After jumping trains, they arrive in New Orleans. Nailer decides to leave with Nita, and a half-man named Tool (originally in Richard's Heavy Crew) to New Orleans. 'Lucky Girl' eventually tells Pima and Nailer the truth: she ran away to safety because her uncle, who wishes to sell illegal 'tar sand', aims to use her as leverage against her father. Soon after, Nailer becomes sick and sleeps for 3 days. Knowing that there might be a reward for returning Nita to her father or uncle, Richard decides to spare her. Richard decides to show mercy because Pima's mother, Sadna, had saved him from the storm. Pima lunges at Richard with a knife, but is overpowered. After Nailer saves Nita, Richard wants to kill the girl and steal the scavenge. With a lot of hesitation, the two Light Crew teenagers save the only survivor of the ship, Nita, who is nicknamed 'Lucky Girl' by Nailer, since she survived the shipwreck. They find a massive clipper ship stranded on the beach.

Nailer and Pima decide to check the beach for scavenge. After two nights, the storm finally subsides. Sadna, Pima's mother, helps wake Richard up and saves him from the storm. Ī storm arrives shortly after Nailer's father, Richard, passes out due to a drug overdose. On the way out, Nailer is impaled by a rusty piece of metal. Luckily, Nailer is able to escape the oil and washes up on the beach. Sloth, another member of the light crew, finds Nailer in the oil pocket, but decides to leave him to die because she wants Nailer's job and she wants to sneak the oil out of the ship and sell it. While gathering copper wires, Nailer falls through the duct and lands in a deep pool of oil. As he crawls through the darkness looking for scavenge to make quota, he dreams of traveling through the bright blue waters of the flooded oceans on a speeding clipper ship.

Nailer, a small-framed teenage boy, is scavenging through an old rusty ship for copper wire. This infuriates several parties, including Nailer's father, the local power brokers, and Nita's father's enemies, including Nita's uncle Pyce. After a storm, Nailer rescues Nita, the stranded daughter of a wealthy merchant, and helps her to get back home. His mother died when he was a young boy and he now lives with his alcoholic and drug addicted father, Richard Lopez. Nailer is a fifteen-year-old boy who works on the light crew. On the Gulf Coast nearby, humanity has reverted to survival mode and a small economy has grown from the scavenging of washed up oil tankers for bits of copper and other valuables.

The polar ice caps have melted and New Orleans is underwater. Human civilization is in decline for ecological reasons. Ship Breaker is a 2010 young adult novel by Paolo Bacigalupi set in a post-apocalyptic future.

Shipbreaker by paolo bacigalupi