Ten Hours Until Dawn: The True Story of Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Tougias
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 242085
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0312334362
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.916345
EAN: 9780312334369
ASIN: 0312334362
Publication Date: May 30, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In the midst of the Blizzard of 1978, the tanker Global Hope floundered on the shoals in Salem Sound off the Massachusetts coast. The Coast Guard heard the Mayday calls and immediately dispatched a patrol boat. Within an hour, the Coast Guard boat was in as much trouble as the tanker, having lost its radar, depth finder, and engine power in horrendous seas. Pilot boat Captain Frank Quirk was monitoring the Coast Guard’s efforts by radio, and when he heard that the patrol boat was in jeopardy, he decided to act. Gathering his crew of four, he readied his forty-nine-foot steel boat, the Can Do, and entered the maelstrom of the blizzard.
Using dozens of interview and audiotapes that recorded every word exchanged between Quirk and the Coast Guard, Tougias has written a devastating, true account of bravery and death at sea.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Would be great if it stuck to the story July 17, 2008
I think the author really is a good writer and researcher, and enjoy the book where it is telling the story which is promises to tell. The book shows evidence that Tougias didn't want to take the time to rewrite the plot progression as he discovered critical new details after the book was half written. Also, there are not enough "interesting" details of the story to fill a book which can be sold for a standard book price, so the author and editors saw fit to fill it up with digressions, side stories, and over-the-top speculation.
Side stories: No problem with a side story or two with a close association to the primary story, but many of the stories have no relation to the Can Do at all. These stories are interesting in themselves and I'd like to read them in an anthology of nautical disasters. But when story-after-story like this are inserted between chapters of a chronological story, it massacres the suspense and the flow. For those side stories which are justified, instead of setting them up chronologically so you learn to love the characters, they are thrown in where the author happened to be at when writing the book (author says that he had already written the first two chapters when he found out about... )
Digressions: Lessons about nautical history, emergency survival, survival psychology, and any many other topics would be fine if they were short enough to not stop the flow--- but they are very distracting here because they are very long and very frequent. If I want to learn all about emergency survival for mountain climbing, I would much rather find an "expert" on that topic on the web or in a dedicated book than reading the haphazard and distracting summaries here.
Speculations: A little speculation may be necessary when covering an event with no surviving witnesses, but some of the late chapters are 95% fanciful speculation about what each crew member may have been thinking, and even how they looked at each other. One egregious speculation which totally conflicts with the other speculations, which praise the determination and pertinacity of the principals, is that they may have discussed the cowardly option of killing themselves with Frank's hand gun.
Subjectivity: It's apparent to anybody who reads this book that the author lost all objectivity by the time he wrote the later chapters, probably from the close and emotional relationships he had formed with surviving family members by then. Every single incident discussed attributes the most noble sentiments and impulses to the primary characters, and to the author's friends. It's funny that at the time of the accident, each character with a family had a perfect family life. Frank was the perfect family man, though he slept on his boat instead of at home most of the time. A suicide occurs late in the book, but it somehow happened in spite of the perfect family environment, with no influence of drugs, loneliness, or romances... of course it was the inevitable outcome of a death in the Can Do 4 years earlier.
Childish mysticism: I put this last, because most people in the US do prefer to pretend that guardian angles protect people, that dead people visit and help survivors, that the dead float around in heaven chit-chatting with people who died years earlier, and that ghosts serve as muses for writers. However, it annoys educated people when adult writers start with the assumption that these fictions are true, and apply no skepticism when, for example, an alcoholic reports waking up in the middle of the night to a visitation, then goes back to sleep. A responsible adult must at least consider the possibility that in the middle of the night people may dream about what they wish for. Suggestion for Tougias: Grow up.
 Harowing tale March 5, 2008
This is a compelling story about real people doing what most wouldn't think of doing. It's infuriating that the captain of the freighter was so thoughtless. If he had been anything but a complete waste of time, Can Do would still be here. Read this book carefully and learn what is happening out there. The media ignores fishing and the ocean unless something bad happens. Your life is affected by the ocean and you should know how.
Ten Hours Until Dawn August 23, 2007
A very well researched and documented story. As a member of the USCG and having been stationed at Gloucester Station and having been born and brought up in the area of the story I found the book extremely interesting. Highly recommend this book to any persons interested in the true story of the men and women of the Coast Guard.
Life of a Coasty January 16, 2007
As a former active Coast Guard sailor (Korean War) I found this book reading at it's best. Tells the life Coast Guard people, along with the harbor pilots, fishermen and others that "Go Down To The Sea in Ships" can encounter.
 Compelling story, but flat delivery. October 16, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Michael J. Tougias, Ten Hours Until Dawn: The True Story of Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do (St. Martin's, 2005) ***
After the runaway success of The Perfect Storm and In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, I rather expected there to be a flood, pardon the pun, of nonfictional tales of derring-do on the high seas. It never happened; Sebastian Junger turned his attention landward, Nathaniel Philbrick has only released a single book since, and the rest of the literary world seems to have met this possible developing trend with a thundering silence. Until, that is, Mike Tougias released Ten Hours Until Dawn, set in the same basic space of The Perfect Storm, but a number of years in the past, during the Blizzard of 1978, a storm that will long be remembered by anyone who happened to be living in the northeast at the time.
Ten Hours Until Dawn was written by a journalist, which is not normally a bad thing. The downside to it is that journalism makes for great half-pagers, but across two hundred-odd pages, it can get a little dry. Tougias has a very worthwhile story here, and tells it competently; however, it could have been told a bit better.
It's the story of Frank Quirk and his pilot boat Can Do, based out of Gloucester, Massachusetts. When the Global Hope, an oil taker, runs aground a few miles south of Gloucester, the harbor patrol sends a couple of boats out after it, and those two boats get caught in the Blizzard of '78, which roars out of nowhere. One gets lost, and the Can Do goes out after it. Eight hours later, the Can Do, also lost, makes its final radio transmission. From the radio transcripts and the aftermath of the storm, Tougias weaves the tale of what may have happened aboard the Can Do that night, as well as the tales of what happened to those two Coast Guard ships (both of which made it back to port) and the Global Hope. There are a number of times during this narrative where Tougias' journalist style serves it well; the simple just-the-facts-ma'am delivery adds a depth to the action. It stumbles, however, when the subject is the humans themselves; even when Tougias is relating the worlds of the survivors, the prose seems oddly wooden in spots, as if the goal is to check in, get a quote, and get back to the action.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good book, and an incident that certainly deserved to be enshrined in the national consciousness. Pick it up, give it a go. ***
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