Time Bandit: Two Brothers, the Bering Sea, and One of the World's Deadliest Jobs

by Malcolm MacPherson

  I should ask a lawyer to legally change my initials from J.H. to T.U. I am Tango Uniform like never before. The minute the light intensifies in the east I can see where I am in this universe. The rain lowers the sky down to the sea. A mist is changing to fog. This world is a dull gray. No one will know I am gone. The look of the cliffs in this weather is like the Land Before Time. The sight off my starboard side chills me. Jagged rocks heap along a mountain wall that rises four or five hundred feet to a short plateau of snow and ice that beats down on my face like sharp slivers. I refuse to put on my life jacket. That is not who I am. I know I can get ashore and cling to the rocks. I tie the ropes of my bumpers in knots. I shoot my last signal flare away from the cliffs.

  The thrall of a current and tide takes hold of Fishing Fever. Inexorably, the water draws the boat toward the line of surf on the rock reef just under the cliffs. That is where I am heading. I can hear the surf collide with the rocks. I can smell the land, as if the violence of the sea against the rocks has produced its own stench. The air, filled with the sea, smells of heavy brine. I estimate forty minutes before I will be in the surf against the rocks. There can be no recovery there, no sandy beaches, no gradual bottom, indeed, no beaches, just rocks sticking out of the waves like blades, and beyond, a wall of rock against which the water explodes.

  I must slow my boat’s drift. It is too deep here for an anchor to grip and hold on the bottom. I tie lines around two buckets, which I throw out as impromptu sea anchors. Their drag is imperceptible in these swells, which are getting higher with every ten feet I drift toward the rock wall. As I watch the buckets drag behind Fishing Fever, I look back in the direction where I came from. It is at that instant that I see a flare. But I do not see a boat under the flare. I am as certain as ever that I saw a flare. And if that is true, then that boat must have seen mine. The worst case, of course, would be if the boat in the distance that fired the flare was in trouble and in no position to come to my aid. That does not seem likely. But a flare is never to be fired only as an indicator; it should be ignited only if the boat firing the flare is in an emergency.

  I watch helplessly. Everything is drenched. Nothing within my control can prevent from happening what I fear second only to the boat sinking under me. I will ride the boat into the reef, and if Fishing Fever does not beak up there, throwing me into the water, the swells will hammer her against the cliff walls. What that means for me is obvious. I will be cast into the water. I refuse to believe I will drown. The rocks can beat me to a pulp but I will survive. I am drifting to a place with no refuge.

  I can see no harm in setting my Danforth. The water here may still be too deep, but the anchor will set, when the bottom shallows nearer the shore. I crawl along the starboard rail, and when I reach the bow deck I get down on my hands and knees for stability. The boat rocks and heaves and bucks. I tie the line to the cleat and over goes the anchor as I pay out scope. While I am still on the bow I look toward the sea. There is nothing out there. I scuttle back along the rail to the deck and the wheelhouse.

  I scan the shore for a beach. I feel better when I strap on the revolver and holster, which allow me the illusion of independent action. Only pockets of beach punctuate this stretch of the Cape. A beach would offer me only different challenges. The boat would scrape through the reef and drift up on a narrow gravel strand. But brown bears crowd these beaches this time of year, and in minutes they would sniff out the salmon in my tanks. I cannot imagine holding off three or four of the largest bears on the planet with a revolver.

  I feel the boat shudder and jump as the anchor scrapes bottom and grabs. The seabed along this coast consists mainly of clay and sand and some rock, but the Danforth is no match for the size of the swells that yank the boat against the anchor line with a loud snap. No shallow, gradual bottom gentles the sea to cliff walls. I look up at the rock face tangled with ice. I am no more than forty yards off the rocks.

  Here’s what it comes down to: heaven and hell. They are this close. You can be in heaven or hell and what separates them is the space between my thumb and forefinger pressed together. It’s that close out here. That is what brings me out. I light my last Winston as if it were the final smoke of the condemned. I look down at the bumpers to figure out how I can work the rope under my arms and hope for the best once I am in the water. I can survive the cold if I can get in without being battered. Maybe the bumpers will overcome the force of the sea. The bumpers are my last best hope.

