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  CONTENTS

  Foreword from Josh and Jake

  Prologue

  1. Saltwater in His Veins

  2. Least Likely to Succeed

  3. Drinkin’, Druggin’, Ridin’

  4. Captain Kid

  5. Beauty and the Pirate

  6. Staggering to the Altar

  7. Raising Hell, Raising Kids

  8. From the Bayou to the Bering

  9. Stepmommy Dearest

  10. Deadliest Voyages

  11. Deadliest Catch

  12. A Star Rises in the North

  13. A Warning Shot

  14. The Final Voyage

  Epilogue: Back in the Bering Forever

  Photographs

  About the Authors

  This book is for all the Deadliest Catch fans who supported the old man from day one. You all saw in our Dad the same thing we saw in him every day of our lives. You welcomed him into your living rooms each Tuesday night with open arms and made him a part of your family. Dad was always so appreciative and thankful to all the fans around the world. You were all there when we lost him, and we think of you as our extended family. Dad’s spirit will live on forever.

  As Dad always said:

  You can watch things happen . . .

  You can make things happen . . .

  Or you can wonder what the fuck happened . . .

  We’ve taken Dad’s words to heart, and we hope you all do the same in your lives.

  We thank you for all your love and support.

  Josh and Jake Harris

  FOREWORD

  Everybody who watches Deadliest Catch knows Phil Harris. They watched him successfully navigate the Cornelia Marie through the Bering Sea in horrendous conditions, keeping his boat upright and functioning despite towering waves and mountains of ice. They saw him pull upward of a million tons of crab out of the water over the years, filling his quota in good times and bad. They admired his ability to mold a crew of tough, independent-minded deckhands into an efficient team, becoming the father figure for a floating family of fishermen.

  Viewers laughed at his jokes, felt the force of his dominating personality, and were left in awe of his courage.

  And then they cried when he died way too soon at fifty-three.

  But Phil, our dad, wasn’t a TV character created by a writer and portrayed by an actor. He was a real person with a family, a history, and a life off camera every bit as intense and entertaining as the one seen worldwide on Discovery Channel.

  That was the Phil Harris that TV viewers never saw.

  Three years after his death, we feel it’s time his millions of fans get to know the man behind the legend. That’s why we have written this book.

  In these pages, readers will meet Grant, our grandfather, the first member of our family to shove off from land, setting us on a course through the Bering Sea that has been followed for three generations.

  Our father didn’t just materialize in a ship’s wheelhouse. Here, readers will see his struggles, doubts, and fears as he overcame the many obstacles that separated him from his dream of becoming a crab boat captain.

  At the age of eight, he lost his mother to cancer. In high school, he was voted Least Likely to Succeed. The men whom Dad fished with on his first boat also put him in that category. They only took him on board because he agreed to work for free. He was the greenhorn, the lowest position on the boat, and his first captain mocked him, predicting for all to hear that he wouldn’t last.

  That was enough to instill in Dad the determination to prove them all wrong. And his resolve still drove him long after he had succeeded beyond all expectations to become the most respected captain in the entire Bering Sea crab fleet.

  When executive producer Thom Beers began Deadliest Catch in 2005, it was immediately clear to him that Dad was the logical choice to be the leading man in the series.

  Readers of this book will learn about our father’s life on land from his crazy days in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, to the back roads of his hometown, Bothell, Washington, where he was every bit as much a folk hero in the seat of his Harley or one of his Corvettes as he was on the top deck of the Cornelia Marie.

  We will bring our mother, Mary, into the spotlight for the first time along with the many buddies who ran with Dad over the years.

  We want to show how he was as a husband, a father, and a friend. We want people to know why he was our hero as well, and we’ll share all that we learned from him that we will carry with us the rest of our lives.

  And we want people to know that, while he may have led a wild life on shore, when the Cornelia Marie or any of the other boats Dad skippered left the safety of a harbor for the dangerous waters of the Bering, he was a serious, dedicated, accomplished captain, revered among his peers. The number-one responsibility of any captain is to bring his boat and crew back safely, and no one took that obligation more seriously than Dad.

  He never let his desire for full pots of crab override his determination to steer his boat into the safest position to retrieve his catch. Though he obviously felt a special closeness for us, his sons, above all the other members of his crew, he was just as concerned with their well-being as he was with ours.

  When it came to finding the crab, nobody was more skilled than Dad. Every captain has his methods and his secret locations, but our father’s seemed the most rewarding.

  Not a day goes by for either of us, no matter where we are in the world, without someone coming up and telling us how much he misses seeing our dad. We hope that, for all his fans, this book will in some small way bring him back to life.

  To tell this story, we have enlisted the aid of New York Times best-selling author Steve Springer and fellow writer Blake Chavez. They have talked to the key people in Dad’s life and are presenting a picture of him that, while not always flattering, is honest and inspiring. He wouldn’t want it any other way.

  Like Dad always said, “When it comes to my life, nothing is out of bounds.”

