{{short description|American lawyer, adventurer, and author (born 1948)}} {{lead too short|date=September 2023}} {{Use mdy dates|date=July 2025}} {{Infobox writer | name = Max Hardberger | image = Max Hardberger.jpg | imagesize = 200 | alt = black-and-white picture of Max Hardberger looking left of camera with a straight face | caption = Max Hardberger | pseudonym = | birth_name = Florian Max Hardberger | birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1948|11|19}} | birth_place = Baton Rouge, Louisiana, US | death_date = | death_place = | occupation = {{hlist|Novelist|ship captain|ship recovery specialist|maritime lawyer}} | genre = {{hlist|Sea stories|adventure|hardboiled|crime fiction}} | signature = | website = {{url|maxhardberger.com}} | education = {{plainlist | * Nicholls State University * University of New Orleans (BA) * University of Iowa (MFA) * Northwestern California University School of Law (JD) }} }}
'''Florian Max Hardberger''' (born November 19, 1948)<ref name="imdb">[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2424117/bio ''Internet Movie Database'' – Max Hardberger]</ref> is an American adventurer, ship captain, aviator, ship recovery specialist, admiralty lawyer, and author of maritime fiction and nonfiction adventures.<ref name="imdb"/>
==Education== Hardberger received his high school degree in 1966 from the Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee. He became a licensed aircraft pilot at the age of 16 while at Castle Heights.<ref name="UNO">Rivault, Mike, [http://www.maxhardberger.com/pdf/UNO_Alumni_Magazine_Fall_2007.pdf "Freighter Repo Man"], ''University of New Orleans Alumni Magazine'', Fall 2007</ref> Hardberger attended college at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, then transferred to the University of New Orleans for another two years of study.<ref name="UNO"/> In 1969, he graduated early with a BA in English.<ref name="UNO"/> During college, Hardberger became a scuba diver, sailor, and navigator. After college, he took creative writing at the University of Iowa (commonly known as the "Iowa Writers' Workshop"), where in 1972, he received an MFA in Fiction and Poetry.<ref name="Iowa">Schoon, Amy, [http://www.maxhardberger.com/pdf/Iowa_Alumni_Magazine_Feb_2008.pdf "The Good Pirate"], ''University of Iowa Alumni Magazine'', February 2008</ref> In 1998, Hardberger earned a Juris Doctor degree from Northwestern California University School of Law in Sacramento, California, and was admitted to the State Bar of California.<ref>[http://www.nwculaw.edu/cgi-bin/nwcu/notable_alumni.html ''Northwestern California University School of Law'' – Notable Alumni] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100507113710/http://www.nwculaw.edu/cgi-bin/nwcu/notable_alumni.html |date=May 7, 2010 }}</ref>
==Professional career== ===Teaching English and playing music: 1969–1976=== After college, Hardberger started his professional career with a short stint teaching English at Mandeville High School in Louisiana.<ref name="UNO"/> He then worked as a newspaper reporter for the ''Houma Daily Guide'' in Houma, Louisiana. He left the newspaper to explore Mexico in an old school bus before returning to the United States to attend graduate school. After he received his MFA degree in 1972, Hardberger taught English at All Saints Episcopal School in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He left teaching to work as a drummer in various blues bands on the Chitlin Circuit.<ref>''Seized'' (2010), p. 43</ref>
===Oilfield worker and pilot: 1977–1985=== In 1977, Hardberger returned to Louisiana to work as a deckhand and then as a mate on the oilfield supply vessel ''Magcobar Mercury'', in the Gulf of Mexico.<ref name="Seized"/> After he earned a captain's license, Hardberger's employer sent him to the Dresser-Magcobar Drilling Fluids School in Houston to learn how to become a drilling fluids engineer. Hardberger initially worked in oilfields off the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast and then worked as a drilling fluids consultant in Guatemala during the civil war. Between oilfield hitches, Hardberger continued his flying lessons, earning commercial and flight instructor licenses, and took a wide variety of flying jobs, including towing banners, dusting crops, doing nightly check runs for banks, and transporting dead bodies for mortuaries.<ref name="UNO"/><ref>''Seized'' (2010), p. 44</ref>
Hardberger returned to the classroom for the 1984–85 school year, when he taught English and world history at Pope John Paul II High School (Slidell, Louisiana).<ref>''Seized'' (2010), p. 63</ref> He briefly returned to the oilfields of Guatemala in 1985, then began crop dusting on a full-time basis in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. At the end of the 1986 crop dusting season, Hardberger traveled to Miami to search for new work.<ref name="UNO"/><ref>''Seized'' (2010), p. 64</ref>
