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    The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
    The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
    The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
    Audiobook9 hours

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

    Written by Sebastian Junger

    Narrated by Richard Davidson

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Man's struggle against the sea is a theme that has created some of the world's most exciting stories. Now, in the tradition of Moby Dick comes a New York Times best-seller destined to become a modern classic. Written by journalist Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm combines an intimate portrait of a small fishing crew with fascinating scientific data about boats and weather systems. In late October, North Atlantic seas are unpredictable. Still, one last good swordfish catch is a chance to start the winter with a fat wallet. As Captain Billy Tyne steers his 72-foot longboat Andrea Gail toward the Grand Banks, growing weather fronts are moving toward the same waters. The Andrea Gail is sailing into the storm of the century, one with 100 mile per hour winds and waves cresting over 110 feet. As each man on the boat faces this ultimate foe, Sebastian Junger gives the account an immediacy that fills The Perfect Storm with suspense and authenticity. Narrator Richard M. Davidson's reading adds further drama to this unforgettable sea adventure. An interview with the author concludes the audiobook.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 16, 2014
    ISBN9781490635194
    The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
    Author

    Sebastian Junger

    SEBASTIAN JUNGER is the New York Times bestselling author of Tribe, War, Freedom, A Death in Belmont, Fire, and The Perfect Storm, and codirector of the documentary film Restrepo, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is also the winner of a Peabody Award and the National Magazine Award for Reporting.

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    Reviews for The Perfect Storm

    4.5/5

    104 ratings55 reviews

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    • 4/5
      In the last couple years I've read two other maritime disaster books: In the Heart of the Sea by Nethaniel Philbrick and In Harm's Way by Doug Stanton, and although this book was a fast read and engaging, I didn't find myself as involved with the characters as in the other books.Perhaps it was simply aptly titled. It was, to me, indeed a book primarily about a storm, more than it was a book about the people in it. Though they figured prominently in the telling of the story, the other two were stories of survival and death. . .this book read like it was just a story of a sinking.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I read this best seller about the deadly nor'easter of 1991 because of my enduring interest in storms. (I live in Oklahoma.) I wasn't surprised to find it reading as if magazine articles were stitched together. I will remember the doomed sailor's romance, the training of rescue jumpers, the rescues themselves, and the process of drowning.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      "Going to sea is like going to prison, with a chance of drowning besides." Samuel JohnsonThis is an excellent narrative nonfiction account of the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail and their encounter with a massive storm. The Andrea Gail set out from Gloucester Massachusetts in October to fish for swordfish on the Grand Banks. Not only is swordfishing one of the most dangerous occupations, but the Grand Banks are on one of the worst storm tracks in the world. Since 1650, the town of Gloucester has lost more than 10,000 men at sea.There is a lot of information in this book about what it is like to be a commercial fisherman, how hurricanes and other storms develop, how waves form, and what it is like to drown, just to mention a few of the topics covered. But most of all it is about Bobby, Billy, Murph, Sully, Bugsy, Albert, and the Andrea Gail.Recommended3 stars

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      3.5 starsIn 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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      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 hoped, 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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I picked up this book thinking it would be a better, more complete version of the movie. In this I was right, and wrong.

      The movie is fictionalized to show the personalities of the fisherman who died and the Andrea Gail. The book removes all of the fictional dialog that happened on the boat, because, no one lived to tell the tale. Instead Junger uses interviews with the people that lived and loved the men lost to the sea.

      This book is just as personalized, and just and emotionally crushing as the movie, but it is done differently. Both made me cry.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This book threw me for a loop, and I'll be up front and say I'm making it low for personal preference. I didn't know much about the book going into it, and was expecting an event-specific account. The book bills itself as being about what happened to the Andrea Gail, but very little is known about what actually happened, so it's a lot of guesswork. Junger delves into the men's lives, goes into technical detail about meteorology and the physics of drowning and...ghosts. It's a weird jumble. Oh, and it's in the present tense, which feels disorienting considering that so much of what happened to the Andrea Gail is unknown.

