High Seas: A Memoir of San Francisco, Vietnam, and Deadly Cargo

In the mid-1960s, before GPS and global tracking, a young man could walk into a shipping hall, sign a paper, and be bound for war by sundown. Roberto Loiederman did precisely that. One day, he was dropping acid in a legendary San Francisco apartment called Cave 7, moving among the era's most influential counterculture figures—including a turbulent friendship with Hunter S. Thompson. The next, he was on the deck of a freighter hauling napalm across the Pacific to Vietnam. With no maritime experience—only youthful audacity and a newly minted Z card—Roberto traded his flower-power existence for life at sea. What began as an impulsive lark became the adventure of a lifetime, transforming a quintessential 1960s dropout into an unlikely witness to history. Roberto's world at sea was populated by weathered sailors whose outlandish personalities and hard-won wisdom shaped him in ways the counterculture never could. Their stories—hilarious, harrowing, and heartbreaking—form the backdrop to his own adventures as he navigated typhoons, foreign ports, spiritual awakenings, and the human cost of war. High Seas chronicles both the drama of life at sea and thrilling adventures ashore in war-torn Southeast Asia. It is a story of drugs, danger, deep water, and deep questions—propelled by one man's desire to "go everywhere and be everyone." A unique perspective on the Vietnam era, 1960s counterculture, and one man's transformation in the most unexpected circumstances. Roberto Loiederman is a journalist, television writer, and former merchant seaman whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, Penthouse, and on programs for National Geographic, PBS, and the Discovery Channel. Co-author of The Eagle Mutiny, a nonfiction account of the only mutiny on an American ship in modern times, Loiederman holds a master's degree in literature and a proud AB ticket from the U.S. Merchant Marine.