The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea

The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
Sebastian Junger

The worst storm in history seen from the wheelhouse of a doomed fishing trawler; a mesmerisingly vivid account of a natural hell from a perspective that offers no escape.The ‘perfect storm’ is a once-in-a-hundred-years combination: a high pressure system from the Great Lakes, running into storm winds over an Atlantic island – Sable Island – and colliding with a weather system from the Caribbean: Hurricane Grace.This is the story of that storm, told through the accounts of individual fishing boats caught up in the maelstrom, their families waiting anxiously for news of their return, the rescue services scrambled to save them. It is the story of the old battle between the fisherman and the sea, between man and Nature, that awesome and capricious power which can transform the surface of the Atlantic into an impossible tumult of water walls and gaping voids, with the capacity to break an oil tanker in two.In spare, lyrical prose ‘The Perfect Storm’ describes what happened when the Andrea Gail looked into the wrathful face of the perfect storm.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER

The Perfect Storm

A True Story of Man Against the Sea

Copyright (#)

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Fourth Estate Limited

Copyright © Sebastian Junger 1997

PS Section © Harper Perennial 2006, except ‘Watching the Storm’ by Lucy Miller © Express 2000

PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Sebastian Junger asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007230068

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 9780007324385 Version: 2017-08-22

PRAISE (#)

‘If one knows anything at all about the sea, one feels the enormous strengths of the hurricane winds and the incredibly towering mass of the hundred-foot waves’

PATRICK O’BRIAN

‘Sebastian Jungers compassionate, intelligent voice instructs us effortlessly on the sea life of the swordfisherman, the physics of a sinking steel ship, and the details of death by drowning. It is a terrifying read’

DAVA SOBEL

‘Junger moves seamlessly between the wrenching human dramas and the awesome details of the storm. The Perfect Storm is terrifying, sad, exhilarating, humbling and unforgettable’

Daily Mail

‘Junger has found a language to match the stature of the sea at its worst, and to capture its mysteries … it’s a chilling account that registers 12 on the Beaufort Scale’

Sunday Times

‘A magnificent sea yarn … but a true story and all the more compelling for hat’

Observer

‘Cuts every facet of raw material to flashing brilliance … It amounts to a Homeric epic in its control of overwhelming natural forces and the grim demands they make of human life and effort’

Scotland on Sunday

‘The closest you will come to drowning at sea without actually having to do so’

The Times

‘Sometimes a story comes along that’s almost too good to be believable. The Perfect Storm may read like a novel but it isn’t one. It’s chillingly true … more fabulous than fiction, it will become a classic for a jaded modern world’

Independent

‘Masterly, an essay in fear … He writes like a poet who has been to meteorology school’

RUTH RENDELL, Daily Telegraph

‘Reading The Perfect Storm is like trawling back through every watery dream, and nightmare, you have ever had. It confirms your wildest hopes of quiet heroism as well as your greatest fears’

Independent

Puts the reader in the eye of the storm and into the hearts and minds of all those whose lives were lost or hearts seared by the disaster … the result is total authenticity and perhaps the best writing since Moby Dick on the awesome power, terror and grandeur of the sea and on the character of the people who confront it’

Lloyds List

’ tour de force of descriptive writing … simultaneously thrilling and sobering’

Financial Times

DEDICATION (#)

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

TO MY FATHER, WHO

FIRST INTRODUCED ME

TO THE SEA.

CONTENTS