British naturalist Redmond O’Hanlon is not a prolific writer, but readers familiar with his grueling memoirs might express concern if his output were more regular. Trawler: A Journey through the North Atlantic is his fourth book in twenty years, not counting an academic study of Joseph Conrad. It follows 1984’s Into the Heart of Borneo, 1988’s In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon, and 1997’s No Mercy: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo, published in the UK as the less ominous Congo Journey. The works live up to their titles’ sensational promise, delivering a requisite dose of exotic locations and near-fatal risk, but O’Hanlon’s oeuvre is closer to that of the Victorian explorers and scientists whom he admires, pioneers such as Alexander Humboldt and Henry Walter Bates. Drawing upon his training as a biologist and literary scholar, O’Hanlon’s work bristles with scientific observation, urbane wit and self-conscious prose, at times descending into dense introspection, as in No Mercy’s nearly inscrutable, Proustian description of feeding a baby gorilla. As in many travel narratives, the journey is often more important than the outcome; observations of the unexpected become more valuable than the object of the original quest, which is often unattainable.
Trawler begins with a premise as ambitious of that of any O’Hanlon book. Paired with a University of Aberdeen doctoral student, he travels to northern Scotland and signs on with the Orkney-based trawler Norlantean for a tour of duty in what promises to be apocalyptic winter weather. Millions of dollars in debt, the skipper is compelled to make the trip; failure means bankruptcy and success demands a crew that’s tough even by regional standards. One of the men offers a nostalgic account of a prison stay, complaining that he was cast out of relative luxury when released for good behavior. Another gruff specimen appears to O’Hanlon as an unreconstructed Pict. Class and regional barriers immediately arise, and O’Hanlon is quickly nicknamed “Worzel Gummidge”, the grizzled Scarecrow of an old BBC children’s program.
O’Hanlon finds the force 12 gales that he seeks, but the demands of losing his mental agility in an insular, sleep-deprived environment proves to be the greater challenge. Unfamiliar with marine biology, he becomes the student of Luke, the younger scientist, and is repeatedly shamed by his inability to identify ocean species. As the men work continuously without rest, they become increasingly verbal; O’Hanlon introduces the theory that the absence of restorative REM sleep demands an alternative emotional outlet, and his prose takes on the quality of punchy, exhausted free association as conversations degenerate into spontaneous outbursts.
Trawler is anti-travel literature. Confined below decks, at the mercy of the primordial chaos of the Faroe-Shetland Channel, forcibly interacting with limited company, there is little sense of a linear journey and a bleak absence of landmarks, leaving only the unchecked thoughts of a weary but inquisitive mind punctuated by manual labor. Occasionally shapeless and full of longueurs, O’Hanlon’s prose reflects his surroundings. He withdraws from the staid, collected observations of the naturalist-writer and enters into more primal territory, where both life and consciousness itself are at risk. In the midst of unchecked nature, the world of the Norlantean is profoundly unnatural, grimly detached from the rhythms of life on land. One crewman, rambling on a sleep-deprived jag, talks about his home life and asks O’Hanlon to write a book that the men can show to their wives and girlfriends and show “how it is.” O’Hanlon’s unique account may disappoint readers seeking a conventional adventure yarn, but it is a unique, occasionally demanding, work that fully delivers on that request.
- Sten Johnson