All Hearts on Deck: A Personal Account of the 1981-82 Campaigns of the Sea Shepherd
By Frankie Seymour
Canberra: Boris Books, 1993. 180 pp., $19.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Phil Shannon
"Stop ship and prepare for boarding", ordered the captain of a Soviet gunship over the radio. "I'll stop my ship when you stop killing whales", came the reply from the Sea Shepherd.
So ran the confrontation between the anti-whaling ship and the Soviet navy off the eastern coast of Russia in 1981. Frankie Seymour, DSS clerk in Gosford, was on the Sea Shepherd and has recorded the events and some poetry and philosophical reflections in All Hearts on Deck.
The early '80s was a time when the massacre of whales was cresting the wave of environmental concern. Frankie felt the urge to get out there and stop the slaughter:
"All that I love is dying in the dawn/ How should I sit at home and merely mourn?"
She joins the crew of the Sea Shepherd (a rogue Greenpeace ship) aiming to sail into Russian waters, track down the pirate whaling ship, the Zvesdney, and disrupt its operations or disable the ship.
All is not smooth sailing, however. It is a toss-up whether violent sea-sickness causes her more trouble than the political and social hazards on board. The Sea Shepherd captain is chauvinist and imposes a "feudal structure" on the crew.
Most put up with it for their higher aim of saving whales but they nearly founder over the many personal abrasions that are "inevitable when you stuff twenty eight people, most of them total strangers ... together in a twenty three berth trawler and drop them in the middle of the ocean". Disputes are particularly fierce over "food morality," with carnivores, ovo-lacto vegetarians and vegans strenuously defending their positions.
Nevertheless, they do manage to achieve a collective camaraderie in their quest to save whales. Although the two ships never meet, the Zvesdney is forced into hiding.
They do, however, meet the Soviet gunship. In the face of gun-bristling menace, Frankie reflects on their position with the humour of the battler against long odds. The gunship runs up a signal flag which sends our heroes searching their code books, only to find the closest meaning to be "How many casualties do you have?" — "Not a reassuring question under the circumstances", writes Frankie.
Or "Stop ship and prepare for boarding by USSR", comes a radio message — "What, all 250 million of you?" is the larrikin reply.
But behind Frankie's splendidly humorous anecdotes lies her deep commitment to the cause in hand, and the "fundamental truth" about animal rights that "pain and grief and fear feel the same no matter what kind of body you happen to get born in, and death is just as permanent". Life has meaning for her when trying to save animals, the environment and people, and working towards the "dismantling of the economic system which has to date prevented all these things".
Frankie has "always seen environmental protection and social welfare issues as inextricable", and she believes that "animal rights and human rights are indivisible". Frankie has been, and is, an active unionist, duck rescuer, Gulf War protester, Roxby blockader, and animal liberationist. Some will argue with Frankie making animal rights the "hinge" of all this, but she is far from the "eccentric with a vision most of my society regard as too ridiculous to even be considered dangerous".
This is an absorbing read; writing comes as easily and gracefully to Frankie as — well, ocean-going to a whale, although she does come perilously close at times to beaching herself on the mystical sandbars of the New Age. A bit short on rigour in the social theory department, her book is nevertheless a ripping good sea adventure with a quirky twist.
[Available through Boris Books, PO Box 1388, Woden ACT 2606. Part of the proceeds go to the Australian and New Zealand Federation of Animal Societies]