North by Northwestern: A Seafaring Family on Deadly Alaskan Waters
The fishing vessel captain prominently featured in all three seasons of Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch tells his family’s story and that of the Norwegian American role in Pacific Northwest fishing—and not only in the now-declining crab industry. If this family saga has a hero, it is Sig’s father, Sverre, who survived immigration from Norway, service in the cold-war army, several shipwrecks, and raising three civilized, if somewhat original, sons to become one of the deans of the crab-fishing fleet in its golden era and still die peacefully at home. Captain Sig still takes his father’s boat into the Bering Sea, one of the harshest environments fishermen have ever faced, and is proud in a gentlemanly way of his Norwegian heritage and celebrity status. Nothing more nor less than a cracking good sea story. --Roland Green