The descriptive data in this book, first published in 1989, were obtained from participant observation and interviews with merchant seaman current and retired.

This publication is the eighth in the series The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War. The publication focuses on the sealift and logistic operations during the war an

"Leon Fink, one of the world's best labor historians, has gone to sea and returned with a powerful yarn about the seafaring workers who built the global economy