The Serpent's Coil (Seal Books)

"The Serpent's Coil" recounts the amazing story of the Liberty ship Leicester, which sailed for New York from England in the summer of 1948, ran into a hurricane (with the loss of six lives), and was abandoned in the mid-Atlantic. It also tells of the deep-sea tug, the Foundation Josephine, which tracked the derelict Leicester over many thousands of miles, found her listing severely, and towed her another thousand miles to Bermuda, where both ships ran into yet another hurricane.Farley Mowat expertly weaves together the different threads of his tale as he tracks the hurricane from its origins to its fateful meeting with the Leicester, describes what it's like to survive a hurricane, and shows the difficult nature of the Josephine's salvage mission. The predecessor of The Perfect Storm, here is a classic of the sea.