In the fall of 1991, the Andrea Gail, along with a number of other vessels, winds up caught in a “perfect storm”—when a hurricane off of Bermuda, a Canadian cold front, and a Great Lakes storm all converge over the North Atlantic’s Grand Banks, a popular fishing ground, at the same time. These three weather systems collide in an event only seen about once every century, imperiling every boat in their path. While this catastrophe serves as the book’s central drama, it’s an extreme example of the risk and danger that are always lurking in the fishing industry. Some of this danger is inherent in the task of fishing, given the constantly changing environment and the accompanying risks of working on deck. And when human factors are added in—given the limitations of human knowledge, and humans’ sometimes arrogant refusal to acknowledge knowable dangers—the risk is multiplied. By emphasizing the manifold dangers of the fishing industry, Junger suggests that fishing itself is a “perfect storm” of risks and dangers that can sometimes be mitigated but can never be completely controlled.
The very nature of fishing is dangerous, given the task at hand and the unpredictable natural environment. Going into a fishing job, fishermen already know how dangerous the job is: “More people are killed on fishing boats, per capita, than in any other job in the United States. [Fisherman Albert Johnston] would be better off parachuting into forest fires or working as a cop in New York City than longlining off the Flemish Cap. […] [Death is] there waiting for you in the middle of a storm or on the most cloudless summer day. Boom—the crew’s looking the other way, the hook’s got you, and suddenly you're down at the depth where swordfish feed.” In other words, a person can be killed with no advance warning—even in the midst of flawless weather conditions. Even under the best of circumstances, the job is inherently deadly.
In addition, the ocean itself is perilous. No matter what precautions are taken, or how strongly built a ship might be, it’s impossible to ensure that it will withstand everything the ocean might throw at it. The most soundly built ship can be flooded and sunk by what mariners call “‘rogue waves’ or ‘freak seas.’ Typically they are very steep and have an equally steep trough in front of them—a ‘hole in the ocean’ as some witnesses have described it. Ships cannot get their bows up fast enough, and the ensuing wave breaks their back. Maritime history is full of encounters with such waves.” Technological advances can mitigate the risk of such encounters but never overcome it.
Human fallibility complicates things further, making the job even more dangerous. No matter how hard a captain might try to avoid dangerous conditions, there are too many different factors at play to be juggled perfectly. Junger explains how the Andrea Gail is two weeks out of sync with the rest of the New England swordfishing fleet: “Ultimately, one could blame some invisible contortion of the Gulf Stream for this: The contortion disrupts the swordfish, which adds another week or two to the trip, which places the Andrea Gail on the Flemish Cap when she should already be heading in. The circumstances that place a boat at a certain place at a certain time are so random that they can’t even be catalogued, much less predicted, and a total of fifty or sixty more people—swordfishermen, mariners, sailors—are also converging on the storm grounds of the North Atlantic. Some of these people have been heading there, unavoidably, for months; others made a bad choice just a few days ago.” A ship’s fate is at the mercy of oceanographic factors, weather flukes, and human judgment calls at any given moment.
Hubris, however, is also a factor, as captains who’ve seen their share of dangerous conditions can fall into an attitude of denial that puts everyone at risk. Once this happens, “it’s hard to know when to stop. Captains routinely overload their boats, ignore storm warnings, stow their life rafts in the wheelhouse, and disarm their emergency radio beacons. Coast Guard inspectors say that going down at sea is so unthinkable to many owner-captains that they don’t even take basic precautions.” This attitude, in turn, shapes the kind and level of preparations a captain will direct his crew to undertake when there’s warning of, say, a big storm brewing. By the time an emergency is at hand, a negligent captain’s hubris means that it might already be too late.
Ultimately, nobody knows what the Andrea Gail’s fate was, except that sometime on the night of October 28th, 1991, off of Canada’s Sable Island, the ship encountered the heart of the storm and was never heard from again. All that’s recovered are some fuel barrels that were spotted by other fishermen on their way back to port—and an emergency beacon that was, mysteriously, never armed. This unsatisfying conclusion reinforces Junger’s argument that ocean fishermen are ultimately at the mercy of larger-than-life forces that they can only attempt to control and whose power on some level remains a mystery.
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Danger, Human Frailty, and Death ThemeTracker
Danger, Human Frailty, and Death Quotes in The Perfect Storm
"On Georges Bank with our cable gone our rudder gone and leaking. Two men have been swept away and all hands have been given up as our cable is gone and our rudder is gone. The one that picks this up let it be known. God have mercy on us."
The note was from the Falcon, a boat that had set sail from Gloucester the year before. She hadn’t been heard from since.