      I can see how this book could really work for people- there's some fascinating stuff here- but for me, between the author's writing style and the jigsaw puzzle of topics covered, it was just okay.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Fast read and very interesting from start to finish Highly recommend
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this. I like the way Junger is able to portray factual events and an interesting storylike manner. I had seen the movie several years ago and kept waiting for the climax of the storm on the Andrea Gail, but events are unknown after their last radio transmission. I like Junger's information from other fisherman that were out in the same storm and detailing their experiences and their thoughts of what the Andrea Gail must be experiencing. There were portions where it became tedious with technical aspects of the boat's characteristics and capacities, and then storms evolution. It reminded me somewhat of a science textbook, just glad I didn't have to take a test on it. The portrayal of the persons involved helped to heighten the tension and suspense and create compassion for the trials experienced. I have previously read Junger's "War" his 15-month tour of duty in an outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. I would recommend this one as well.
    • 4/5
      a interesting book and was turned into a movie
    • 5/5
      About a gigantic storm off shore of Canada. It is non-fiction. The beginning is slow with lots of technical information about storms. The end is very interesting with information about real life rescues. Not really about Andrea Gale.
    • 4/5
      This is another case where the movie has almost nothing in common with the book. The book is very readable even when explaining changes in fishing laws, and how changes in boat design can change its bouyency to the training of the Air force rescue jumpers.
    • 4/5
      This book documents the fates of several people who had the misfortune to be at sea during the "perfect storm" -- a storm that became unexpectedly big and powerful due to the alignment of several weather systems. The primary story is the fate of the Andrea Gail, a fishing vessel that gets lost in the storm. Other stories of those who encountered the storm -- including a thrilling Coast Guard rescue -- are also chronicled. Junger does a good job of telling a true story in a novelistic way, and his description of what probably happened to the crew of the Andrea Gail is haunting. Like Alive described above, this book was made into a movie (this one starring George Clooney -- swoon)!
    • 5/5
      I read this book way back in the summer of 1999, and just after finishing the book took a family vacation to Cape Cod, and later drove up to visit Gloucester, MA. Junger's description of the town was so well done it almost felt like I had actually been there before.Admittedly, the really riveting story is the storm and the ship at sea. But even the details of the coast guard rescuers, their training, and raw bravery are so well told that this book can consume you. It did me, and it still is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read.
    • 4/5
      Of course I've seen the film, many years ago, and loved it for years. I was aware that it was based on a book (a friend who came to visit read it when she came across on the ferry many years ago, much to the amusement of the other passengers), and I've always wanted to read it, but I've never gotten around to it.Then I bought a set of books called 'Stranger Than Fiction...' from The Book People, which are all stories about real people and events, but which are, funnily enough, stranger than fiction. They are all beautiful books. The covers are really pretty (which always makes a book nice to look at).This book was more the sort of thing I had been expecting Longitude to be. It was all based on fact, there was a lot of factual information packed into the story, but there was speculation there which posed events as they might have been. It was very well done, especially considering that when it was written in 1997, it wasn't that long since the actual storm itself and by writing the book Junger was going to be opening wounds that were barely healed for the family and friends of the lost men.I really enjoyed it. If I hadn't been quite so busy working on my OU, I probably would have finished it much quicker. Although it had a lot of information about weather and boating terms (which when compared to the similar aspects of Longitude which detailed sailing and how clocks were made/used which I found quite boring), but it was all explained in a really interesting way. It was written in a slightly more 'literary' style (totally borrowing from my course here) which meant that even though there were technical terms which might have bogged it down, they were almost poetic in places and described using quotes from people who had experienced the events themselves.One thing which might ordinarily have annoyed me, but which really didn't, was the switches in tenses through the book. As it was dealing with events that had happened, specutlation on what might have happened, as well as memories, there as some shifting between present and past tense. I did become aware of it somewhere around the first couple of chapters of the book, and sort of noted that it wasn't bugging me, probably because it felt like a very natural way to move between the past and present.Obviously, having seen the film, I knew how the book would end, but there were differences. I was surprised at how little focus there was on the crew of the Andrea Gail. The main focus of the film is obviously on the men and the events on the boat before and during the storm. In the book Junger spends a lot of time explaining that it's not possible to know what happened, but that other people who have been in similar situations and survived have experiences this. It's a very respectful way of handling what happened.I found it really sad in places, which was kind of expected, given the subject matter. It was also kind of creepy; there's a lot of superstitions surrounding fishing (and sailing in general). The dreams that family members had following the loss of the boat were heartbreaking.I really did enjoy this book and I'm so glad that I've read it. I'd definitely recommend it, though maybe not to someone who's got to travel by boat regularly. I don't think I could have done it when I was having to commute off the island everyday.
    • 4/5
      Well, I wouldn't recommend this as reading material to anyone planning a cruise.I don't know why I do this to myself, I really don't. I am not a fan of heart-pounding real-life dramas. I don't need to hear about men doing HALO jumps, and others drowning at sea (in horrific detail). Such stories make me want to bury further under the duvet and not even drive a car on the highway, because danger suddenly lurks everywhere. Never mind. I'll be fine tomorrow.I'd seen the film -- quite different in tone to the book, which is heavy on technical details -- and also an episode of 'I Shouldn't Be Alive', which I hadn't connected with this very incident, strangely. The ISBA episode told the story of the rescue team who ran out of fuel. After that I stopped watching ISBA. I'm also going to stop watching Air Crash Investigation with my husband.Whenever I read the name 'Bob Brown' I couldn't get the former leader of the Australian Greens Party out of my head, which was a bit weird, and perhaps peripheral to this review.The story certainly wiped any romantic ideas I may have entertained about working on a fishing boat -- the camaraderie, the fresh, wild-caught fish for dinner every night (I can only presume), the physical prowess and the long months of holiday between jobs. Nope. Don't intend a career change anytime soon. In fact, I'm staying right off of dinghys in ponds. No dinghys for moi.
    • 3/5
      When the narrative stays at sea, the story is captivating; when it hits land, though, it really bogs down.
    • 3/5
      Although highly enlightening, it was a very dry read at times. I almost wish he had filled in the blanks and created an educated guess of the last few days of the men of the Andrea Gail, but I guess that would've been false to their memory. Perhaps if he had just written a fictional novel based on these events, but ... Oh well.
    • 5/5
      What amounts to a well written journalistic account of a unique weather event through the eyes of people who were caught out in the storm. Full of regional history and thecharacters that bought it to life.
    • 5/5
      A fascinating and well-written piece of nonfiction. Junger does an excellent job of filling in the unknowns with the recollections of others in similar circumstances and interviews with experts, avoiding the docu-drama pitfall. Much superior to the movie, which mashed up characters and events beyond recognition.
    • 3/5
      This is a piece of journalism, and a riveting read. The "perfect"storm of 1991 did cause a great deal of damage but Mr. Junger managed to build a very good book out of it. Yes, it is not pure non-fiction, but his imaginings of the last hours of the Andrea Gail were quite realistic in the artistic sense. It was made into a film, and I hope a financial bedrock for Mr. Junger. Mind you I see that the term "Perfect storm of..." seems to have replaced the single word, "combination" in a lot of lazy writing lately. Just sayin"....
