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

by Sebastian Junger

For some, acting like the money means nothing is the only compensation for what it actually must mean.

A boat can’t stay indefinitely out at sea—supplies run low, the crew gets crazy, the fish get old.

More people are killed on fishing boats, per capita, than in any other job in the United States.

As a result, sword boat captains help each other out on the high seas whenever they can; they lend engine parts, offer technical advice, donate food or fuel. The competition between a dozen boats rushing a perishable commodity to market fortunately doesn’t kill an inherent sense of concern for each other. This may seem terrifically noble, but it’s not—or at least not entirely. It’s also self-interested. Each captain knows he may be the next one with the frozen injector or the leaking hydraulics.

The air above one square-foot of equatorial water contains enough latent energy to drive a car two miles. A single thunderstorm could supply four days’ worth of the electrical power needed by the United States.

A mature hurricane is by far the most powerful event on earth; the combined nuclear arsenals of the United States and the former Soviet Union don’t contain enough energy to keep a hurricane going for one day. A typical hurricane encompasses a million cubic miles of atmosphere and could provide all the electric power needed by the United States for three or four years. During the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, winds surpassed 200 miles an hour and people caught outside were sandblasted to death. Rescue workers found nothing but their shoes and belt buckles.

When the Contship Holland finally limped into port several days later, one of her officers stepped off and swore he’d never set foot on another ship again. She’d lost 36 land/sea containers over the side, and the ship’s owners promptly hired an American meteorological consultant to help defend them against lawsuits. “The storm resulted in large-scale destruction of offshore shipping and coastal installations from Nova Scotia to Florida,”

EPIRBs are kept permanently in the “armed” position, and if the boat goes down, a water-sensitive switch triggers a radio signal that gets relayed by satellite to listening posts on shore. The Coast Guard immediately knows the name of the boat, the location, and that something has gone disastrously wrong. If a boat loses her radios before actually sinking, though, the captain can send a distress signal by just twisting the ring switch to the “on” position. It’s the same as screaming “mayday” into the radio.

For the first time since the ordeal began, Spillane has the time to contemplate his own death. He isn’t panicked so much as saddened by the idea. His wife is five months pregnant with their first child, and he’s been home very little recently—he was in paramedic school, and in training for the New York City marathon. He wishes that he’d spent more time at home. He wishes—incredibly—that he’d cut the grass one more time before winter. He wishes there was someone who could tell his wife and family what happened in the end. It bothers him that Dave Ruvola probably died taking the helicopter in. It bothers him they’re all going to die for lack of five hundred pounds of jet fuel. The shame of it all, he thinks; we have this eight-million-dollar helicopter, nothing’s wrong with it, nobody’s shooting at us, we’re just out of fuel.