  I would like to think this is not happening to me. This happens only to other fishermen. I can see my future in front of me. There is no alternative action I can take that I have not already tried. The seas will not shift, nor the wind, or current or tides to save me. No miracle is going to come my way. A finger of land juts into the water, and the sea beats at it. I am between a rock and a watery place. I came out only to catch red salmon. That was all I had on my mind. I did not care if I caught sockeye, either. I do not fish salmon to catch salmon. I mean, salmon is not the point; it provides me with an occasion. The fishing camp—the first rule is that there is no fishing camp—draws me out each summer, the guys, the drinking, women now and then, the bullshit and laughter, with some sockeye fishing as a diversion and excuse. I bet that the guys’ stomachs are hurting with laughter about now. I thought if it ever came to this, the Bering Sea in winter would be my executioner, not the rocks off Cape Douglas. I look up in the sky to the south, in the direction of Kodiak, praying for a H-60 helicopter with the orange stripe marking of the Coast Guard to lift me out of this mess. The sky is empty.

  The Danforth slips. I can feel the boat move under me with renewed lightness. The anchor grabs and I lose my balance and hold on. The flukes are skipping along the bottom but the power of the swells pulls the anchor loose before it can dig in and hold. The scope should help the anchor purchase in the mud but no anchor was ever designed to withstand a heaving sea like this one. It slips…. it holds. With the swells the anchor will kite into shore. It slips again, and Fishing Fever continues its shoreward drift. I know I can’t swim out of this. I see and hear and smell the shore and unreasonably those senses give me false hope. Land means safety from sea. But who am I fooling? Waves are too big for me to land on a beach, even if there were a beach. I would have to ride the boat in. But facing a rock wall, I am done. There is nowhere to swim. I can try to jump on a rock or cling to the cliff, but that is dreaming.

  I deny the Cape my attention and turn my back on the land. I will not watch the collision. I reach down, and in a wetbag I throw a blanket, some fishing line, and my knife, and I unbuckle and place in the bag the gun belt and gun. I stuff in my Bic, a firesteel, and a towel. I close the bag tight and as I turn in the wheelhouse, I see a boat coming straight toward me. A flare lifts off—another one, and another. I leave the wheelhouse and dance a jig on the deck. Whoever is in that boat sees me, knows me, and is speeding to rescue me. I look between the land and the sea, between the cliffs and this other boat. It looks like Dino’s Rivers End. He must have been searching since yesterday morning. I knew it would happen. He will not get here a minute too soon….

  But he could get here a minute too late. The closer to the shore, the heavier swells saw in and out swinging the boat, but more in with each cycle than out. I can feel the tug. The land is winning over the sea as if it were hungry for Fishing Fever. Like I said, death in one form or another, without being too melodramatic, is what this life is about. It is. It just is. I never thought that the land would be trying to kill me and the sea would be trying to kill me at the same time. This struggle is as raw as it comes.

  Murphy is working his law overtime. With a slam and a shudder of the hull, the impact of the rudder against a sunken rock shoves the rudder into the stern tube and the boat begins to leak in her rear lazarette. She is quickly bogging in the stern. I open the lazarette to look at the damage knowing I have no electricity to drive the bilge pumps. I get on my knees with a coffee can bending into the compartment. There is more water coming
in than I can get out. Bailing is a waste of time, because the boat will not sink from a leak in the rudder tube; it will go down from the damage to the hull against the rocks.

  The Rivers End is turning. Dino is going to let the swells push him into me and control his speed and direction with his throttles. If he hits the rocks we are both gone. I certainly cannot save him. I can take a tow from either bow or stern. It looks like my bow is turning partway out of the trough, pointing closer to Dino’s stern than away from it. Right now I do not worry about rigging the tow with his stern in line with my bow. I do not care where I cleat down his line as long as he can drag me back out into deeper water. He is preparing a heaving line with a monkey’s head. I hastily get my knife out of the wet bag to cut the anchor line when and if I can cleat down his towing line.