    • 4/5
      Firstly I feel it is only fair to admit that I have never seen the movie of the same name (personally I tend to avoid anything that George Clooney is in) but I did know a few of the facts beforehand mainly because the film had been so extensively publicized.Initially I was not sure that I would enjoy this book, I had been expecting a novel rather than the more journalistic format that it is actually written in and I found a few of the early background details a little tedious, but once I really got into the book I really enjoyed it. Junger builds the background story piece by piece in much the same way as the storm is building in intensity and overall it felt almost atmospheric. Junger blends facts with speculation, despite admitting that he knows nothing about life on the sea, but on the whole the assumptions that he makes seem very probably correct, he has obviously done his research. Since the crew of the Andrea Gail have never been seen again obviously speculation is all there can be.However, if I had one complaint it is the fact that Junger only tells the story of the yacht Santori from one standpoint although admittedly from that of an experienced sailor. The captain/owner of the Santori has to be ordered off the yacht because others felt that it was unsafe to stay aboard but in the end the boat stayed afloat and he later recovered it when it ran aground so it could be argued that he was proved right not the crew.The book was not completely without faults but overall I rather enjoyed it findind it quite an emotional rollercoaster, varying from hope to despair.The book beautifully portrays the extremes fishermen sometime have to go to to catch the fish we eat, not to mention the hard partying they do when back ashore, but also the heroism of those who must try to rescue them and other seafarers, when things go tragically wrong.
    • 4/5
      I have never seen the film, which is probably a good thing. The book was excellent, a gripping ride from start to finish. The human side was both interesting and ultimately tragic. The details of the actual storm are frightening, 70 foot waves and 100 mile an hour winds!!Recommended
    • 5/5
      Great story telling - character, detail, tension. Author photo is a bit spooky, like a zombie football player.
    • 5/5
      So much better than the movie. Instead of egos, infighting and going to sea because they love it, these people are real, driven by practicalities and accepting risks as an unfortunate but necessary part of the job. Plus, the author does an excellent job of helping readers understand how storms form, how rescue operation are carried out and so much more I never imagined I would find fascinating.
    • 4/5
      Sebastian Junger's utterly compelling account of a hurricane at sea. "The Perfect Storm" is a meteorologist's term for the theoretically worst storm possible. In 1991 theory became reality off the New England coast. Such is the power of the writing, the movie spin-off with the same title stirs the imagination weakly in comparison. This is a book to keep you awake at night.
    • 4/5
      Three storm systems collide to form what meteorologist fondly dub as the "perfect storm" or "the hundred year storm" off the North American Eastern Coast. This is the kind of storm system that Hollywood movies are made of (and it does become just that) as commercial fisherman and sailing enthusiasts are caught out in the midst of Mother Nature's maelstrom. In other words, all hell breaks loose and every man is struggling to hold on to whatever ledge, string, board they can leverage. The story is centred around the commercial sword fishing boat called The Andrea Gail and the six men on board who eventually find themselves caught in the Atlantic Ocean facing death in the form of 100 feet waves and 100 mile winds. This is a story of their struggle, their fight and eventually their demise at the hands of one of the worst storms ever witnessed by mankind.The first couple of pages throws me for a loop and I was confused - not by the content of the book but how the book was written. I admit that I was under the misconception that although this was based on true events, that the book would be written in a fictional format. It read more like a newspaper article or an interview. So I concluded that this was more in the realm of a non-fiction book and was applauding myself for reading my first non-fiction book in 2011. But then the author would veer off into speculative commentary about what he thought was most likely the course of events in the final hours of the Andrea Gail and her crew. After adjusting to the tone of the author's non-fiction/fiction pendulum, I settled in for what turned out to be a fascinating read on how Mother Nature lost her marbles and went ballistic. To be honest, I am probably jaded from my reading of Moby Dick where the constant and incessant referrals to the different types of sea-faring transportations and the kind of ropes to harpoons that were used agitated me to no end. So when the book started going off the deep end with its various descriptions of boats and so on, I inwardly groaned and prepared myself for a deluge of information that I didn't really care to know about since I was no fisherman nor did I have any plans of becoming one. But the second half of the book HOOKED me. The details and science behind how a storm forms and what causes a "perfect storm" sent chills down my spine. The story of the Andrea Gail actually was not in my opinion the best part of the book since it really is just speculative because no one on this earth really knows what happened to the boat and her crew. All we have are educated and scientific guesses. But the story and rescue of Satori and her three person crew was riveting. I could not tear myself away from the story as it was like reading a play by play of the action that was taking place. The lives that were at stake and the risks that the rescue crew took was beyond human comprehension. For example, here is an excerpt from the book detailing the kind of training it takes to even become qualified enough to risk your life rescuing people on the high seas."During the first three months of training, candidates are weeded out through sheer, raw abuse. The dropout rate is often over ninety percent. In one drill, the team swims their normal 4,000 yard workout, and then the instructor tosses his whistle into the pool. Ten guys fight for it, and whoever manages to blow it at the surface gets to leave the pool. His workout is over for the day. The instructor throws the whistle in again, and the nine remaining guys fight for it. This goes on until there’s only one man left, and he’s kicked out of the PJ school. In a variation called “water harassment,” two swimmers share a snorkel while instructors basically try to drown them. If either man breaks the surface and takes a breath, he’s out of the school."~The Perfect Storm, Pg. 176In the end, The Perfect Storm was thoroughly an enjoyable and highly informative book. Suffice to say, I will not be going on any oceanic trips in the near future - even if George Clooney were the Captain at the helm.
    • 5/5
      Great detailed story. Perfect mix of information of what's happening.
    • 5/5
      3035 The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea, by Sebastian Junger (read 16 Nov 1997) This is a stunning and perfect book. It tells a true story of a storm in late October 1991 in which a swordfish fishing vessel, the Andrea Gail, and its crew six perished. The book is flawless and even I, who have no real at sea experience, was absorbed in the account of the storm and its fury. I was totally bowled over by this excellent, excellent book. The storm was in the vicinity of Sable Island--a place which I have long had an interest in. This book is a gripping gripping read. I presume it is the best book I'll read this year. {But it wasn't--on Dec 21 I read Back to the Front, and it won out, probably mistakenly, over this book to be the best book read in 1997.]
    • 5/5
      In Gloucester there is a sculpture of the Virgin Mary between two tall bell towers of the Our Lady of Good Voyage Church. She has a bundle in her arms that she lovingly gazes at. The bundle is not the infant Jesus; it’s a Gloucester schooner. Fishing the Grand Banks has always been extremely dangerous. Dories rowed out to haul in lines, back-breaking work at best, and disappeared into dense fog never to be seen again; or, occasionally the seafarers might walk up the lane months later having returned from Europe where they had been blown, surviving on dew and whatever fish they could catch. This area routinely spawns devastating storms. Some ten thousand Gloucester fishermen have been killed in the past three hundred years, and commercial fishing has the highest per capita death rate of any profession. Risks today have only been slightly lessened with the use of special survival suits and lifeboats. Most of the fishing is out of the range of rescue helicopters.

