Word: gulf
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Ever since he became a member of the old Rivers & Harbors Committee in 1933, Michigan's Congressman George Anthony Dondero has championed the seaway. As Public Works Committee chairman, he steered the bill through the House this year despite continued opposition from Atlantic and Gulf ports and from the railroad interests. Two recent developments finally dispelled congressional timidity: 1) the steel industry's ever-growing dependence on Labrador ore, which could be cut off by enemy submarines as long as it must be shipped through East Coast ports, and 2) Canada's decision to build the seaway...
Writers of the sea, like war novelists, test their heroes by putting them through an ordeal. In his semi-documentary novel. Gulf Stream North, Author Earl Conrad pits a simple crew of Florida Negroes against schools of unpalatable fish called menhaden, and gives their humble ordeal moments of tragic dignity...
...five blazing hot days that Gulf Stream North covers, it looks as if no one is going to make a dime. The men mumble against the captain and against the Moona Waa Togue, a leaky, loo-ft. sieve that has been on the seas for decades...
When a boil of Gulf Stream finally points to pogy, and the men in the small boats close their quarter-mile ring of net to draw it in, the menhaden suddenly "thunder" (i.e., make a quivering mass surge) and split the net. Captain Crother follows another school too close to shore, promptly loses a second net when its base is sucked fast into the sandy ocean floor. Still another catch has to be let go when baby sharks begin to shred a third net. In final irony, the Moona Waa Togue is almost within hail of home port with...
More a novel by courtesy than by craft, Gulf Stream North makes what its characters do seem a good deal more real than what they are, makes the special idiom they talk most real of all. Author Conrad regards Gulf Stream North as the completion of an "idiom trilogy" that began with Scottsboro Boy and continued with Rock Bottom. When the men of the Moona Waa Togue "crap up the captain" (praise him), sing their work chanteys ("Who emptied out the bottles from hea-a-ven-n-n, and let the rain fall down-w-w-n-n?"), or joke...