In the late 1970s, while America was in the throes of the first major fabricated oil shortage in history, Tom Archer, recent academy graduate, climbed aboard his first ship as the new third mate on the BALTIMORE CANON, an old rusting T-2 tanker engaged in the Alaskan Prudhoe Bay oil trade. The youngest officer by at least eight years, he found himself frequently filling in for the second mate, occasionally for the chief, and once for the captain. This is the story of those voyages, coming directly from the third mate's personal log, including a realistic accounting of an off-shore oil operation that most people have no access to information about.