Michael J. Tougias has 7 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 10 ratings. The most-rated is The Finest Hours.
The Finest Hours
Summary
In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor’easter in years. As the weather wreaked havoc on land, the freezing Atlantic became a wind-whipped zone of peril, setting the stage for one of the most heroic rescue stories ever lived. On February 18, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, were in the same horrifying predicament. Built with “dirty steel,” and not prepared to withstand such ferocious seas, both tankers split in two, leaving the dozens of men on board utterly at the Atlantic’s mercy. The Finest Hours is the gripping, true story of the valiant attempt to rescue the souls huddling inside the broken halves of the two ships. The spellbinding tale is overflowing with breathtaking scenes, as boats capsize, bows and sterns crash into one another, and men hurl themselves into the raging sea in a terrifying battle for survival. Not all of the 84 men caught at sea in the midst of that brutal storm survived, but considering the odds, it’s a miracle - and a testament to their bravery - that any at all came home to tell their tales.
©2009 Casey Sherman and Michael Tougias (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Overboard!
Summary
In early May of 2005, Captain Tom Tighe and first mate, Loch Reidy, of the sailboat Almeisan welcomed three new crew members, two men and a woman, for a five-day voyage from Connecticut to Bermuda. While Tighe and Reidy had made the journey countless times, the rest of the crew were paying passengers learning about offshore sailing—and looking for adventure. Four days into their voyage, they got adventure but nothing that they had expected or had any training to handle. A massive storm struck, sweeping Tighe and Reidy from the boat. The remaining crew members somehow managed to stay aboard the vessel as it was torn apart by wind and water. Overboard! follows the simultaneous desperate struggles of boat passengers and the captain and first mate fighting for their lives in the sea.
©2010 Michael J. Tougias (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Storm Too Soon
Summary
A heart-stopping true-life tale of maritime disaster,survival, and daring rescue from a master storyteller. Seventy-foot waves batter a torn life raft 250 miles out tosea in one of the world's most dangerous places, the Gulf Stream. Hanging on to the raft are three men, a Canadian, a Brit, and their captain, Jean Pierre de Lutz, a dual citizen of America and France. Their capsized forty-seven-foot sailboat has filled with water and disappeared below the tempestuous sea. The giant waves repeatedly toss the men out of their tiny vessel, and JP, with ninebroken ribs, is hypothermic and on the verge of death. The captain, however, is a remarkably tough character, having survived a brutal boyhood, and now he must rely on the same inner strength to outlast the storm. Trying to reach these survivors before it's too late are four brave coast guardsmen battling hurricane - force winds in their Jayhawk helicopter. They know the waves will be extreme, but when they arrive they are astounded to find that the monstrous seas have waves reaching eighty feet. Lowering the wind-whipped helicopter to drop a rescue swimmer into such chaos will be extremely dangerous. The pilots wonder if they have a realistic chance of saving the sailors clinging to the broken life raft and if they will be able to even retrieve their own rescue swimmer from the towering seas. Once they commit to the rescue, they find themselves in almost as much trouble as the survivors, facing one life-and-death moment after the next. Also caught in the storm are three other boats, each one ina Mayday situation. Of the ten people on these boats, only six will ever see land again. Spellbinding, harrowing, and meticulously researched, A Storm Too Soon is a vivid account of the powerful collision between the forces of nature and the human will to survive. Author Michael J. Tougias, known for his fast-paced writing style and character-driven stories, tells this true saga in the present tense to give the reader a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat immediacy. A Storm Too Soon is Tougias at his masterful best and a heart-pounding narrative of survival, the power of the human spirit, and one of the most incredible rescues ever attempted.