  He throws the line just as a swell bucks me upward in the bow. My hands are freezing and I am being thrown around. I miss the monkey’s head, which plops into the water. I bend way over the bow rail to reach for it but it is too far.

  He has one last shot, and he is pulling the line like a sonofabitch to get it back in quickly. I crawl back to the stern and pry off my pike pole from the clips on the deck, then inch along the starboard rail to the bow again with the pole in one hand. He is readying to throw the heaving line. I look back over my shoulder. This throw will be the last. Or we will both be in trouble. I get on my knees. I can feel Fishing Fever touching on the stern. Rivers End has turned into the trough. He is doing what has to be done. Another wave hits us.

  He throws the line, which lands in the water off my bow. I jab at the monkey fist with the pike pole and bring the light line toward me. I reach over and touch the line and hold tight. I reel it in and cleat off the heavier line. With my knife I cut the anchor line, which falls away.

  I yell, “Go! Go!”

  He needs a few seconds to take up slack with his throttles. He does not want to foul the towing line in his wheel, not this close to deliverance. He uses the deck station to maneuver his boat, working the throttles until Rivers End is heading into the swells and the line is taut. Then he guns the engine. The line strains. He tows me about a hundred yards off and into deeper waters. We are still in a world of shit. It is a fourteen-mile jog over to the Barren Islands and I have water in my rear lazarette. I do not want to abandon Fishing Fever. I crawl back from the bow to the deck. I know that Dino has long jumper cables on his boat that I can use to juice my batteries at least enough to use the pumps, and we can skip the Barrens for Kasilof, where they will pull Fishing Fever out of the water and fix the fried gear.

  I yell over to him to throw the cables. He is standing in his stern. I look closely at my rescuer for the first time. I should not be as surprised as I feel. I yell out to him, “Hey, what took you so long, Russ?”

  We both laugh a psychotic, not a funny, laugh, until our sides ache.

  Epilogue: We Are Sort of Famous

  Andy

  “People like the danger. And the men on the show like Andy and Johnathan live in the minute because of danger. There are no patterns. They can’t function in society. They go out, day after day, and maybe never come back. People fall in love with those kinds of characters.” That is our mother Joan talking about why she believes people watch us Hillstrand brothers, Time Bandit, and the four other crab boats’ crews on the Discovery Channel’s cable TV show The Deadliest Catch. Her guess is as good as mine.

  Johnathan and I suppose the appeal has to do with danger, drama, and money, like Mom says. It’s the old gold rush, the last hurrah, where you either make big bucks or go bust, a drama played out on a stage that is the farthest west anyone can go and still be in America. People watching on TV have told us that they think we are crazy. That makes the show worth watching, right there. They think of our work as a huge gamble for money at the risk of our lives. They can live vicariously through our real-life dramas. It is the same reason why people watch World Championship Poker. The players go bust or make a million. With us, there is no million. There is nothing except the crabs. But we give viewers an added ingredient of danger.

  Mom says that people, especially men, like to watch other men who are not afraid to face adventure and danger. “People like to see heroes,” she tells John and me. And most people are so removed in their daily grind from men like Johnathan and me when we are fishing the Bering Sea.

  “People today are not living life to its fullest,” Mom contends. “They are not living their dream and their adventures. They are afraid to. And here are my sons facing nature and the danger. That is exciting to watch. It scares the life out of me, and I pray for their safety. Women like to see adventures, too, just like men. It could be a fantasy thing. On TV women see adventurers whom they never see in their husbands, and that does not mean that they love their husbands any less.”

  Our mom is a very straight-talking gal but what she forgets is that Johnathan and Neal and I, along with our crews, do not think of what we do as an adventure, any more than we think of ourselves as adventurers. It is what we have done since our childhoods; fishing the Bering Sea is as natural to us as driving to work on a highway, delivering packages, climbing telephone poles, and policing a beat is to other men. We were born into adventure, in a sense, and we chose a life where we have no choice but to fight the elements and put the bow into the wave to accomplish what we set out to do. But when we are in what viewers of the TV show consider to be an adventure, we think of ourselves as simply doing what we have always done. In other words, “adventure” rests purely in the eye of the beholder.

