The Perfect Storm

In the late afternoon, the crew has their last drinks in the Crow’s Nest. They make final preparations, saying goodbye to girlfriends and wives, then board the boat.

“Almost as soon as the New World was discovered,” Junger writes, “Europeans were fishing it” (41). He relates the first Frenchman who fished off the Grand Banks and returned home with a hold full of cod, and how this discovery led to the Portuguese fishing there. They salted or dried the cod and returned home to sell them. Eventually, the first Europeans settled in New England, and immediately began to fish. The fishing settlements, like Gloucester, eschewed Puritan ethics and established brothels and taverns. The fishermen “lived hard […] because they died hard as well” (44). By the 1860s, the first ships were fishing Georges Bank, and elevated sea floor that separates the Gulf of Maine from the Atlantic Ocean. For almost 300 years, captains had shunned it. In 1991, a few modern boats fish Georges Bank, but more make the long trip to the Grand Banks, which are further north, near Newfoundland. During the trip they repair gear, sleep, read, and eat, often trading chores for cigarettes. Billy Tyne, captain of the Andrea Gail, has been out to the Grand Banks dozens of times.