Seized: A Sea Captain's Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters »

MAX HARDBERGER has been an airplane pilot, a lawyer, a high school teacher, a writer, an adventurer, and a ship captain on commercial freighters. Unique in his area of expertise, he has been repossessing illegitimately seized freighters for the last eighteen years.  His adventures have been featured by NPR, the Learning Channel, and the L.A. Times, among other publications.  When not on the high seas, he lives in Louisiana.

www.maxhardberger.com

Seized throws open the hatch on the shadowy world of maritime shipping, where third-world governments place exorbitant liens against ships, pirates seize commercial vessels with impunity, crooks and con artists reign supreme on the docks and in the shipyards—and hapless owners have to rely on sea captain Max Hardberger to recapture their ships and win justice on the high seas.
 
A ship captain, airplane pilot, lawyer, teacher, writer, adventurer, and raconteur, Max Hardberger recovers stolen freighters for a living.  In Seized, he takes us on a real-life journey into the mysterious world of freighters and shipping, where fortunes are made and lost by the whims of the waves.  Desperate owners hire Max Hardberger to “extract” or steal back ships that have been illegitimately seized by putting together a mission-impossible team to sail them into international waters under cover of darkness.  It’s a high stakes assignment—if Max or his crew are caught, they risk imprisonment or death.
 
Seized takes readers behind the scenes of the multibillion dollar maritime industry, as he recounts his efforts to retrieve freighters and other vessels from New Orleans to the Caribbean, from East Germany to Vladivostak, Russia, and from Greece to Guatemala.  He resorts to everything from disco dancing to women of the night to distract the shipyard guards, from bribes to voodoo doctors to divert attention and buy the time he needs to sail a ship out of a foreign port without clearance.  Seized is adventure nonfiction at its best.

The Washington Post - Ken Ringle

It's a rollicking ride and all the more so because Hardberger…tells a great story, writes with genuine skill and—just for good measure—hails from New Orleans, the city of pirate Jean Lafitte.

Ch. 1 Through the Reefs on the Naruda 3

Ch. 2 The Patric M 15

Ch. 3 The Bay of Flowers 42

Ch. 4 Forty-Seven Crop Dusters 62

Ch. 5 Adrift on the Percival J 86

Ch. 6 Annie's Revenge 117

Ch. 7 The Professor Kurilov Leaves Port 142

Ch. 8 Into the Storm on the Devi Parek 172

Ch. 9 Battling Pirates 203

Ch. 10 Greek Easter on the Fontanka Saga 228

Ch. 11 A Mexican Brothel and the Petro Chem IV 243

Ch. 12 Stealing Back the Maya Express 257

Acknowledgments 287

Index 289