The Perfect Storm

“‘Most of them are single kids with no better thing to do than spend a lot of dough,’ says Charlie Reed, former captain of the boat. ‘They’re highrollers for a couple of days. Then they go back out to sea.’”

The author mentions on several occasions this dual aspect of the lives of fishermen: one part of their life on shore leave, the other part at sea. When they come home from sea, they drink hard. They spend time with their family. They sleep with their wives or girlfriends. Growing up in the fishing town of Gloucester, they know how dangerous the sea is, so when they come home, they party. They celebrate being with loved ones, and they celebrate returning from the sea, because fishermen do not always return.

“By and large, young men from Gloucester find themselves at sea because they’re broke and need money fast.”

Here, the author attempts to dispel a few myths about why men go to sea. A few lines earlier he says that captains might love fishing but the young men of Gloucester fish because they haven’t much choice. Bobby Shatford needs money because his marriage failed and he wants to remarry. He can make a lot of money in very little time—$5,000 a month, if the fishing is good—but the unspoken sentiment here is that the pay is so good because it is such dangerous work. Ships get lost at sea and men never come home, which is why Junger points out that it’s mostly young men who fish, and, even then, only those who desperately need the money. Further, there are few alternatives for working-class males in this region.

“There are worse deaths than the one Lee almost suffered, though.”

Here, Junger lists not only the difficulties of fishing throughout the years, but the deaths that resulted from them. He cites fog and frostbite and dories—small ships that set out from schooners—blown off course. He lists these stories of death and loss to remind the reader how dangerous fishing is in this area of the ocean but also because he wants to add another element: the element of not-knowing. When dories were lost at sea, sometimes men returned months later, which led others to believe their loved ones might return as well. He is describing people who live, and die, at sea, and a town that is constantly watching the waves for what might return.

“Chris and Bobby can’t see the ocean but they can smell it, a dank taste of salt and seaweed that permeates the entire peninsula and lays claim to it as part of the sea. On rainy days there’s no getting away from it, wherever you go you breathe in that smell, and this is one of those days.”

The first chapter describes how devoted the town is to fishing: the shops and bars cater to fishermen, and most everyone who lives there is involved in the industry in some way. This quote shows that the town is part of the sea—they even breathe the sea when they can’t see it. This is because the ocean and the fishing industry are a part of them, and everyone, even those who have never fished, will feel the loss of the those who die at sea.

“The Grand Banks in October is no joke and everybody knows it.”

This foreshadows the fate of the Andrea Gail, but more importantly it characterizes those who live with fishermen: they are attuned to the storms of fall, the high seas, the danger. They know there’s a chance their loved ones will not return, because they have seen it happen before.

“If the fishermen lived hard, it was no doubt because they died hard as well.”

Junger is relating the history of fishing in the New World and that many towns had brothels and taverns and didn’t respect the Sabbath. He’s also explaining why so many men took to drinking and prostitutes, as if they have nothing left to live for, or as if they know their chances of dying are great, so they get the most out of life while they are still alive.

“The problem with a steel boat is that the crisis curve starts out gradually and quickly becomes exponential. The more trouble she’s in, the more trouble she’s likely to get in, and the less capable she is of getting out of it.”

Here, Junger foreshadows the trouble the Andrea Gail gets in. The book’s title is The Perfect Storm, and in his Foreword, Junger says that he is using the word “perfect” meteorologically—a storm that could not possibly have been worse, which means that many factors came together to create it. Describing the dangers specific to a steel ship is another factor in what might have happened to the Gail.

“There’s a certain amount of denial in swordfishing. The boats claw through a lot of bad weather, and the crew generally just batten down the hatches, turn on the VCR, and put their faith in the tensile strength of steel.”

All fishermen—and everyone even closely associated with the sea—know the dangers. But they cannot focus on it. To do such dangerous work, they must deny to themselves the dangers. They must shut out the fear, and hope that the ship survives.

“A mature hurricane is by far the most powerful event on earth; the combined nuclear arsenals of the United States and the former Soviet Union don’t contain enough energy to keep a hurricane going for one day. A typical hurricane encompasses a million cubic miles of atmosphere and could provide all the electric power needed by the United States for three or four years.”

The storm disrupts radio signals. It hinders rescue operations. The Andrea Gail is a tiny ship in a huge ocean in the middle of a huge storm, and the comparison here—this comparison to nuclear arsenals that could destroy the world ten times over—show how bad of a position she is in. Nuclear weapons, and nuclear energy, are the most powerful manmade objects in the world, but don’t even come close to the power of a hurricane.

“‘She’s coming on boys, and she’s coming on strong.”

This is Billy Tyne’s last received message aboard the Andrea Gail, sent to the other ships in the fleet. They could have been his last words ever. Shortly after, the Gail disappears, as does everyone on board with her. Billy’s last words, then, would have been a warning to the other ships in the fleet—even as the storm bore down on him, he wanted the other ships to be safe.

“0200—steering weather-dependent course. Ship no longer obeys rudder. Ship strains hard and lurches heavily.”

Junger includes the log from the Contship Holland to show how dangerous the storm is. The Holland is almost ten times the size of the Andrea Gail, but the storm is so powerful that even such a big ship is at the mercy of the weather. For a boat the size of the Gail, the seas would have been overwhelming.

“The sea state has reached levels that no one on the boat, and few people on Earth, have ever seen.”

Junger includes this line to show not only how huge and terrifying the storm is, but to show that even the most experienced fisherman would not have known how to survive it. They could only hang on, and do what they had done in rough seas in the past. They had to hope it would be enough to survive this one as well. For the Andrea Gail, it was not.

