The Last Ship (novel)
Thomas is writing this account several months after the war in order to describe the odyssey of his Norwegian-homeported ship, USS Nathan James (DDG-80), in the aftermath of the conflict.[citation needed] On December 21 (year unknown), without prior warning, Thomas, the captain of the U.S. Navy destroyer, USS Nathan James (DDG-80), receives authenticated orders to carry out a nuclear strike on the Soviet city of Orel and its nearby ICBM silos.Nathan James continues to scout the Mediterranean coastline, finding only masses of people suffering from radiation sickness who have fled the chaos inland.Off the coast of France, Nathan James finds a luxury sailboat with the passengers apparently killed mid-meal, suggesting the use of a neutron bomb on a coastal city.The corpse of the ship's radioman is found deeper within, along with his limited report of areas hit with nuclear weapons, painting a bleak picture for Europe, the Soviet Union, and North America.The U.S. Navy destroyer, relatively well-stocked with food but low on nuclear fuel, will scout northern Africa, then make her way to the Pacific Ocean in search of habitable land for the two crews.Nathan James scouts Mediterranean Africa, but strangely, despite not seeing visible direct hits, finds no people but reads radiation levels which steadily increase the farther inland any shore party ventures.In the following weeks the ship proceeds through the Suez Canal, which is luckily open, and travels through treacherous seas in the Indian Ocean as nuclear winter begins to take full effect, with dramatic temperature drops and black snow at the equator.Luckily, Nathan James was designed with cold weather and fallout in mind, and Thomas orders the ship hermetically sealed and people stationed on the bridge in short rotations.Nathan James eventually reaches the remote South Pacific and, with the ship's nuclear fuel nearly gone, discovers a small, uncontaminated island in French Polynesia.[2] Burke Wilkinson, a U.S. naval officer, writing for The Christian Science Monitor, called The Last Ship "extraordinary" and a "true classic", saying its sum was "greater than its parts".[2][3] After the success of Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Steven Soderbergh had planned on adapting the book as his next film; however, he abandoned the project after several unsatisfactory screenplay drafts.