The Perfect Storm: God’s Country Summary & Analysis

By midafternoon, the Andrea Gail is ready to go. Bobby and Chris drive back to Chris’s friend Thea’s for a few hours of privacy. At five, Sully calls from the Crow’s Nest to tell Bobby it’s time to go. At the bar, things are grim. Ethel is crying, and all the men are reluctant to leave their loved ones. Gradually, with several still voicing reluctance and misgivings, the men pry themselves away from the crowd. Despite lingering premonitions, everyone drinks a final round and walks out of the Crow’s Nest. Bobby and Chris hold onto each other in the front seat of Chris’s car. Bobby’s trying not to cry; he doesn’t want to go, but he needs the money. Finally, he tells Chris he loves her and walks down to the boat.

Europeans, especially Portuguese, began codfishing off the North Atlantic’s Grand Banks in the 16th century. Codfish was easy to transport because it could be salted and dried, and codfishing quickly became a lucrative trade. Massachusetts’ Cape Ann was first visited by a European in 1605, when the French explorer Samuel de Champlain made his way there; 20 years later, a group from Dorchester, England, attempted unsuccessfully to establish a fishing village there. A few settlers stayed on, banded together with some outcasts from the Puritan colony at Plymouth, and founded a new colony called Gloucester.

By 1631, the Gloucester settlement was well underway. Because it was sustained by fishing, the town seemed to attract younger men who weren’t interested in the more sedate farming lifestyle that took hold in other parts of New England. Gloucester fishermen quickly developed a reputation for wildness. They probably lived recklessly because of the risks of their profession—a couple of hundred men died at sea each year. As of the 1990s, in fact, around 10,000 Gloucestermen are believed to have died at sea.

The Grand Banks, a major North Atlantic fishing ground, are especially dangerous. That’s because the spot is situated in an infamous storm track. When low pressure systems develop over the Great Lakes or Cape Hatteras, they follow the jet stream out into the ocean and cross directly over the Grand Banks. Even more dangerous is Georges Bank, a spot located 180 miles east of Cape Cod. Georges Bank is home to strange currents and fast tides. Fishermen often spoke of having bad dreams and uneasy feelings there.

Over time, the draw of plentiful fish overcame people’s dread of Georges Bank. When people turned complacent, though, the Bank grew deadly. If a storm blew in, the many ships anchored around Georges Bank could collide, become entangled, and run aground in the shallow seas. Nowadays, fewer boats fish Georges Bank; most of them make the week-long journey to the Grand Banks instead, 1200 miles away. The cold Labrador Current creates the perfect environment for sea life to proliferate.

During the journey to the Grand Banks and back, the crew generally sleeps, because once they reach the fishing grounds, they work 20-hour days for two or three weeks straight. They also spend a lot of time maintaining and repairing their gear so that nothing will prevent them from catching as much as possible as quickly as possible. They take turns standing watch at the helm.

Billy Tyne didn’t intend to become a fisherman. He came from a relatively well-off Gloucester family and hoped to become a psychologist. Eventually, though, he dropped out of school and wandered into fishing on a relative’s suggestion. His wife, Jodi, says that “it was all over” at that point—men who try fishing and love it can never be happy doing anything else. Billy’s first fishing trip was on the Andrea Gail, and he quickly proved to be good at it. Even after Billy’s newfound obsession with fishing broke up his marriage, he kept doing it. When Charlie Reed stepped down as the Andrea Gail’s captain, Bob Brown, offered Billy the role.

By September 26th or 27th, the Andrea Gail has made it to the “Tail” of the Grand Banks, about 300 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. Here plentiful swordfish can be found—fearsome fish that are capable of slashing not only other fish, but boats and fishermen themselves. The swordfish has a bony “sword” that extends from its upper jaw, is four or five feet long, and dangerously sharp. The fish itself is about 500 pounds. These fish spawn in the Caribbean and head for the waters off of eastern Canada in the summer. They feed in deep waters during the day and work their way to the surface at night.

Baiting is a dangerous job. A huge spool of fishing line crosses diagonally across the deck. Baiters stand on deck and impale pieces of squid and mackerel on hooks on shorter lines called gangions, snap the gangions onto the ship’s mainline, and throw the whole line into the water. If the hook catches the baiter somehow, he could easily go over the side of the boat along with the gangion. It takes about four hours to set out 30 miles of fishing line. Radio transmitters are occasionally attached to the line as well, to help the captain locate any gear that drifts away. All told, this equipment represents around $20,000 worth of gear, and a captain might risk his fishermen’s lives to get it back, even in a storm.

Each morning, the men are awakened by a blast on the ship’s airhorn long before dawn, and they haul back the line that was baited and set out the night before. A crewman called the hauler has the stressful job of unclipping a gangion from the line every few seconds. When he senses the weight of a swordfish on the line, he slows down the line, and two men prepare to hook the fish, drag it aboard, and sometimes harpoon it, if it’s still alive. Then the swordfish are gutted and thrown into the ice-filled hold. On a good day, a crew might haul up 10 or 20 swordfish—that’s one ton of meat. Bob Brown remembers one Hannah Boden trip in the mid-80s which yielded five tons a day for an entire week—a payoff of $10,000 for the lowest-ranked crew member.

Fishing trips aren’t always that lucrative, however, and setting out bait is a skill that requires awareness of currents and knowledge of feeding habits. Even with that skill, any trip could be a bust. Captains must also keep track of the positions they fish and how many fish they catch in order to show that they’re adhering to regulations and to help marine biologists assess conditions.

During the end of September and the beginning of October, the Andrea Gail fishermen repeatedly set out and haul back their gear. On the horizon, they can occasionally see a boat called the Mary T, captained by Albert Johnston. The Mary T heads back to port on October 7th and arrives at Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on the 12th. After unloading his catch, Johnston starts outfitting the Mary T to head out again—it’s getting late in the fishing season, and the faster he can turn the boat around, the better.

Around this time, the Andrea Gail, still on the Grand Banks, gets slammed by a rogue wave while the crew is hauling in their gear. The wave is about 30 feet high and throws the boat over on her side. It takes a long time for the boat to right herself. That night, Billy Tyne radios a friend, Charlie Johnson, whose Seneca has stopped at a Newfoundland port, to tell him about the wave. Charlie recalls feeling concerned that the boat went over so easily, especially with tons of fish in its hold. It doesn’t sound right to him, but he doesn’t say anything at the time.

The Andrea Gail spends another week fishing off the Grand Banks’s Tail, but the trip is shaping up to be a bust. Around the middle of October, they haul in their gear and steam to an area called the Flemish Cap, setting them well away from the rest of the swordfishing fleet. The vessel is on the edge of the usual fishing grounds, and the weather is cold and raw. All everyone wants to do is to finish up and go home.