Eduardo Lacreta

Ricardo Guedes

AUTHOR:

The Perfect Storm’ s author is Sebastian Junger, one writer and a traveler man.He was born on January 17 th, 1962, in Belmont in the state of Massachusetts in USA.

In 1991, he was living in Gloucester, small town in Massachusetts. In Gloucester he saw houses and properties near his home destroyed by a terrible storm. Two years later, he decided to write a book about this terrible storm. He interviewed people to do it. The book was published in the USA in 1997.

In 1998 Sebastian Junger and his friend created THE PERFECT STORM FOUDANTION, one organization to help the children of the Gloucester fishermen, and the young people of the town.

Sebastian Junger

Gloucester is a fishing town.Most of the people who live in the port have jobs conected with fishing.They make their money from fishing, or from doing things which the fishing people need to be done.

The fishermens of Gloucester were caught in one terrible storm at the end of October 1991. This storm was a “perfect storm“. The perfect storm happens maybe only once in a hundred years.

Now we are going to talk about this really story...

Gloucester

Crow’s Nest is a small hotel in Gloucester. It’s is very popular with young fishermen. Ethel Shatford comes from a family of fishermen. She works in the Crow’s Nest.Ethel has six children – four sons and two daugthers – Bobby, her son, went on his first trip with his colleagues on the most famous swordfishing boat of Gloucester.

Crow`s Nest

Andrea Gail is a largue and strong swordfishing boat. The crew of Andrea Gail are formed of six fishermens.Before the trip, captain Billy Tyne to find enough crew members for the trip. Many fishermen didn’t want to travel with Andrea Gail because the Ocean was very dangerous and other fishermens didn’t need the money and others fishermens had stranges feelings, for example Adam Randall.

Swordfish

Sully and Murph, two of the Andrea Gail’s crew, was buying food for the long trip.They had only $ 4,000.00 to buy things for the trip.

One of this things is the ice, is very important in the bussiness of fishing.Ice can keep fish for weeks, so the fishing boats can stay at the fishing grounds for a long time.

Now, the crew will start the trip on the ocean and at this time Ethel has a strange feeling: “It’s very late in the year to be going out to the Banks. There are lots of storms out there at this time of year”.

Andrea Gail had been built in Panama City, Florida in 1978. In 1987, in Gloucester, Andrea Gail was modificate with new and extra equipment. It had all the correct equipment to cope with problems at sea.

The Andrea Gail’ s crew go to the Grand Banks, one good fishing grounds.

On september 27th the Andrea Gail’s crew started to fish. The first week the sky was a deep blue color.

Andrea Gail

In the ocean, Andrea Gail and the Hannah Boden(another swordfishing boat) often helped each other.

Billy call to Linda, the captain of Hannah Boden, and told him her position. After two days, Andrea Gail and Hannah Boden separated and the crews said goodbye to each other.

Andre Gail went to the north, in the direction of the Flemish Cap, one dangeours area.

Flemish Cap in green

All the boats in the swordfishing fleet received one fax of the Canadian Weather Service, and the fax said the captain had to decide about the best thing to do for his bout and his crew.

Billy one experience captain must have known that the Andrea Gail was going into a dangerous storm but he didn’t said this for his crew.

The satellite photos showed a front of cold air moving to the area of the Andrea Gail was going to pass through.

Satelite photo

The last contact Andrea Gail had with Canadian Weather Service was at about 6 p.m. on Monday, October 28th. After this contact, Billy didn’t call again.Was Billy busy in the storm?Had he just forgotten to call?Andra Gail has lost her radio antennas in the storm?The situation was very serious and complicated.

But the Andrea Gail also had another equipment, the EPIRB(Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon). EPIRB works in a different way, it does’t need antennas, it sends out a radio signal when it’s sensor touches water.

EPIRB

yacht Satori

In the evening of Tuesday, October 29th,, the Hurricane Grace colided with the Sable Island storm,the result very violent. The boats in the swordfishing fleet were about 500 miles to the east of Sable Island and escaped the worst part of the storm.

"But there were also other people in danger. A yatch called Satori was in great danger, she couldn’t survive the huge waves and the terrible winds for very long. Another big problem was the life raft which had dissappeared, the crew couldn’t get off the boat!The Satori`s radio was still working and Sue began to talk into it very fast one Mayday message.The U.S. Coast Guard received the message and sent one Falcon jet plane out to find th Satori and The Coast Guard also sent a powerful ship, the Tamaroa.

After the crew of Satori was safely in the helicopter, Ray Leonard wasn`t happy. He sat quietly on his own because he didn`t want to leave his boat, the yacht was his home.

The Coast Guard cutter, the Tamaroa was called to another rescue that night. A National Guard helicopter was returning to the shore when it had run out of fuel. The helicopter had crashed into the ocean and had sunk immediately.There were five National Guardsmen on board, but one was missing, Rick Smith.

The waves were huge and the wind was blowing at about 100 knots. It was impossible for the pilot of the helicopter to drop a rescue basket into the sea. He called the Tamaroa on his radio.There`s only one possible way to save these man. The four Guardsmen had to swim to Tamaroa, and the crew put a net over the side of the ship.

Four men were safe, but the fifth man, Rick Smith was missing.

Tamaroa

The storm still did terrible damage to some of the boats. It destroyed their antennas and their fishing gear.They need to repair the boats.But the only boat that disappeared forever was the Andrea Gail.

Nobody had received any Mayday calls from her and there had been no signals from her EPRB.Maybe the crew is still OK, maybe the boat had lost her antennas and Billy could`t call anybody.

On Wednesday, October 30th, the Coast Guard called all the boats near the Sable Island on the radio. They asked these boats to try and get in touch with the Andrea Gail. There were six boats calling, but Andra Gail still didn`t answer.

Many groups of fuel drums were seen floating on the water, these drums had “AG” painted on the sides too.

Nobody can ever know for sure what happened to the Andrea Gail`s EPIRB. The Coast Guard said that this sensor had been switched off, but one rumor started going around Gloucester.This story said that the sensor had been switched on, and the Canadian Coast Guard had received the signal, but thy didn`t want to send rescuers.It will aways be a mistery.

Finally, just before midnight on November 8th, the Coast Guard stopped the search for the Andra Gail