The Sinking of the Scandies Rose

The Untold Story of an Alaskan Fishing Disaster

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About the Book

The Perfect Storm meets The Wager in this pulse-pounding saga about a deadly Alaskan shipwreck, a heroic search and rescue mission, and a Coast Guard investigation that trained its crosshairs on everyone involved, including the survivors.

On New Year’s Eve, 2019, the Scandies Rose—a 130-foot commercial crab and cod fishing vessel—was steaming toward the Bering Sea in a terrible storm. The captain was one of the most experienced and respected in the Alaskan fleet. But within two minutes of sending out a mayday call, all communications ceased. He and his crew faced the dark, icy sea—and choices no one should ever be forced to make.

Drawing on extensive interviews, testimonies, and his years embedded in America’s fishing communities, the Emmy Award–winning showrunner of Deadliest Catch reconstructs the ship’s harrowing final voyage with a level of understanding only an insider could provide. Watson follows the lives of the seven men aboard the Scandies Rose, the brave Coast Guard helicopter and airplane crews who launched into the storm to search for them, and the family members left seeking answers among the wreckage.

This page-turning blend of true crime and survival story takes you behind the scenes of the disaster, and straight into the guts of Alaska’s $5.3 billion seafood industry. It leads you deep into the fishermen’s lives. Finally, it builds to a high-stakes hearing to expose the failures that dragged good sailors to the ocean floor.

About the Author

Decker Watson has spent fifteen years embedded with the men and women of America’s most dangerous industries. A two-time Emmy Award winner, he served as executive producer, writer, and director of Deadliest Catch for more than 150 episodes. His other credits for the screen include Ice Road Truckers; Swords: Life on the Line; Netflix's Pirate Gold of Adak Island, which he created; and the Paramount+ feature Finestkind, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Ben Foster, and Jenna Ortega. The Sinking of the Scandies Rose is his first book.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Gallery Books (February 23, 2027)
  • Length: 304 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781668212257

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Raves and Reviews

"Alaskan waters, so rich with piscine treasure, have long been a proving ground for a sea captain's skill and nerve. Decker Watson, no stranger to those heaving cold swells and the individuals who brave them for a livelihood, poignantly captures the dance of risk and reward that lies at the heart of the enterprise. The Sinking of the Scandies Rose is a beautiful, tragic tale of the sea, deeply reported and empathetically told."
—HAMPTON SIDES, New York Times bestselling author The Wide Wide Sea and In the Kingdom of Ice

"[Watson] pulls no punches, glosses over nothing, and digs deep into the emotional soup of fishing, dying, and surviving . . . he paints intimate pictures of the characters in the story; who they were and what made them tick . .. [and] perhaps because he knows fishing and knows how close calls feel, his description of the sinking itself is enough to curdle the blood of any mariner.”
—NATIONAL FISHERMAN

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