The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men against the Sea (1997)

This book is an interesting story about fishermen who spend most of their lives at sea because it is the only way they can make money. The money they make completely depends on how lucky they get at sea. A boat could catch more swordfish in one week than another one catches in a month. Their ability to stay alive also depends on their luck at sea. Some fishermen are only home for a week at a time, and they end up spending much of their earned money on drinks. The book has a disappointing ending, but it is very interesting to learn about the ways of the sea and the life of a fisherman. The book definitely has its boring parts, but the interesting parts outweigh those. ( )

The perfect storm engulfed the Andrea Gail, a swordfish boat with its six crew members, in 1991, many miles off the coast of Massachusetts. Nobody knows exactly what happened. However, there were other ships out in the ocean that night, in different locations, and there are accounts of other ships encountering horrific storms from other years. From these accounts, Junger pieced together a reasonable account of what happened on the Andrea Gail.

It is not fiction. All quotations are exact, from actual people. Junger never goes over the line to make up a story, just offers possibilities.

We first get to know the crew, just a little, just enough to care something about the men. Then we follow radio contact, weather reports, wave reports, visual accounts. We get to know the folks back on shore, waiting for these men.

It's a revealing work, showing just how nature's forces can defeat any effort by humans to survive or even to rescue those trying to survive. Others have said it's an accurate account of what it is like out there in these unusual storms. I am prepared to believe that. ( )

Horrific, harrowing.. Book picks up in the last quarter.. Beyond the main story line of the boat, you get the story of other boats, out of this world rescue efforts, and damage done throughout the coast line. Reading the book in a dark room (my bedroom!) really amplified the intensity. Great narration. I didn't need as much science behind waves and storms, and wanted more of the good stuff - rescue and survival ( )

The phrase "the perfect storm" has passed into common parlance to signify a rare convergence of factors that make something bad even worse. This is the book that launched that idiom. It's a sad tale of a group of men who sail the Atlantic in search of swordfish and paychecks and their fateful encounter with the ironically-named Hurricane Grace.

For a book that was a #1 bestseller back in the 1990s, it was less accessible to me as a non-sailor, non-fisherman than I had hoped. A lot of nautical jargon is used in the text and there is no glossary to help the landlubber figure it out. The men of the ill-fated Andrea Gail aren't developed as characters as much as I would have liked, either. There are a lot of digressions, and I did more skimming as I read than I prefer. Still, this book is a timely reminder of the dangers of sea and storm, as well as a tribute to those who didn't make it home. ( )

3.5 stars

In 1991, a storm hit the Atlantic Ocean off the Eastern coast of the US and Canada. There were fishing boats out there: one of them, the “Andrea Gail”, disappeared and others had people aboard who needed to be rescued. In addition, the book includes information about fishing and the fishing industry, and the history of both. It also includes some information about weather and storms.

It was good, but there was a lot of detail that I just ended up skimming over. The author talked to families and loved ones of the missing fishermen, and to some of the rescuers and survivors, as well as others who had a link to the people caught in the storm. There were a lot of people to keep track of, and I was unsuccessful at much of that, often forgetting who was who unless there was a reminder. There is no way to know what happened aboard the Andrea Gail, so that is kept to speculation about what most fishermen were likely to do in similar circumstances. Some of the fishing techniques upset me (trawling), and I’m sure things have gotten worse since 1991 (and 1997 when the book was published), but that also wasn’t news, sadly. Probably the most interesting parts of the book, for me, were the descriptions of the various rescues. ( )