  So here it is, the Phil Harris you thought you knew, and the Phil Harris you will be seeing for the first time.

  —Josh and Jake Harris

  PROLOGUE

  The mystic northern lights dance a scintillating, supernatural neon jig in the Alaskan sky.

  God’s country.

  But stray farther to the southwest and the stark beauty of this little corner near the top of the world can lose its appeal to all but the hardiest of travelers. The terrain is rougher, the area barely habitable, the surrounding water even more menacing.

  These are the Aleutian Islands, bordering on the Bering Sea, where the brave souls who challenge the harsh conditions share the area with polar bears, sea otters, and bald eagles, just a sliver of the population that includes twenty-five varieties of marine mammals, hundreds of invertebrate species, 110 million birds representing forty species, and 450 different kinds of fish.

  Most of the people who venture into this frontier are part of the fishing industry. Some work in one of the area’s many processing plants. Others man the fishing fleet that braves the notorious Bering Sea.

  The fishing vessels are not of the ilk favored by commercial fishermen on the East Coast of the United States. Crab boats on the Bering Sea are more than 100 feet long, some stretching to more than 180. East Coast boats are normally one-quarter that length. The larger size is necessary to face waves that can s
oar as high as a four-story building.

  Suffice it to say that a different breed of men fish the Bering Sea.

  The crab fishing grounds encompass much of the 884,900 square miles of the Bering, the third-largest sea in the world. It is the northernmost region of the Pacific Ocean, bounded by Russia, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and the Bering Strait, beyond which is the Arctic Ocean.

  The Bering has long been an enigma to those who ply her waters, a sea with a split personality. On any given day, the water may be as smooth as glass with a gentle breeze stirring the call of seagulls in the distance. On these occasions, the sea is nothing less than majestic. Sea otters float lazily on their backs, a whale swims in the distance, and seals, sea lions, and porpoises play as dolphins, a good omen to many sailors, race alongside an intruding fleet.

  Within hours, though, the calm can be shattered, the beauty of a natural aquarium overshadowed by a deadly display of nature’s power. A single arctic storm can range over a thousand square miles. The fishing fleets sometimes face hurricane-force winds, the strongest ever recorded in the Bering Sea reaching 159 miles per hour. Sets of waves, the highest ever seen estimated to be over 100 feet tall, can bring tens of thousands of gallons of water crashing onto the decks. Then there’s the burglar of the sea that strikes when it is least expected: the rogue wave. It’s a monster swirl that caves in against the grain of the sets rolling in, erupting in a wall of water.

  And, as if the wind and water weren’t trouble enough, there’s the temperature. It can drop to forty below in winter, the prime season for crab fishing. When the mercury drops to such menacing levels, even the ocean spray freezes, and the deckhands are flayed with splinters of ice. Something as simple as urinating can be an adventure. When the crab boat crew does so outdoors under those frigid conditions, the urine freezes before it hits the deck.

  There is ice everywhere on the boat: on the bow, the deck, the 800-pound crab-catching steel cages commonly known as pots, the ropes, the winch, even on the crew’s moustaches. The layers of ice can weigh tons, which serves to make the boat top-heavy. As the ice builds up, the vessel becomes more and more likely to be rolled onto her side, a virtual death sentence for all aboard.

  To avoid such a fate, the deckhands must break off the ice with sledgehammers. The crew can spend hours in the tough, urgent work of de-icing the boat. But often, once the ship is safe and fishing has commenced, the ice returns and the same chore must be performed again just hours later.

  Boats on the Bering are mandated by law to keep a supply of outfits known as survival suits on board at all times. Crews are routinely tested by the Coast Guard to ensure they know how to put on this gear in a timely manner. Doing so in less than a minute is crucial to staying alive in the event that the craft sinks.

  There is a general understanding between the Bering Sea and those who fish her: fall into her waters without a survival suit and you die.

  There have been exceptions, but they are rare indeed. Anyone who tumbles into the water in subzero conditions can become paralyzed, as hypothermia sets in almost instantly. The vital body organs fail and the unfortunate soul finds himself in the throes of death within minutes.

  That’s usually not enough time for a rescue operation. Because of the great size of most crab boats, it takes the vessel almost ten minutes to maneuver a U-turn and come back. And if the seas are high or darkness has set in, the search for a lost crew member becomes even more difficult.

  There are still more hazards to avoid. Rough seas and icy temperatures are the ideal conditions for the killer whales of the Bering Sea to go hunting. Nothing chills the soul like watching a whale just off the bow as it feasts on a great white shark.

  Then, there are the icebergs. The Titanic didn’t survive even a single confrontation with a mountainous mass of ice. Crabbers, in much smaller boats, face those huge killers every season. Sometimes the crabs congregate near the ice floes. And crabbers go where the crabs are.

