Book Review: Life and Death at Cape Disappointment: Becoming a Surfman on the Columbia River Bar (2021). Christopher J. D’Amelio with Reid Maruyama.

I discovered this unusual and worthwhile memoir last year in a charming little bookstore in Ilwaco, Washington, on a vacation to the southwest Washington coast. That was probably more than coincidence, since most of the action in this intriguing story of a Coast Guard surfman takes place in and around that same small town of Ilwaco, and at the Coast Guard lifeboat station nearby at Cape Disappointment.

Christopher J. D’Amelio was a 19-year old California surfer and swimmer when he enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1995. In the course of beginning to tell his story about his life in the Coast Guard, he talks briefly about why he enlisted, boot camp, the temporary disruptions to his personal life and his relationship to the sweetheart he eventually (and happily) married when he first joined, and his early tours and adventures aboard Coast Guard ships in Alaska and other dangerous areas.

But the heart of his story is about the decade and a half or so he spent at Cape Disappointment in the early 2000s, the last point of land on the southern Washington coast that ends at the mouth of the great Colombia River, where the river flows into the Pacific Ocean. This coastal area has often been called “the graveyard of the Pacific” for its uniquely destructive combination of high winds, waves, surf, tides, and shoals. Since the beginnings of recorded maritime history, hundreds of vessels have sunk just offshore, and the sea has claimed many lives in the process.

For precisely this reason, the U.S. Coast Guard chose this challenging location to create its training school for surfmen – the elite small boat operators whose job it is to brave the worst weather and conditions, and to captain tiny motor lifeboats (from 23 to about 5o feet long) through rain, wind, huge waves and various sorts of disasters, to save lives and where possible bring stranded ships in to safety and calm waters. This was the role for which the author volunteered and was chosen, and after detailing the rigorous selection and training challenges he faced, he takes us along for a ride on some of his most daring and almost unbelievable rescue "cases".

Of all the military services of the United States, I’ve long felt that the Coast Guard is both the most under-appreciated, and the most inspirational. Their mission above all others is to save lives rather than to take them, and many of their members do this crucial function for the rest of us, day and day out, for years and decades, often under the most horrifyingly dangerous conditions.

As a result, a number of their technical specialties are particularly and almost unimaginably daring to most of us, including their storm-trained helicopter and C-13o pilots, and especially their famous rescue swimmers, who routinely jump out of helicopters into freezing oceans into terrible storm conditions, without much more than a dry suit, a mask, a knife and a pair of flippers to keep them alive while they pull people out of the water and off sinking ships and oil platforms.

The surfmen are in a similar category of bravery and skill. D’Amelio describes the physical danger aboard these tough little covered lifeboats, the huge towering waves, ferocious winds, and the pounding that shakes the crews' bodies to their cores, while they still need to constantly and carefully control engine power and steering to prevent being capsized or swamped by every passing monster wave set. But he doesn’t brag – it’s just what he did, and it is clear it was a passion and a mission for him, one that he felt called to do, and generally enjoyed.

Very much to his credit, he also talks wisely in retrospect about the toll that this “always on call” dangerous work takes on a marriage and family life. He also talks about the difficult form of guilt that he and his colleagues always carry about every life they tried but failed to save. You would think that these men and women might be well content with the number of hair-raising rescues they've performed that did succeed, and the many lives they’ve saved, but oddly it seems that it is the few failures that seem to weigh on them the most, long after the glory of each amazing rescue exploit is behind them.

The author talks honestly and openly about all that, in a way that made the connection for me to all our first responders who take on the role of protecting others, and who often suffer from lingering psychological burdens as a consequence of adversity and losses they experience that are beyond their control. It should make us all value what these first responders do that much more, and be grateful for their willingness to serve, but particularly for those who routinely put their own lives at risk to do it.

This is an excellent first-hand account of what Coast Guard surfmen and their fellows do for the public all over the country, how they do it, and what it costs them. They train in Washington state, but of course they are deployed around the whole country and its coasts, wherever rough ocean conditions or storms occur. I would imagine they’re on duty in Florida today, in the wake of Ian, the latest massive hurricane to hit that region. I hope they’re all staying safe, but of course that’s not in their job description. Highly recommended.