30 pages • 1 hour read
Sebastian JungerThe Perfect Storm
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Beta“The Flemish Cap”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter Summary: “The Flemish Cap”
Junger begins the third chapter by explaining how technology—better gear, spotter planes, long-line fishing—led to conservation. The better technology allowed for more and more fish to be caught, which caused a decline in the fish population. Huge Russian factory ships caused America to extend its international waters, but only so American ships could fish. By 1990, though, an international conservation commission implemented a quota, which meant that the Andrea Gail needed to fish faster to fill her holds.
Albert Johnston, after unloading at New Bedford, has his ship back out by mid-October. He has been fishing since before he could drive. In 1983, a friend of Johnston’s rode through a particularly rough storm and was driven backward sixty miles. The Tiffany Vance almost went down, as did the Rush.
In the present, the Andrea Gail is not fishing well. Junger describes the living conditions aboard the boat, and the boat itself. He describes how a ship can sink, the conditions that cause it, and he describes the “eyeball engineering” (81) that Bob Brown, owner, undertook in the late 80s. He also describes Brown’s work ethic—tough as nails, and unafraid to send his ships out in any weather. In 1980, Brown’s ship, Sea Fever, lost a man due to unpredictable conditions. It happened again in the mid-1980s.
Albert Johnston is still fishing for tuna. Billy Tyne, aboard the Gail, hauls his last set on the 25th of October. Around that same time, a sailor in Maine sets sail on a sloop for Bermuda, and a container ship leaves the port of France. Billy Tyne starts heading in to shore. 2,000 miles away, weather systems are converging, as are the lives of the crew of dozens of ships in the North Atlantic.
“The Flemish Cap” Analysis
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. He details all the factors that can cause a ship to go down because they are myriad: human factors, the failure of technology, the caprice of weather. He describes the ship, in order to show where everything is, and he describes the “eyeball engineering” to show that safety is not the greatest concern—money is. He explains in detail the roll of a ship, how waves strike, and the numerous other sinkings that have occurred to show not only how often these tragedies have happened in the past, but how easily they can happen to anyone on the sea. He also describes the technological advances, and how they led to conservation, and how, in turn, that conservation led to quotas. In doing so, Junger shows the historical factors that led to the Andrea Gail, and other vessels, fishing so late in the season. Other outside factors include Bobby Shatford’s need of money, the expectations of the town toward its fishermen, (that they not back out), and the fact that the city of Gloucester is reliant on the sea, and its catch.
Junger also describes, in this chapter, how the people affected by the storm are coming together. He describes where Albert Johnston is. He tells the story of the sloop headed south for Bermuda out of Maine. He mentions a container ship leaving France, headed for the North Atlantic. He is drawing them all together, in much the same way the storm is coming together: there’s a hurricane off the coast of Bermuda, a cold front coming down off the Canadian Shield, and a storm brewing over the Great Lakes.
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