Most deckhands have precious little affection for the business, though; for them, fishing is a brutal, dead-end job that they try to get clear of as fast as possible. At memorial services in Gloucester people are always saying things like, "Fishing was his life," or "He died doing what he loved," but by and large those sentiments are to comfort the living. By and large, young men from Gloucester find themselves at sea because they’re broke and need money fast.
For the families back home, dory-fishing gave rise to a new kind of hell. No longer was there just the grief of losing men at sea; now there was the agony of not knowing, as well. Missing dory crews could turn up at any time, and so there was never a point at which the families knew for sure they could grieve and get on with their lives. "We saw a father go morning and evening to the hill-top which overlooked the ocean," recorded the Provincetown Advocate after a terrible gale in 1841. “And there seating himself, would watch for hours, scanning the distant horizon . . . for some speck on which to build a hope."
A longliner might pull up ten or twenty swordfish on a good day, one ton of meat. The most Bob Brown has ever heard of anyone catching was five tons a day for seven days—70,000 pounds of fish. That was on the Hannah Boden in the mid-eighties. The lowest crew member made ten thousand dollars. That's why people fish; that’s why they spend ten months a year inside seventy feet of steel plate.
The following year the National Marine Fishery Service implemented a quota of 6.9 million pounds of dressed swordfish for U.S.-licensed sword boats, roughly two-thirds of the previous year’s catch. Every U.S.-licensed boat had to report their catch when they arrived back in port, and as soon as the overall quota was met, the entire fishery was shut down. […] The result was that not only were fishing boats now racing the season, they were racing each other. When the Andrea Gail left port on September 23, she was working under a quota for the first time in her life.
More people are killed on fishing boats, per capita, than in any other job in the United States. Johnston would be better off parachuting into forest fires or working as a cop in New York City than longlining off the Flemish Cap. Johnston knows many fishermen who have died and more than he can count who have come horribly close. It’s there waiting for you in the middle of a storm or on the most cloudless summer day. Boom—the crew’s looking the other way, the hook's got you, and suddenly you're down at the depth where swordfish feed.
The circumstances that place a boat at a certain place at a certain time are so random that they can’t even be catalogued, much less predicted, and a total of fifty or sixty more people—swordfishermen, mariners, sailors—are also converging on the storm grounds of the North Atlantic. Some of these people have been heading there, unavoidably, for months; others made a bad choice just a few days ago.
Around nightfall a Canadian weather map creaks out of the satellite fax. There’s a hurricane off Bermuda, a cold front coming down off the Canadian Shield and a storm brewing over the Great Lakes. They're all heading for the Grand Banks. A few minutes after the fax, Linda Greenlaw calls.
Billy, you seen the chart? she asks.
Yeah I saw it, he says.
What do you think?
Looks like it's gonna be wicked.
Once you're in the denial business, though, it’s hard to know when to stop. Captains routinely overload their boats, ignore storm warnings, stow their life rafts in the wheelhouse, and disarm their emergency radio beacons. Coast Guard inspectors say that going down at sea is so unthinkable to many owner-captains that they don’t even take basic precautions.
After talking to Barrie, Billy picks up the microphone on his single sideband and issues one last message to the fleet: She's comin' on boys, and she's comin' on strong. The position he’d given Linda Greenlaw on the Hannah Boden— 44 north, 56.4 west—is a departure from his original heading. It appears to be more the heading of a man bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia, or maybe even Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island, than Gloucester, Massachusetts. […] Whatever the reason, Billy changes course sometime before 6 PM and neglects to tell the rest of the fleet.
With all this catastrophe in his life Murph had two choices—decide either that he was blessed or that his death was only a matter of time. He decided it was only a matter of time. When he met his wife, Debra, he told her flat-out he wasn’t going to live past thirty; she married him anyway. […] And a few weeks before signing onto the Andrea Gail, Murph had stopped by his parents' house in Bradenton for a somewhat unsettling goodbye. His mother reminded him that he needed to keep up on his life insurance policy—which included burial coverage—and he just shrugged. Mom, I wish you'd quit worryin' about burying me, he said. I’m going to die at sea.
In a sense Billy’s no longer at the helm, the conditions are, and all he can do is react. If danger can be seen in terms of a narrowing range of choices, Billy Tyne’s choices have just racheted down a notch. A week ago he could have headed in early. A day ago he could have run north like Johnston. An hour ago he could have radioed to see if there were any other vessels around. Now the electrical noise has made the VHF practically useless, and the single sideband only works for long range. These aren’t mistakes so much as an inability to see into the future. No one, not even the Weather Service, knows for sure what a storm's going to do.