      Sebastian Junger has recreated the tragedy of the Andrea Gail in The Perfect Storm. He reconstructed as best he could what might have happened. In the process, we learn a great deal about the swordfishing industry. The Andrea Gail was a good ship and swordfishing could be particularly lucrative. On a good trip, the captain might receive a $20,000 share after all expenses had been paid; the lowest seniority crewman, $5,000 for a month’s work. Swordfish are not gentle creatures. They have a four to five foot bony “sword” that is used for slashing and eviscerating schools of fish. They have been known to attack fishermen when hooked and there is a case on record of one mauling a clipper ship. Commercial fishermen avoid the thrill by baiting hooks on miles of lines that are trolled behind the vessel. The baiting process is interesting and extremely dangerous. It’s done on the fly as the line is played out. Large #10 hooks are baited and snapped on to the line. Should the hook catch on the baiter’s clothing as it goes by, he goes over the side with it. If he’s extremely lucky, he can grab a knife that is always kept ready and cut the line before he drowns. The bait is illuminated with Cyclume sticks costing $1.00 each — swordfish feed at night and the light sticks are supposed to illuminate the bait — and during a trip, the ship might use 5000 of them. The trolling line is usually about thirty miles long. Buoys and radio beacons as well as radar reflectors are added every so often to keep the hooks suspended at the feeding depth of seventy feet, so one trolling line might be worth $20,000.