  Just being on board a crab boat is hazardous, but nobody is ever just on board. The fishermen are there to work, and their work is grueling. Take the brutal and seemingly never-ending task of stacking the eight-hundred-pound crab traps. Though a winch lifts the pots and delivers them on deck, they must be grounded so that the stacks are even and don’t collapse onto the crew. Positioning the pots becomes a matter of muscle because they don’t respond much to finesse. Even when they are properly stacked, the pots can tumble when they become caked with ice.

  The bodies of crew members take a beating from head to toe. A crabber can expect to have his tailbone rubbed raw from slamming against the pots as he works. A bloody back and hindquarters are just part of the job.

  The extreme changes in weather and temperature tend to wreak havoc on a deckhand’s complexion. The toughened facial skin peels off in strips when exposed to extreme cold on such a regular basis.

  The hands of a Bering Sea deckhand make those of a professional bull rider look manicured and pampered in comparison. Many deckhands are not able to retain all the digits on their hands. The fingers that survive grow gnarled, swollen, and misshapen. A crab boat deckhand sews his own stitches as readily as a carpenter applies a Band-Aid.

  The dangers of such a job are reflected in data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that ranks commercial fishing as the occupation with the highest fatality rate: 121.2 deaths per 100,000 workers, thirty-five times greater than the average for the overall American workforce. Loggers rank second with 102.4 fatalities per 100,000, followed by pilots and flight engineers at 57.0. The death rate for Bering Sea crabbers, in particular, is even higher still, at 260 per 100,000, according to a study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Eighty percent of those Bering Sea fatalities are due to drowning or hypothermia.

  Pound for pound, crabbers are the toughest bastards on earth.

  This is the life that our father, Phillip Charles Harris, was destined for when he was brought into the world on December 19, 1956.

  CHAPTER 1

  SALTWATER IN HIS VEINS

  It is dour; it freezes hard; it is difficult to navigate when the ice crowds down; and it punishes those who miscalculate its power. But it also teems with a rich animal life and rewards good hunters and fishermen enormously.

  —James Michener on the Bering Sea in his novel Alaska

  His name is on the lips of every man who has ever sailed north of the Aleutian Islands. But if Vitus Jonassen Bering’s name had not been affixed to the Bering Sea, his role nearly three centuries ago in exploring the then-uncharted body of water would by now have been long forgotten.

  Bering was a Danish-born sea captain who sailed under the Russian flag. It might seem strange that a foreigner would be given such a central role in the Russian navy, but it wasn’t that unusual in an era when the Russian czar, Peter the Great, was always on the lookout for exceptional sailors. He wasn’t concerned with their nationality, only their ability to help maintain his country’s sea power.

  Born in 1681 in Horsens, Jutland, the part of Denmark that connects it to the European continent, Bering took to the seas at the age of fifteen. In the next seven years, he sailed widely, reaching both the Danish East and West Indies.

  He was looking for new horizons by age twenty-two, and he found them through Cornelius Cruys, a Norwegian who had become a vice admiral in the Russian navy and was, like Peter the Great, constantly in search of new nautical talent. Bering boarded his first Russian ship in 1703 and went on to distinguish himself in both the Great Northern War against Sweden and the Russo-Turkish War.

  His military successes earned Bering the opportunity to take part in one of the great adventures of his age. Back then, much of the world, including Russia, didn’t know if Asia and North America were separate continents or if they were connected by a land bridge. In 1725, Bering led an expedition to learn the answer while also searching for a northeast passage to China and exploring the possibilities for Russian trade and colonization in North America.
He returned in 1730 to report that Asia and North America were indeed separated by a body of water, one that would later bear his name.

  Three years later, Bering departed again on what became known as the Great Nordic Expedition, leading a group of as many as ten thousand on a journey that would last a decade, although he himself would not live to see the end of it.

  In the summer of 1741, commanding his ship, the St. Peter, but separated by a storm from a sister ship, the St. Paul, Bering reached the coast of Alaska. On July 20, Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German naturalist, became the first European to set foot in Alaska when the St. Peter stopped at Kayak Island, east of Prince William Sound in the Gulf of Alaska.

  He didn’t get to stay long. Fearful of being stranded when winter arrived, Bering ordered Steller back to the ship and kept sailing, first north to the Alaska Peninsula, then west past the Aleutian Islands. But, despite his caution, Bering never made it back home. He was shipwrecked on an island just short of his destination, Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Suffering from starvation and scurvy, he died there along with twenty-eight crew members in December 1741.

  But Bering will not soon be forgotten, because so much of the area—the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait, the Bering Land Bridge, and Bering Island where he died—bears his name, a tribute to the man who reached Alaska decades before the United States even existed.

  Over the centuries, many sea captains, Russian and American, have followed in his wake, venturing into the Bering Sea’s treacherous waters and handing down the region’s seafaring traditions from generation to generation.

  • • •

  For Grant Harris, though, there was no such family tradition, no notable lineage or treasured fishing lore. He didn’t inherit a legacy, but he would certainly pass one on.

  Grant, born in Seattle in 1933, never met his father. His parents were divorced and his father departed before he was born. Grant couldn’t even claim his love of the sea was in his genes, since his father was a steelworker.