  There are plenty of eyes watching The Deadliest Catch, and we appreciate each pair.

  We are sort of famous. I stress “sort of.” We do not kid ourselves about that. But even semifamous can be a rush. Sometimes people do things for us, like send us boxes of cookies. Doors open for us that have never been opened before, but these are not big doors. They are more like a free drink in a bar, tickets to a NASCAR race, or throwing out the ball in an Alaska arena ball game, a wave from a car when we cross the street. We receive a fee to be on the TV show that we put toward our fuel bill for Time Bandit in return for allowing the Discovery Channel’s cameramen to ride with us during our king crab and opie seasons. We are one of five boats featured on the show. And we were the last to be signed up.

  We thought it would be cool. That was what interested us. I thought my grandkids would have a video record of what I did professionally. We went out the first year. It was okay. The cameramen were not in our way, or not as bad as I thought. We just finished our third year.

  None of what you see on TV is faked. How could it be? Last year a line wrapped around Richard’s leg. He would not have faked that in a million years. He easily might have died. What happens on TV is what happened on the Bering Sea. That’s what I like about the show. It makes an edited record of what occurs anyway.

  We have put the fear of God in the camera crews we have taken out with us. They live on the edge, definitely like us, and we like to have them around.

  When Johnathan and I accept invitations to appear for charities and sign T-shirts and photographs, we like talking to the men and women and especially the kids who come out. They are like us, working families, for the most part. The men talk about what they do for a living and about their passions, which are hunting and fishing, just like us. We talk the same language. They make me shake my head sometimes for the generosity of their flatteries. These are the same guys we grew up with, we know, and we like to be around. They are solid family men who like guns and dream of those two weeks they get each year away from wives and children—out with the guys, like Johnathan at fishing camp.

  I talked last summer to a policeman in Sarasota, Florida. He was standing out in front of Barnacle Bill’s Seafood Restaurant. I do not know if he was bullshitting me, but I do not think so. Anyway, he embarrassed me. He said, “You guys are the last of the real men.”

  “Well, what about you?” I asked him.

  “Naw, not even close
. Every day you take your life in your hands.”

  “And you don’t?” I asked.

  “I’m a policeman, but what you do is one helluva lot more risky than what I do. You do it so people can eat. But it has to be in your blood. I couldn’t get on a boat in the Bering Sea, much less work like you do around the clock. It just blows my mind, watching you on TV.”

  A FedEx driver was listening. He added, “Any man who has ever worked with his hands likes the show and knows who you are. Women appreciate the same thing. And it appeals to anyone who has ever owned a boat; I get nervous when there’s more than a ripple on the water. I know water, and I know boats, and I have a huge appreciation for what you do on that sea. We are grateful to you for letting us look over your shoulders.”

  We have no way of knowing how long the show will last. Inevitably, viewers will lose interest in the Bering Sea and us. That is natural and to be expected. And we will continue what we do, without the presence of cameras and boxes of cookies in the mail. But we will know that many people all over the world are aware of—indeed, appreciate, we hope—what it takes to put delicious Alaskan crab legs on their tables.

  Acknowledgments

  We could easily crowd the deck of Time Bandit with the people to whom we owe a debt of gratitude for getting us to and through this book. In this long procession, we have to start with our mother, Joan, who sewed us up all the times we got cut, and gave us her mother’s love; and our stepdad, Bob Phillips, who put up with our misbehavior and taught us and protected us. Our brother Neal deserves our thanks for being such a great brother; we could not do any of what we do without him. Joe and Arlene McDougall in Seattle and Deedee in Homer keep the wolves from our doors with their bookkeeping for Time Bandit.

  We have had some great crews on Time Bandit over the years, but none quite to equal Russell Newberry, a friend from way back. We want to thank the many fishermen who have worked with us. We offer our respects to those who are no longer with us, Clark Sparks and Mike Lyda, who drowned doing what they loved. Our hearts go out to the families of the men whom the sea has taken away, especially the captain of the Troika and the other doomed sailors mentioned in this book.