Florian Max Hardberger (born November 19, 1948)''Internet Movie Database'' – Max Hardberger
/ref> is an American adventurer, ship captain,

aviator An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators because they a ...

, ship recovery specialist,

admiralty law Maritime law or admiralty law is a body of law that governs nautical issues and private maritime disputes. Admiralty law consists of both domestic law on maritime activities, and conflict of laws, private international law governing the relations ...

yer, and author of maritime fiction and nonfiction adventures.

Education

Hardberger received his high school degree in 1966 from the Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee. He became a licensed aircraft pilot at the age of 16 while at Castle Heights.Rivault, Mike
"Freighter Repo Man"
''University of New Orleans Alumni Magazine'', Fall 2007 Hardberger attended college at

Nicholls State University Nicholls State University is a public university in Thibodaux, Louisiana. Founded in 1948, Nicholls is part of the University of Louisiana System. Originally named Francis T. Nicholls Junior College, the university is named for Francis T. Nichol ...

in Thibodaux, Louisiana, then transferred to the

University of New Orleans The University of New Orleans (UNO) is a Public university, public research university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. First opened in 1958 as Louisiana State University in New Orleans, it is the largest public university and one of t ...

for another two years of study. In 1969, he graduated early with a BA in English. During college, Hardberger became a scuba diver, sailor, and

navigator A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's prim ...

. After college, he took creative writing at the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (U of I, UIowa, or Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized int ...

(commonly known as the "

Iowa Writers' Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a graduate-level creative writing program. At 89 years, it is the oldest writing program offering a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in the United States. Its acceptance rate is between 2 ...

"), where in 1972, he received an MFA in Fiction and Poetry.Schoon, Amy
"The Good Pirate"
''University of Iowa Alumni Magazine'', February 2008 In 1998, Hardberger earned a ''Juris Doctor'' degree from

Northwestern California University School of Law The Northwestern California University School of Law is an online law school registered in Sacramento, California, founded in 1982. It is approved and accredited by the Committee of Bar Examiners of the State Bar of California, and is authorized ...

in Sacramento, California, and was admitted to the

State Bar of California The State Bar of California is an administrative division of the Supreme Court of California which licenses attorneys and regulates the practice of law in California. It is responsible for managing the admission of lawyers to the practice of law ...

Professional career

Teaching English and playing music: 1969–1976

After college, Hardberger started his professional career with a short stint teaching English at Mandeville High School in Louisiana. He then worked as a newspaper reporter for the ''Houma Daily Guide'' in

Houma, Louisiana Houma ( ) is the largest city in and the parish seat of Terrebonne Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is also the largest principal city of the Houma– Bayou Cane– Thibodaux metropolitan statistical area. The city's governme ...

. He left the newspaper to explore Mexico in an old school bus before returning to the United States to attend graduate school. After he received his MFA degree in 1972, Hardberger taught English at All Saints Episcopal School in

Vicksburg, Mississippi Vicksburg is a historic city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the county seat. The population was 21,573 at the 2020 census. Located on a high bluff on the east bank of the Mississippi River across from Louisiana, Vicksburg ...

. He left teaching to work as a drummer in various

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

bands on the Chitlin Circuit.

Oilfield worker and pilot: 1977–1985

In 1977, Hardberger returned to Louisiana to work as a deckhand and then as a mate on the oilfield supply vessel ''Magcobar Mercury'', in the Gulf of Mexico. After he earned a captain's license, Hardberger's employer sent him to the Dresser-Magcobar Drilling Fluids School in Houston to learn how to become a drilling fluids engineer. Hardberger initially worked in oilfields off the Louisiana and Mississippi

Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South or the South Coast, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Tex ...

and then worked as a drilling fluids consultant in Guatemala during the

civil war A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...

