great job of relating how dangerous fishing in freezing seas can be. The actual sinking of the boat doesn't occur until about halfway through the book. The author kept me interested in the descriptions of the boat, the multicultural group of men who lived there, and the process of commercial fishing. It's a miracle any of these men survived to write the story. While not written with the same excitement level as a Jon Krakauer book, it still held my attention and I'm glad I read it.
    • 5/5
      Last Man Off is the fascinating, if not gruesome, account of a young fish biologist aboard a South African fishing vessel. His role was simply to make sure the fishery was not over fished. When the ship began to sank, his role changed to one of leader.The story, based on true accounts, was riveting. The writing was well done, with enough detail to make the story come alive.Highly recommend this book!
    • 4/5
      Last Man Off by Matt Lewis - a first-hand account of an ocean tragedy. The waters of Antarctica, June 6th 1998. 23-year-old Matt Lewis has just started his dream job. An observer aboard a deep sea fishing boat, he is mesmerized by his new surroundings: glistening icebergs, killer whales and majestic albatross. As the crew haul in their lines for the day, the waves seem bigger than usual - they are casting shadows on the deck. A storm is brewing. What follows is an astonishing story of human courage, folly and tragedy. With the captain missing, and the crew forced to abandon ship, Lewis leads the escape onto three life rafts, where the battle for survival begins.

      There is part early on in the book where Matt Lewis asks his new shipmates if they enjoyed the film Titanic...especially the sinking part and you know this is going to end in tears.

      Matt is very likeable and his naivety and trust in others that they will do the right thing is endearing. However mortal danger tends to bring out the best and the worst in people. Matt becomes the self-effacing hero of the hour, as he says he was the best he has ever been in his life during the catastrophe.
      “Watch your knives, Matt. If she sinks, people will fight with knives. They would stab you for a place in a raft.” Written by the author as a closure exercise it really is a personal story, well paced; thrilling and it only wavers when he has to switch to third party accounts of the disaster.The author puts the reader right at the heart of the story and you ponder, many times, how would you behave?“No one was yelling, ‘abandon ship’. There were no sirens or claxons.
      “I came up from the factory [where the fish are kept]... and we had been trying to save the boat, mend the pump that would have saved the ship. There were half a dozen of us down there and we found the rest of the crew we getting ready to abandon, and nobody had told us.”

