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

by Sebastian Junger

If the fishermen lived hard, it was no doubt because they died hard as well. In the industry’s heyday, Gloucester was losing a couple of hundred men every year to the sea, four percent of the town’s population. Since 1650, an estimated ten thousand Gloucestermen have died at sea, far more Gloucestermen than died in all the country’s wars. Some times a storm would hit the Grand Banks and half a dozen ships would go down, a hundred men lost overnight. On more than one occasion, Newfoundlanders woke up to find their beaches strewn with bodies.

The Grand Banks are so dangerous because they happen to sit on one of the worst storm tracks in the world. Low pressure systems form over the Great Lakes or Cape Hatteras and follow the jet stream out to sea, crossing right over the fishing grounds in the process.

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.

Wind is simply air rushing from an area of high pressure to an area of low; the greater the pressure difference, the faster it blows.

The biggest rogue on record was during a Pacific gale in 1933, when the 478-foot Navy tanker Ramapo was on her way from Manila to San Diego. She encountered a massive low-pressure system that blew up to 68 knots for a week straight and resulted in a fully developed sea that the Ramapo had no choice but to take on her stern. (Unlike today’s tankers, the Ramapo’s wheelhouse was slightly forward of amidships.) Early on the morning of February seventh, the watch officer glanced to stern and saw a freak wave rising up behind him that lined up perfectly with a crow’s nest above and behind the bridge. Simple geometry later showed the wave to be 112 feet high.

Water is the only element that offers more resistance the harder you hit it, and at fifty miles an hour it might as well be concrete.