Out of the Fog - True Sea Stories

About the Book

Out of the Fog - True Sea Stories is about the adventures of my father, Captain Marvin F. Hopkins, and his experiences as a young man and his love of Arizona and then his love of the sea, becoming a ship captain traveling around the world. He conducted ship expeditions from the area of the North Pole to the area of the South Pole. Enjoy this chronological history of his adventures during his times of building the roads in the hot Arizona desert, to meeting then presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to later trying to organize a group of penguins, to bringing a Christmas tree to Christmas Island, to trying to locate a dead crewman's casket lost somewhere at San Francisco's airport.

About the Author

From stunt horseback riding for old Western movies, to being contaminated by radiation, to being held captive by the Ecuadorian government for eighteen days aboard his vessel, to leading scientific research expeditions to far away exotic places. My dad, Captain Marvin Francis Hopkins, lived an adventurous life. He was a merchant marine and worked for many years for Scripps Institute of Oceanography. He traveled around the world on various expeditions that took him to far away islands and places that people only see on a map. He was the first civilian ship to participate in the Bikini Atoll Atomic Testing of the 1950s, was held captive by the Ecuadorian government in 1962, and brought back penguins and tortoises to zoos in the United States and Australia. For many years, Dad wanted to publish his book called Out of the Fog - True Sea Stories. But he suffered from emphysema from smoking since the age of twelve, and he passed away in December 1990 from congestive heart failure. This book is the completion of a promise I made to him that I would get his book published. This book is also for our family, who many times heard these adventurous stories, and now these stories can be shared with others for years to come.