      The storm that destroyed the Andrea Gail was of truly awesome proportions, and Junger does a brilliant job of mixing in the scientific understanding of hurricane physics, wave mechanics, and storm development with analysis of human and ship behavior. One huge container ship that traversed a less intense area of the storm lost 37 containers (huge tractortrailer sized shipping units that are securely attached to the decks of large vessels). After it limped into New York, an officer walked off and declared he would never set foot on board a ship again. Meteorologists calculated it was the worst storm in one hundred years. Significant wave heights were measured by instruments at over 97 feet. Peak wave heights would have been more than twice that. That’s as high as a twenty story building. Waves that high have never been measured, but it’s suspected that “they would destroy anything in a position to measure them.” An example of what can happen during such a storm was recounted by another Gloucester fisherman named Chris, whose boat was hit by a tremendous boarding sea in a lesser storm. As Junger recounted, “The stern lifted, the bow dropped, and they started surfing down the face of the wave. When they got to the bottom there was nowhere to go but down, and the crest of the breaking wave drove them like a piling. Chris looked out the porthole, and all he could see was black. If you look out the porthole and see whitewater, you’re still near the surface and relatively safe. If you see greenwater, at least you’re in the body of the wave. If you see blackwater, you’re a submarine. ‘I felt the boat come to a complete stop. . . . We hung there a moment and then the buoyancy caught and it was as if she’d been thrown into reverse. We plowed right back out the way we came.’”