©2013 Michael J. Tougias (P)2014 Blackstone Audio
Ten Hours Until Dawn
Summary
During the height of the blizzard of 1978, the tanker Global Hope floundered on the shoals off the Massachusetts coast. The Coast Guard dispatched a patrol boat, but was soon in as much trouble as the tanker. Then pilot boat captain Frank Quirk, hearing of the Coast Guard's troubles on his radio, decided to act. He gathered his crew of four, readied his 49-foot steel boat, the Can Do, and entered the maelstrom of the blizzard that was to become known as the "Storm of the Century". Encountering one of the most monstrous seas ever recorded, Quirk struggled through the night to keep his boat from being driven to the depths of the sea, maintaining contact with a local ham-radio operator through his hand-held battery-powered radio. We know that the Can Do stayed afloat past three a.m. Then there was silence.
©2005 Michael J. Tougias (P)2006 Blackstone Audiobooks
Rescue of the Bounty
Summary
Rescue of the Bounty is the harrowing story of the sinking and rescue of Bounty - the tall ship used in the classic 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty - which was caught in the path of Hurricane Sandy with 16 aboard. On Thursday, October 25, 2012, Captain Robin Walbridge made the fateful decision to sail Bounty from New London, Connecticut, to St. Petersburg, Florida. Walbridge was well aware that a hurricane was forecast to travel north from the Caribbean toward the Eastern Seaboard. Yet the captain was determined to sail. As he explained to his crew of 15: A ship is always safer at sea than in port. He intended to sail around the hurricane and told the crew that anyone who did not want to come on the voyage could leave the ship - there would be no hard feelings. As fate would have it, no one took the captain up on his offer. Four days into the voyage, Superstorm Sandy made an almost direct hit on Bounty. The vessel's failing pumps could not keep up with the incoming water. The ship began to lose power as it was beaten and rocked by hurricane winds that spanned 800 miles. A few hours later, in the dark of night, the ship suddenly overturned 90 miles off the North Carolina coast, in the "Graveyard of the Atlantic", sending the crew tumbling into an ocean filled with towering 30-foot waves. The Coast Guard then launched one of the most complex and massive rescues in its history, flying two Jayhawk helicopter crews into the hurricane and lowering rescue swimmers into the raging seas again and again, despite the danger to their own lives. In the uproar heard across American media in the days following, a single question persisted: Why did the captain decide to sail?
©2014 Michael J. Tougias and Douglas A. Campbell (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
So Close to Home
Summary
A true story of men and women pitted against the sea during World War II - and an unforgettable portrait of the determination of the human spirit. On May 19, 1942, a U-boat in the Gulf of Mexico stalked its prey 50 miles away from New Orleans. Captained by 29-year-old Iron Cross recipient Erich Würdemann, the submarine set its sights on the freighter Heredia with 59 souls onboard. Most of the crew were merchant seamen, but there were also a handful of civilians, including the Downs family, consisting of the parents, Ray Sr. and Ina; along with their two children, eight-year-old Ray Jr., nicknamed "Sonny", and 11-year-old Lucille. Fast asleep in their berths, the Downs family had no notice that two torpedoes were heading their way. When the ship exploded, Ina and Lucille became separated from Ray Sr. and Sonny. An inspiring historical narrative, So Close to Home tells the story of the Downs family as they struggled against sharks, hypothermia, drowning, and dehydration in their effort to survive the aftermath of this deadly attack off the American coast.
©2016 Michael J. Tougias (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
King Philip's War
Summary
The harrowing story of one of America's first and costliest wars - featuring a new foreword by best-selling author Nathaniel Philbrick At once an in-depth history of this pivotal war and a guide to the historical sites where the ambushes, raids, and battles took place, King Philip's War expands our understanding of American history and provides insight into the nature of colonial and ethnic wars in general. Through a careful reconstruction of events, including first-person accounts, and by providing information on the exact locations of more than 50 battles, King Philip's War is useful as well as informative. Students of history, colonial war buffs, those interested in Native American history, and anyone who is curious about how this war affected a particular New England town, will find important insights into one of the most seminal events to shape the American mind and continent.
©1999 Eric B. Schultz and Michael J. Tougias; foreword copyright 2017 by Nathaniel Philbrick (P)2020 Tantor