Alaska in 1965 was remote, undeveloped, with few visitors, limited communications, a wilderness grounded in the previous century. Into this isolated place goes David Blake, a college dropout from the South whose romantic notions about ships, oceans, storms and intimations of mortality move him to volunteer for duty on the sea.
He is a sailor on the Coast Guard buoy tender Buttercup, a sturdy, squat, unglamorous utility boat her crew calls “scungebucket.” The ship labors in any weather at several missions, most dirty and some hazardous. Blake befriends shipmates, who call themselves “deckrats,” representing an array of personalities, backgrounds, talents and perceptions. They ponder the nuances of existence and realities of their world, and speak with candor and bluntness. Pretense isn’t tolerated and secrets are few inside this coarse, confined vessel.
Blake at first resents the military hierarchy and regrets his long enlistment. In time he appreciates that stolid Buttercup forebears his yearning to experience the sea in all its states and squeeze the brief fullness of life from a vast, hard, elemental world of ineffable beauty.
