Strikingly handsome, with a square jaw and wavy dark hair, his resemblance to his father grew as he aged until, by his late twenties, even strangers would comment on the similarity. Once he’d attained the rank of ship’s master, he resumed using the family name. No one he’d served with would dispute that he knew his ships and the sea as well as anyone who’d ever commanded a merchant vessel.

In short order he was hired by the largest shipping company in the world to drive supertankers across the seas, taking 1,400-foot-long behemoths through storms that would frighten a statue and across oceans so vast that the crew would often go days without sighting another ship.

But as the years passed and the ships became more automated, the crews became smaller and satellite telemetry made him feel less like a master and commander and more like a bus driver. By the time he was in his late thirties, he’d moved back to his family’s shipping line, where he could once again manage the voyage and not simply optimize fuel consumption based on computer models and satellite predictions of weather and current.

—

WITH ASIA TO his north and Africa to his south, Captain Romanos was at the helm of the 860-foot M/V Lindos as it steamed east through the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Aden.

Sixty feet wide and with walls of glass, the oil tanker’s bridge offered a spectacular 360-degree view of the world as the sun fell through scattered clouds and disappeared below the horizon. The ship’s officers watched the sky and sea meld into blackness, interrupted only by the stars above and their reflections on the water below. Though they’d seen it happen a thousand times before, its mystical beauty never failed to reinforce their calling to the sea.

It was five past midnight when the captain prepared to retire to his stateroom and turn the bridge over to his second-in-command. Romanos was halfway to the door when the navigator spoke up.

“I’ve never seen that before,” he said, mostly to himself.

The captain stopped short.

The navigator and most of the other officers had come with him from the larger shipping company where they’d worked together for nearly a decade. They’d become like brothers, spending more time with one another than they did with their own families, and they’d learned to trust one another’s judgment and anticipate one another’s thoughts. Together they’d survived typhoons, been boarded by unfriendly navies, and had more barroom fistfights than anyone could count.

As far as the captain was concerned, the navigator had seen everything.

Romanos turned around.

“All three radars are full of static,” said the navigator. “Lost the GPS too.”

“Radio?” said the captain, nodding toward the single-sideband.

The communications officer turned up the volume.

“Nothing but noise. Same with the VHF.”