The crew just racks out and watches videos. Everybody acknowledged this was the worst storm they'd ever been in—you can tell by the size of the waves, the motion of the boat, the noise, the crashing. There’s always a point when you realize that you're in the middle of the ocean and if anything goes wrong, that’s it. You see so much bad weather that you kind of get used to it. But then you see really bad weather. And that, you never get used to.
The Andrea Gail crew, all experienced fishermen, are probably trying to shrug it off as just another storm—they’ve been through this before, they'll go through it again, and at least they're not puking. Billy's undoubtedly working too hard at the helm to give drowning much thought. Ernie Hazard claims it was the last thing on his mind. "There was no conversation, just real business-like," he says of going down off Georges Bank. "You know, 'Let’s just get this thing done.'” […]
Be that as it may, certain realities still must come crashing in. At some point Tyne, Shatford, Sullivan, Moran, Murphy, and Pierre must realize there's no way off this boat.
In the old days it was known that most shipwrecks on Sable occurred because of errors in navigation; the westerly current was so strong that it could throw boats off by sixty to a hundred miles. If Billy has lost his electronics—his GPS, radar, and loran—he's effectively back in the old days. He’d have a chart of the Grand Banks on the chart table and would be estimating his position based on compass heading, forward speed, and wind conditions. This is called dead reckoning. Maybe the currents and the storm winds push Billy farther west than he realizes, and he gets into the shallows around Sable. […] Or maybe their steering’s gone and, like the Eishin Maru, they’re just careening westward on the weather.
Whether the Andrea Gail rolls, pitch-poles, or gets driven down, she winds up, one way or another, in a position from which she cannot recover. […] The transition from crisis to catastrophe is fast, probably under a minute, or someone would've tripped the EPIRB. […] There’s no time to put on survival suits or grab a life vest; the boat’s moving through the most extreme motion of her life and there isn’t even time to shout.
The body could be likened to a crew that resorts to increasingly desperate measures to keep their vessel afloat. Eventually the last wire has shorted out, the last bit of decking has settled under the water. Tyne, Pierre, Sullivan, Moran, Murphy, and Shatford are dead.
"I was in a corner and I covered myself with soft things," says Stimpson, "and with a flashlight I took about ten minutes and wrote some goodbyes and stuck it in a ziplock bag and put it in my clothing. That was the lowest point. […] But it's a strange thing. There was no sentiment there, no time for fear. […] It was a grim sense of reality, a scrambling to figure out what to do next, a determination to stay alive and keep other people alive, and an awareness of the dark noisy slamming of the boat. But it wasn’t a terror beyond words. I just had an overwhelming sense of knowing we weren’t going to make it."
"When I got up into the helicopter I remember everyone looking in my and Sue's faces to make sure we were okay," says Stimpson. "I remember the intensity, it really struck me. […] They’d take us by the shoulders and look us in the eyes and say, 'I'm so glad you're alive, we were with you last night, we prayed for you. […] When you're on the rescuing side you're very aware of life and death, and when you're on the rescued side, you just have a sort of numb awareness. At some point I stopped seeing the risk clearly, and it just became an amalgam of experience and observation."
A reporter from News Channel Five calls Tommie Barrie’s wife, Kimberly, and asks her about the Allison. Kimberly answers that she talked to her husband the night before by single sideband and that, although she could barely hear him, he seemed to be fine. Channel Five broadcasts that tidbit on the evening news, and suddenly every fisherman’s wife on the East coast is calling Kimberly Barrie to ask if she has any news about the fleet. She just repeats that she talked to her husband on the 29th, and that she could barely hear him. "As soon as the storms move offshore the weather service stops tracking them,” she says "The fishermen’s wives are left hanging, and they panic. The wives always panic.”
And then, on the afternoon of November 5th, an EPIRB washes up on Sable Island. […] Like the bottled note thrown overboard from the schooner Falcon a century ago, the odds of something as small as an EPIRB winding up in human hands are absurdly small. And the odds of Billy Tyne disarming his EPIRB—there's no reason to, it wouldn’t even save batteries—are even smaller. Bob Brown, Linda Greenlaw, Charlie Reed, no one who knows Billy can explain it.
If the men on the Andrea Gail had simply died, and their bodies were lying in state somewhere, their loved ones could make their goodbyes and get on with their lives. But they didn’t die, they disappeared off the face of the earth and, strictly speaking, it’s just a matter of faith that these men will never return. Such faith takes work, it takes effort. The people of Gloucester must willfully extract these men from their lives and banish them to another world.