===Ship captain: 1986–1990=== When Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier was overthrown as the ruler of Haiti in 1986, trade opened up between the Caribbean nation and the United States.<ref name="UNO"/> After Hardberger left crop dusting, he found work on the Miami River as the captain of a small freighter.<ref name="UNO"/><ref>''Seized'' (2010), p. 66</ref> Among his commands was the ''Erika'', a small freighter that transported cargo throughout the Caribbean. Hardberger's voyages on the ''Erika'' were the basis of his 1998 semi-autobiographical novel, ''Freighter Captain''.<ref name="Times">Weikel, Dan, [http://www.maxhardberger.com/pdf/Los_Angeles_Times_March_1_2007.pdf "He's His Own Port Authority"], ''Los Angeles Times'', March 1, 2007</ref>
===Recovering vessels: 1990–present=== Hardberger left the ''Erika'' to work for a Miami-based ship owner, MorganPrice & Co.,<ref>[http://www.morganpriceco.com/HomeEnglish.htm MorganPrice & Co. Website] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100309013333/http://www.morganpriceco.com/HomeEnglish.htm |date=March 9, 2010 }}</ref> as port captain responsible for overseeing port calls by the company's ships.<ref name="UNO"/> During this period, a MorganPrice freighter, the ''Patric M'', was seized by a shipper in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. This required Hardberger to sail the vessel out of port under the cover of night and without clearance, in violation of Venezuelan law.<ref>Author Unknown, [http://www.maxhardberger.com/pdf/Florida_Shipper_Magazine_July_1990.pdf "Commando Action Saves Ship"], ''Florida Shipper Magazine'', July 16, 1990</ref> The operation was Hardberger's first vessel "extraction" and is detailed in his autobiography, ''Seized''.<ref>''Seized'' (2010), pp. 15–61</ref>
Hardberger left MorganPrice in 1990 to form his own marine consultancy business in Louisiana. He was periodically retained by shipowners to extract their vessels from lawless ports without clearance from local authorities. In 1998, following his admission to the California Bar, Hardberger began to practice maritime law alongside his marine consultancy and vessel extraction business. In 2002, he formed the ship repossession company Vessel Extractions, LLC ("VessEx") to extract vessels illegitimately detained or seized in foreign countries. In 2004, Hardberger was featured in the Learning Channel series ''Repo Men: Stealing for a Living'', in a segment titled "Repo Adventurer", documenting his extraction of a 10,000-ton freighter from Haiti during the 2004 rebellion and his delivery of the vessel to her mortgagee in the Bahamas.<ref name="Fairplay">Watson, Will, [http://www.maxhardberger.com/pdf/Fairplay_Magazine_April_26_2007.pdf "Just What the Witch Doctor Ordered"], ''Fairplay International Shipping Weekly'', April 26, 2007</ref>
==Writing== Hardberger's first book was ''Deadweight: Owning the Ocean Freighter'' (1994),<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20110728190046/http://www.wikireadia.org/search-books-by-isbn.php?searchstr=0964043300&searchby=ISBN&action=Search WikiReadia – ''Deadweight: Owning the Ocean Freighter'']</ref> a textbook on ship ownership. He followed ''Deadweight'' with his first novel, ''Freighter Captain'' (1998),<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20110728190110/http://www.wikireadia.org/search-books-by-isbn.php?searchstr=0964043378&searchby=ISBN&action=Search WikiReadia – ''Freighter Captain'']</ref> a semi-autobiographical account of his adventures as a ship captain in the Caribbean. Hardberger then moved from maritime subjects to a murder mystery with his 1999 novel, ''The Jumping-Off Place'',<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20110728183152/http://www.wikireadia.org/search-books-by-isbn.php?searchstr=096404336X&searchby=ISBN&action=Search WikiReadia – ''The Jumping-Off Place'']</ref> which was a tribute to the hardboiled detective novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. On April 6, 2010, Hardberger's autobiography about his ship recovery adventures, titled ''Seized! A Sea Captain's Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters'', was published by the Broadway Books imprint of Random House.<ref name="Seized">Hardberger, Max, [http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780767931380&ref=rec&name=search ''Seized: A Sea Captain's Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters''], Broadway Books, 2010 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100411232710/http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780767931380 |date=April 11, 2010 }}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * {{official|maxhardberger.com}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hardberger, Max}} Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:American non-fiction writers Category:California lawyers Category:Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni Category:Maritime writers Category:Nicholls State University alumni Category:Writers from Baton Rouge, Louisiana Category:University of New Orleans alumni