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Dennis M. Powers


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Topics of conversation:

  • Who was Captain Dynamite Johnny O'Brien?  Fascinating insights into this larger than life personality as discovered through lost memoirs recently uncovered by Powers in Alaska.
  • Captain O'Brien's romantic escapades, and final marriage to wife Emily.
  • Powers uses his unique storytelling ability to tell about many of O'Brien's amazing adventures at sea.
  • Surprising connection to Jack London's Captain Wolf Larsen in the famous book "The Sea-Wolf", and other notable people that claim to have rubbed shoulders with O'Brien.
  • Powers talks about the research process, what surprised him most about O'Brien, how sailing vessels and the business have changed over the years, and how it has stayed the same.
  • Upcoming events, book projects, etc.

Dennis M. Powers was a business law attorney before teaching as a Full Professor and later Professor Emeritus at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado, the University of Denver Law School, and Harvard Business School.              

Dennis is the author of ten books, including his last five about the sea, his long-time interest: The Raging Sea (2005) chronicles the crushing 1964 tsunami that ravished the U.S. West Coast; Treasure Ship (2006) is about the final discovery of a long-lost, steamship that sank off northern California with millions of dollars of gold; Sentinel of the Seas (2007) tells about the most remote, dangerous, and expensive lighthouse built in this country; and Taking the Sea (2009), the adventurous tales of the wreckers, or ship salvagers, that sailed the oceans.

Tales of the Seven Seas: The Escapades of Captain Dynamite Johnny O'Brien

Dennis M. Powers
Taylor Trade Publishing (2010)
ISBN 9781589794474
Reviewed by Richard R. Blake for Reader Views (02/10)

Read interview with author on ReaderViews.com

Read the review on ReaderViews.com


Synopsis: Captain Dynamite Johnny O’Brien sailed the seven seas for over sixty years, starting in the late 1860s in India and ending in the early 1930s on the U.S. West Coast. He sailed every type of ship imaginable, but this book is more than the story of this incredible, charismatic sea captain. It is a tale about what sailing over the oceans was really like from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, when danger and adventure coexisted on a daily basis.

The story sweeps from his compassion in the Chinese trade in coolie labor for constructing the railroads to the rich living of kings and princesses in the Hawaiian Islands. It covers the Klondike Gold Rush, when sailors and their vessels sailed into the Artic Circle and the brutal gales of the Bering Sea. Captain Dynamite Johnny O’Brien was called the “Nestor of the Pacific,” or one who by fist and spirit ruled the seas, and we applaud O’Brien and these men of the sea. These stories are about the sea, courage, failures, and overcoming incredible odds—which are so applicable today—but so sorely missed.