“The Beaufort Wind Scale defines a Force 12 storm as having 73-mile-an-hour winds and 45-foot seas. Due south of Sable Island, data buoy 44137 starts notching 75-foot waves on the afternoon of the 29th and stays up there for the next seventeen hours.”

Junger has been describing the intensity of the storm; this quote focuses on duration. As storm continues to build, Junger describes how waves work, and how waves exponentially build the longer the wind blows, so after seventeen hours, the waves continue to grow. The winds are Force 12 for over a day. The waves are over 75-feet high for almost a full day..

“The two vessels pass by each other without a word or a sign, unable to communicate, unable to help each other, navigating their own courses through hell.”

During the storm, radio waves become so bogged down that radar stops working. The Mary T can’t raise any other ships on the radio. Long-range radio and satellite phones are also useless. Without communication—without weather updates from the Coast Guard, without being able to let anyone know where they are, without being able to call anyone at all—they are utterly alone. Even as the Japanese ship passes the Mary T, they are unable to communicate—all they can do is watch.

“It takes a freakish alignment of variables to permit that to happen, a third cog in the huge machinations of the sky […] Generally speaking, it takes a hurricane.”

Junger has been describing that most storms at sea move west-to-east. This movement subtracts wind speed, making them less dangerous. The chapter title is “World of the Living,” and in it Junger begins to describe what happens to those on land, which makes this statement quite important, since Hurricane Grace has just collided with the Sable Island storm. Grace is now the final, freakish variable that causes the storm to not only pick up speed, but move east-to-west, inland, gaining strength as it moves.

“When the Tamaroa arrives, he’ll have to abandon ship, which is an almost unthinkable act for a captain. The Satori is his home, his life, and if he allows himself to be taken off by the Coast Guard, he’ll probably never see her again. Not intact, anyway. At some point that night, lying on his bunk waiting for dawn, Ray Leonard decides he won’t get off the boat.”

Junger is describing the mindset of a captain on the verge of losing his ship. He mentions that the ship is his home, his life. He means it literally —Ray Leonard lives in the Satori—but it is also metaphorical: the ship is everything to him, and Leonard decides he won’t abandon ship; instead, he’ll go down with it. There is perhaps a suggestion here that Billy Tyne, aboard the Andrea Gail, might have thought the same thing.

“But I couldn’t let them see me in pain, I told myself. I couldn’t let them down.”

Despite the death and devastation wrought by the storm, the book, in its depiction of man versus nature, shows the courage and indomitable spirit of humankind. John Spillane has jumped into the ocean from a height of some seventy feet, broke ribs and arm and leg, knows he is about to die, but does not want to bring any extra burden to the other men also fighting for their lives in the raging ocean. He thinks, for just a moment, before his survival training kicks in, that his broken body will cause the others to have to take care of him, which might lessen their chances for survival, and thinks he should just die by himself.

“This guy’s so good, Guardsmen are saying, he’s just gonna come through the front door at Suffolk Air Base wondering where the hell we were.”

This quote is in reference to Rick Smith, who was lost in the storm. It shows the kind of thinking rescuers, fishermen and their families engage in. Earlier, Junger outlines how their ship going down is so far from the minds of ship captains that they often don’t follow safety procedures. They turn away from the worst thought. They have to. Otherwise, living with such danger constantly would destroy them. It’s a psychological safety net, a way to rescue themselves from doubt and fear.

“Satellite photos show a cyclonic swirl two thousand miles wide off the East Coast; the southern edge reaches Jamaica and the northern edge reaches the coast of Labrador.”

This quote gives context to the size of the storm. Junger mainly concentrates only on the center of the storm, the relatively small area of Georges Bank and ships from Gloucester. But throughout the book he names dozens of other ships affected by the storms, dozens of rescue agencies, and hundreds of people. The size of the storm tells the reader that there were perhaps millions of people affected by the storm in some way, from Jamaica to Newfoundland.

“The warnings go out via satellite uplink along something called the NOAA Weather Wire, which feeds into local media and emergency services. By dawn, radio and television announcers are informing the public about the oncoming storm, and the state Emergency Management Agency is contacting local authorities along the coast to make sure they take precaution.”

Communication, or lack thereof, is a major theme of the book. Here, as the storms bears down on the coast, all agencies involved are sending out word. At sea, however, communications often fail. In the storm, strobe lights allow searchers to find those in the water; the small light can be the only way of communicating, as electricity in the storm disrupts radio signals. Everyone is looking for the Andrea Gail, trying to raise her on the radio, and back home, family and friends wait for word, for some form of communication. Communication, then, becomes all-important in saving lives.

“Finally, a half-hour before midnight on November 8th, the search for the Andrea Gail is permanently suspended. She’s been missing for almost two weeks, and planes have searched 116,000 square miles of ocean without finding any survivors. All they turned up was a little deck gear.”

Junger’s book is, in a way, a mystery unfulfilled. Despite over 200 pages of trying to uncover what happened to the Andrea Gail, and uncovering almost exactly what happened to other boats like the Satori, he turns up very little of the Gail’s fate.

“I urge you to mourn not just for these three men, but for all the other brave people who gave their lives for Gloucester and its fishing industry.”

Junger shows a town coming together at the funeral of three of its own, and the reverend asks that they all remember the deaths of these three men, and of all the other men who have ever died fishing, which is what Junger has set out to do with this book. He sees the men aboard the Andrea Gail as representing everyone who has ever been lost.

“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.”

Junger’s main purpose is to chronicle the storm, but at the heart of the storm is the Gail, and he can’t find out what happened to her. Neither can the people who lost loved ones aboard. Without the finality of knowing, they will always expect them to return.