This title is part of Wetware Media’s Furthermore Series — live recordings with authors and experts, in their own words.
High Seas
A Memoir of San Francisco, Vietnam, and Deadly Cargo
Written and narrated by Roberto Loiederman
Available July 16, 2025
Nonfiction / Memoir / Oral History
5 hours 49 minutes
Narrated by the author
Introductory narration by Paul Aulridge
Produced by Colin Wasmund
“[High Seas is] Apocalypse Now meets A Confederacy of Dunces.”
— Don Lattin, bestselling author of The Harvard Psychedelic Club
Audio Excerpts
Start of Chapter 1
Cave 7 (from Chapter 1)
From psychedelic explorations in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury to navigating treacherous waters with a deadly payload, High Seas is the true story of an extraordinary adventure.
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 exactly 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.
In Vietnam and Southeast Asian ports, Roberto glimpsed societies torn between ancient traditions and modern conflicts, offering listeners a rare civilian mariner’s perspective on America’s most controversial war.
Through Roberto’s unique lens, High Seas chronicles both the drama of life at sea and thrilling adventures ashore in war-torn Southeast Asia. This is a story of drugs, danger, deep water, and deep questions—propelled by one man’s desire to “go everywhere, and be everyone.”
From dropout to sailor, from seeker to father, Roberto Loiederman’s memoir offers an intimate and extraordinary perspective on the Vietnam era, 1960s counterculture, and one man’s transformation in the most unexpected circumstances.
This story is a unique perspective on the Vietnam War—not from a soldier, but from the merchant marine’s invisible supply line. It is an unforgettable memoir of transformation, brotherhood, and the search for meaning.
Roberto Loiederman
Roberto Loiederman has been a journalist, merchant seaman, TV scriptwriter, kibbutz cook, deli owner, documentary film producer and writer, and some other professions he’d rather not remember. He’s had more than 200 articles and stories published in the L.A. Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Penthouse, Jewish Journal, and many others. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2014, 2015, and 2021. He is co-author of The Eagle Mutiny, a nonfiction account of the only mutiny on an American ship in modern times.
Four of his true short stories have been published on the podcast PenDust Radio:
Playing Air Guitar in Paris
Rafael, Titicaca, and How My Son Got His Name
The Night Ken Kesey Gave His Magic Away
The Darker Side of a Night with Hunter Thompson
“Roberto Loiederman’s humane and hilarious sketches of merchant seamen aboard a flotilla of rusty ammo ships reveal the true craziness of the 1960s, from the Summer of Love to the killing fields of Vietnam. Apocalypse Now meets A Confederacy of Dunces.”
— Don Lattin, bestselling author of The Harvard Psychedelic Club
“Poignant, funny, and intensely human, Roberto Loiederman takes you into Southeast Asia brothels, opium dens, the experience of what to do with a dead shipmate, and a memorable night with Hunter Thompson. Unforgettable stories and a fascinating side of history.”
— Jesse Byock, archaeologist and Professor of Old Norse at UCLA, director of the Mosfell Archaeological Project in Iceland and author of Viking Age Iceland, Feud in the Icelandic Saga, and Viking Language: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas.
Contents
Chapter 1: Cave 7
From academia to acid, Roberto plunges into San Francisco’s counterculture and has an unforgettable evening with Hunter S. Thompson.
Chapter 2: Call Me Maynard
A spur-of-the-moment decision lands Roberto on a ship with a most dangerous destination.
Chapter 3: Maynard at Sea
With a new name, a new crew, and no clue what he’s doing, Roberto begins the first of many voyages into the unknown.
Chapter 4: Bangkok, Subic, and the Edge of the World
From back-alley bars to spiritual temples, Roberto plunges into the exotic and the absurd. The East opens like a fever dream—and not all awakenings are holy.
Chapter 5: Disneyland for the Weird
A stormy arrival in Vietnam unspools into a psychedelic tour of some of the country’s strangest shadows.
Chapter 6: The Search for George
In a war-built town of makeshift bars, friendships are tested, a shipmate disappears, and Roberto embarks on a quest with unexpected revelations.
Chapter 7: Back to Sea
Back on land, the counter-culture beckons, but free love and free spirits aren’t enough to keep Roberto from drifting toward the sea once more.
Chapter 8: Lucky and Loaded
A new ship, a towering bosun named Lucky, and the invisible hand of Aristotle Onassis set the stage for Roberto’s second voyage into the Zone.
Chapter 9: Missing the Ship
A wild shore leave turns into a missed ship, a surreal detour through war logistics, and a deeper reckoning with the line between revelry and real danger.
Chapter 10: Death of the Hippie
From Native rituals to Haight-Ashbury protests, Roberto returns to the States only to find his generation writing its own eulogy.
Chapter 11: The Del Alba and a Day with Dana Stone
Aboard the Del Alba, ship life becomes a circus of personalities, old rituals, and absurd routines—until Da Nang reappears and brings with it a wild adventure with war photographer Dana Stone.
Chapter 12: When the Mooring Lines Snap
After three weeks at sea, psychological mooring lines snap. Switchblades come out, secrets spill, and a drifter with big promises comes aboard.
Chapter 13: The Freest Guy on the Planet
After a tearful family farewell, Roberto returns to San Francisco to find his room in Cave 7—and his life—occupied by unexpected grace.
Chapter 14: Dropping Anchor
In the shadow of the Strait of Magellan, a friend dies, and back in Argentina, a new life begins. Roberto drops anchor—choosing a new kind of adventure.