    • 4/5
      I worked as a fisheries observer up in Alaska, so this one was of particular personal interest. The details ring true in describing life at sea and the realities, but it stays kind of dry in terms of prose. Don't expect "The Perfect Storm", but as a unique story, highlighting the ongoing dangers of commercial fisheries, check it out.
    • 4/5
      Last Man Off: A True Story of Disaster and Survival on the Antarctic Seas by Matt Lewis is one of the most horrifying books I have ever read. Through a number of mistakes and cutting corners, a fishing boat carrying 38 people sank in the Antarctic seas. This is an amazing tale of survival in one of the most hostile environments on Earth. It is so unfortunate that so many people died in a tragedy that should have been prevented. Ultimately, this is a story of greed winning out over safety and I highly recommend this book for everyone.
    • 4/5
      Written for Early Reviewers.A few minutes glancing through Last Man Off tells you the basics of the story. Matt Lewis, a young marine biologist, survives the wreck of a ship in the antarctic sea, many others didn't. So the question is, is this a book worth reading considering there's no big mystery as to what happened? I'd say yes. The reader is given an interesting look at the lives of men fishing in pretty extreme conditions. And it shows how they cope and don't cope after the ship sinks as well as how Lewis came to deal with the incident the rest of his life.For a non writer, Lewis writes pretty well. Worth a read.
    • 3/5
      Interesting read. I got a little confused in the beginning with the description of the ship, etc. but once I got into the part of the sinking, etc. I found it riveting. Thoroughly enjoyed.
    • 3/5
      The obvious comparison to this book is the The Perfect Storm. Both are tales of fisherman, battling the seas to fill their hulls with fish, when things go wrong.Mr. Lewis was a young marine biologist who was hired at the last minute to ensure that a South African fishing boat, Sudur Havid, complied with environmental laws. As you can tell from the title, the boat sinks.The distraction for me was the comparison. The Perfect Storm is a fantastic book. Mr. Lewis is great writer for a marine biologist, but Sebastian Junger is a great writer for a writer.Beyond the distraction, Lewis put a good story in the book. I'm glad the publisher sent me a copy to review.
    • 3/5
      I found this book to be interesting, but an unevenly told tale. The beginning was overly detailed - and I'm a very visual person, so I usually like detailed descriptions in books. But the author spent a lot of time describing the process of preparing the boat, and more time describing the fishing. None of which actually came into play during the survival tale. And I found the breadth of characters confusing. So many names and descriptions, and most of the time I had no idea who was who. The best part of the book was the meat of it - the actually tragedy of the sinking, and the desperate times spent in the lifeboats. I wish there had been less prep, and more insight into the physical and mental ordeal of the life rafts. Then the legal aspects of blame were kind of tacked on there at the end. It all felt a bit uneven. It is an amazing tale of survival, but the presentation made it less riveting to those of us reading than it could have been.
    • 4/5
      I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers on LibraryThing and found it very interesting for the most part. The author makes you feel like you are right there in the life boats with them. The harrowing account is told in such vivid detail that only someone who really experienced this disaster could tell. Even when you know at the beginning what is going to happen (the boat sinking and that the author survives), you catch yourself wondering if the writer will live through this disaster. I think anyone who has watched reality shows on TV dealing with fishing in dangerous seas will appreciate this book. There were only a couple of things that I found to be a problem. One was that there were a few errors in grammar and/or typos. The other was that in the first part of the book, a reader can get bogged down with too many details of the boat, the preparation of the fishing lines, and the processing of the fish. These in depth details, especially about the fishing, tend to slow the pace of the narrative and seem at times to not be needed. Also, there are times when American spellings or words are not used; making it a little confusing until a reader becomes accustomed to it.
    • 4/5
      This is a fast and interesting read. The author does a good job of conveying the experiences of an untried observer on a commercial vessel. The language and writing would be easily handled by middle or high-schoolers and the story is interesting enough that it could be a good teaching book in the science classroom.I was a bit disappointed by the ending. The author didn't tell us much about what happened to those who survived, or what action was taken regarding the wreck. There is an excerpt from the inquest, but no information about what, if any changes were made to the regulations or personnel.A good disaster book. Worth reading, but you can let the library store it for you unless you're a collector of such stories.
    • 4/5
      Last Man Off is the true story of a commercial fishing trip gone disastrously awry. In April 1998 Lewis was the marine observer assigned to the Sudur Havid as it left Cape Town for the fishing grounds of Antarctica's South Georgia Island. On June 6th a series of events unfolded over several hours that left the Sudur Havid on the bottom of the ocean, just 21 survivors from a crew of 38. Lewis weaves together four strands together to tell the story. The first, Escape, sets the stage for the events of June 6th. Here he outlines the reasons he came to be on board the ship, describes a number of key people on board, and the ways in which the ship functioned while at sea. The following sections are titled Trouble, Adrift, and Deliverance, each telling in greater detail the events of that fateful day. I found the section from abandoning the sinking vessel to the eventual recue of the survivors to be the most compelling part of the story. Lewis writes in such a way as to bring the harrowing events of that fateful day to life. While he tells what is clearly and adventure story, there is also an underlying moral value, as he shines a light on some of the tendencies within commercial fishing that make disasters such as this not only possible, but given a variety of factors within this story, also probable. In the lessons to be learned from the Sudur Havid perhaps a similar tragedy will be prevented, and in doing that Lewis has told a story that moves far beyond mere adventure.
    • 4/5
      A well-written and satisfying read of a maritime disaster, as told by a survivor.
    • 5/5
      Highly recommended, LAST MAN OFF: A True Story of Disaster and Survival on the Antarctic Seas, is an up-close look at the fishing industry, its workers, and the world's insatiable appetite for fish on the table. The book is well written, reads quickly, and has the tone and feel of the best of fiction thrillers. At times it is difficult to remember that the book is a memoir; the story, real.In the late 1990s, Matt Lewis, fresh out of college, gets a job as an Observer on a deep-sea fishing vessel out of South Africa. Lewis, from Scotland, has never worked at sea, and the position aboard the "Sudur Havid" is his first as a scientist aboard ship. His duties include keeping an eye on compliance with international fishing regulations, measuring and counting catch, and watching for endangered species (birds, for example) that might get caught up in the nets. From the start, Lewis is thrown into a rough and tumble world very different from the sheltered university experience. His crew mates are of various ages, races, and nationalities, but with few exceptions, most are familiar with the Southern Ocean - the mean, cold, and relentless sea around the fringes of Antarctica. With very few creature comforts; an unheated galley in which crew eat basic meals; small, crowded and shared cabins; few shower facilities; language barriers, and freezing cold work on the decks, the men of the "Sudur Havid" go to sea.Lewis is a keen observer, not only of all scientific, but also of mankind. He is curious about and fascinated by his fellow shipmates and provides short but memorable profiles of the men on board. His discomfort on the vessel comes out in his writing: he is young, from the United Kingdom, college educated, and naive about life at sea. Very little serves him well for his new experience except his thoughtfulness, manners, intelligence, and intuition. Of course, Lewis is writing a memoir, and he is writing it from a distance of over fifteen years. He looks back at his younger self realistically, it appears, although there are times when he lets his "inner hero" out. The reader will wonder if he did, said, or accomplished those "hero moments" or whether, over the intervening years, memory has faded and the writer's maturity has stepped in and taken over. We will never know. All any reader will know for sure is that Matt Lewis is a smart fellow, a very good writer, and, mostly likely, a gentleman.The "Sudur Havid" goes far south to fish for Toothfish, the real name for the ugly species that ends up on dining tables as the highly desired Chilean Sea Bass. For those who have ever wondered where their favorite fish originates or what life is like for those who work at putting it on their table, "LAST MAN OFF" will be eye opening. The reader will feel the cold arctic air, get drenched by the spray of an unforgiving ocean, and smell the salty slime as the fish roll on board and are cut and processed.As Lewis's title implies, there is a tragedy, and the second half of the book is about what happens when the "Sudur Havid" gets caught up in a brutal winter storm yet keeps fishing until water is filling the boat and death looks imminent. Descriptions of the moments before the sinking, the abandoning of ship, and the state of the life rafts are riveting. The reader will fight between putting the book down in order not to read the inevitable and/or reading faster trying to get past and through uncomfortable and frightening scenes.After the rescue is complete and the bodies are counted, there is a great deal to think about for the sailors, their families, the ship owners, fishing industry folks, and insurance companies. How could this happen? Why did this happen? Questions arise regarding the condition of the boat, the training of the crew, the equipment aboard, and the unspoken mandates from shoreside. Lewis presents very thought provoking material, and it is tough to think of all he had to endure to give us this excellent book. One thing is for certain: no one who reads LAST MAN OFF will want to eat Chilean Sea Bass again. Any bite of the delicious fish will undoubtedly slam many hard truths and realities into the face of modern-day epicures. We never know how long, how hard, or in what dangerous conditions, people labored to bring us our meal from places far away where, perhaps, men weren't meant to fish at all.