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

by Sebastian Junger

By the mid-eighties, the U.S. swordfish fleet alone was up to 700 boats fishing around fifty million hooks a year.

You see so much bad weather that you kind of get used to it. But then you see really bad weather. And that, you never get used to.

the total amount of wave energy in a storm doesn’t rise linearly with wind speed, but to its fourth power. The seas generated by a forty-knot wind aren’t twice as violent as those from a twenty-knot wind, they’re seventeen times as violent.

high winds tend to shorten the distance between wave crests and steepen their faces. The waves are no longer symmetrical sine curves, they’re sharp peaks that rise farther above sea level than the troughs fall below