. Between oilfield hitches, Hardberger continued his flying lessons, earning

commercial Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

and flight instructor licenses, and took a wide variety of flying jobs, including towing banners, dusting crops, doing nightly check runs for banks, and transporting dead bodies for mortuaries. Hardberger returned to the classroom for the 1984–85 school year, when he taught English and world history at Pope John Paul II High School (Slidell, Louisiana). He briefly returned to the oilfields of Guatemala in 1985, then began crop dusting on a full-time basis in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. At the end of the 1986 crop dusting season, Hardberger traveled to Miami to search for new work.

Ship captain: 1986–1990

When Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier was overthrown as the ruler of Haiti in 1986, trade opened up between the Caribbean nation and the United States. After Hardberger left crop dusting, he found work on the Miami River as the captain of a small freighter. Among his commands was the ''Erika'', a small freighter that transported cargo throughout the Caribbean. Hardberger's voyages on the ''Erika'' were the basis of his 1998 semi-autobiographical novel, ''Freighter Captain''.Weikel, Dan
"He's His Own Port Authority"
''Los Angeles Times'', March 1, 2007

Recovering vessels: 1990–present

Hardberger left the ''Erika'' to work for a Miami-based ship owner, MorganPrice & Co., as port captain responsible for overseeing port calls by the company's ships. During this period, a MorganPrice freighter, the ''Patric M'', was seized by a shipper in

Puerto Cabello Puerto Cabello () is a city on the north coast of Venezuela. It is located in Carabobo State, about 210 km west of Caracas. As of 2011, the city had a population of around 182,400. The city is home to the largest and busiest port in the count ...

, Venezuela. This required Hardberger to sail the vessel out of port under the cover of night and without clearance, in violation of Venezuelan law. The operation was Hardberger's first vessel "extraction" and is detailed in his autobiography, ''Seized''. Hardberger left MorganPrice in 1990 to form his own marine consultancy business in Louisiana. He was periodically retained by shipowners to extract their vessels from lawless ports without clearance from local authorities. In 1998, following his admission to the California Bar, Hardberger began to practice maritime law alongside his marine consultancy and vessel extraction business. In 2002, he formed the ship repossession company Vessel Extractions, LLC ("VessEx") to extract vessels illegitimately detained or seized in foreign countries. In 2004, Hardberger was featured in

the Learning Channel TLC is an American multinational cable television, cable and satellite television, satellite television network owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks, Networks division of Warner Bros. Discovery. First established in 1980 as The Learn ...

series ''Repo Men: Stealing for a Living'', in a segment titled "Repo Adventurer", documenting his extraction of a 10,000-ton freighter from Haiti during the 2004 rebellion and his delivery of the vessel to her mortgagee in the Bahamas.Watson, Will
"Just What the Witch Doctor Ordered"
''Fairplay International Shipping Weekly'', April 26, 2007

Writing

Hardberger's first book was ''Deadweight: Owning the Ocean Freighter'' (1994), a textbook on ship ownership. He followed ''Deadweight'' with his first novel, ''Freighter Captain'' (1998), a semi-autobiographical account of his adventures as a ship captain in the Caribbean. Hardberger then moved from maritime subjects to a murder mystery with his 1999 novel, ''The Jumping-Off Place'',WikiReadia – ''The Jumping-Off Place''
/ref> which was a tribute to the

hardboiled Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...

detective novels of

Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive durin ...

and

Dashiell Hammett Samuel Dashiell Hammett ( ; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the characters he created are Sam Spade ('' The Ma ...

. On April 6, 2010, Hardberger's autobiography about his ship recovery adventures, titled ''Seized! A Sea Captain's Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters'', was published by the

Broadway Books Broadway Books is an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.. It released its first list in Fall 1996. Broadway was founded in 1995 as a unit of Bantam Doubleday Dell, a unit of Bertelsmann. Bertelsmann acquire ...

imprint of

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

.Hardberger, Max
''Seized: A Sea Captain's Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters''
Broadway Books, 2010

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hardberger, Max 1948 births Living people American non-fiction writers California lawyers Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni Maritime writers Nicholls State University alumni Writers from Baton Rouge, Louisiana University of New Orleans alumni