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Longliner
The Andrea Gail is the Gloucester swordfishing boat, or longliner, that occupies the book’s central drama. It is owned by Bob Brown, captained by Billy Tyne, and crewed by Bobby Shatford, Bugsy Moran, Dale Murphy, Alfred Pierre, and David Sullivan. It is sunk in the “perfect storm” of October, 1991.
Andrea Gail Quotes in The Perfect Storm
The The Perfect Storm quotes below are all either spoken by Andrea Gail or refer to Andrea Gail. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Barrel of the Gun
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With all this catastrophe in his life Murph had two choices—decide either that he was blessed or that his death was only a matter of time. He decided it was only a matter of time. When he met his wife, Debra, he told her flat-out he wasn’t going to live past thirty; she married him anyway. […] And a few weeks before signing onto the Andrea Gail, Murph had stopped by his parents' house in Bradenton for a somewhat unsettling goodbye. His mother reminded him that he needed to keep up on his life insurance policy—which included burial coverage—and he just shrugged. Mom, I wish you'd quit worryin' about burying me, he said. I’m going to die at sea.
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Graveyard of the Atlantic
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The Andrea Gail crew, all experienced fishermen, are probably trying to shrug it off as just another storm—they’ve been through this before, they'll go through it again, and at least they're not puking. Billy's undoubtedly working too hard at the helm to give drowning much thought. Ernie Hazard claims it was the last thing on his mind. "There was no conversation, just real business-like," he says of going down off Georges Bank. "You know, 'Let’s just get this thing done.'” […]
Be that as it may, certain realities still must come crashing in. At some point Tyne, Shatford, Sullivan, Moran, Murphy, and Pierre must realize there's no way off this boat.
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The Zero-Moment Point
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Whether the Andrea Gail rolls, pitch-poles, or gets driven down, she winds up, one way or another, in a position from which she cannot recover. […] The transition from crisis to catastrophe is fast, probably under a minute, or someone would've tripped the EPIRB. […] There’s no time to put on survival suits or grab a life vest; the boat’s moving through the most extreme motion of her life and there isn’t even time to shout.
The Dreams of the Dead
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And then, on the afternoon of November 5th, an EPIRB washes up on Sable Island. […] Like the bottled note thrown overboard from the schooner Falcon a century ago, the odds of something as small as an EPIRB winding up in human hands are absurdly small. And the odds of Billy Tyne disarming his EPIRB—there's no reason to, it wouldn’t even save batteries—are even smaller. Bob Brown, Linda Greenlaw, Charlie Reed, no one who knows Billy can explain it.
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If the men on the Andrea Gail had simply died, and their bodies were lying in state somewhere, their loved ones could make their goodbyes and get on with their lives. But they didn’t die, they disappeared off the face of the earth and, strictly speaking, it’s just a matter of faith that these men will never return. Such faith takes work, it takes effort. The people of Gloucester must willfully extract these men from their lives and banish them to another world.
Get the entire The Perfect Storm LitChart as a printable PDF.
Andrea Gail Term Timeline in The Perfect Storm
The timeline below shows where the term Andrea Gail appears in The Perfect Storm. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Foreword
...details or uncertain conjectures. Ultimately, because he couldn’t know for certain what happened aboard the Andrea Gail , he interviewed people who’d survived similar situations.
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Gloucester, Mass., 1991
...wakes up around eight o’clock. In a few hours, he’s supposed to be on the Andrea Gail , a swordfishing boat, for a month-long trip to the Grand Banks. When Chris finally...
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...get married, but Bobby needed money first. He decided to take a job on the Andrea Gail , a lucrative sword boat captained by a family friend, Billy Tyne. Tyne, in turn,...
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...Bobby Shatford wants, though, is to put in a year’s worth of trips on the Andrea Gail so that he can hopefully earn enough to pay off his debts.
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During Bobby’s first trip on the Andrea Gail , which left in August 1991, Chris spent a lot of time sitting in her...
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On the August 1991 trip, the Andrea Gail caught 15 tons of swordfish, which they sold for $136,812. The boat’s owner, Bob Brown,...
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...to spend the day following their return hauling out the fish and ice, scrubbing the Andrea Gail ’s decks, and stowing the gear. That night, the fishermen were paid half of what...
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Unlike many fishermen, Billy Tyne really loved his job, as did his predecessor on the Andrea Gail , Charlie Reed. Charlie loved the solitude aboard ship, the closeness to nature, and the...
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...week’s worth of cash in one night. Chris recalls how much everyone drank before the Andrea Gail ’s last voyage. She and Bobby had gotten physically violent on their final night together,...
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The Andrea Gail is 72 feet long and was built in Florida in 1978. She has an angled...
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The Andrea Gail ’s latest trip is off to a bad start. Its crew has been drinking a...
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...many other businesses, like Gloucester Marine Railways, which touches up damaged boats between trips. The Andrea Gail has been worked on there, though her most recent major renovations took place in St....
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God’s Country
By midafternoon, the Andrea Gail is ready to go. Bobby and Chris drive back to Chris’s friend Thea’s for a...
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By September 26th or 27th, the Andrea Gail has made it to the “Tail” of the Grand Banks, about 300 miles off the...
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During the end of September and the beginning of October, the Andrea Gail fishermen repeatedly set out and haul back their gear. On the horizon, they can occasionally...
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Around this time, the Andrea Gail , still on the Grand Banks, gets slammed by a rogue wave while the crew...
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The Andrea Gail spends another week fishing off the Grand Banks’s Tail, but the trip is shaping up...
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The Flemish Cap
...each other back to port as the season declined. In the fall of 1991, the Andrea Gail was fishing under a quota for the first time.
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...17th, the Mary T situated farther south and closer to the Gulf Stream than the Andrea Gail . Johnston, now 36, has been fishing since he was a teenager. Established in the...
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...for testing limits this way; Linda has bailed him out before. The Hannah Boden and Andrea Gail rendezvous south of the Flemish Cap—a dangerous maneuver—and Linda pumps fuel into the Andrea Gail’s...
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...boats under 79 feet long aren’t required to be tested for their stability profile. The Andrea Gail is 72 feet long and never underwent stability testing—making her quite typical.
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Indeed, although no major issues were ever reported when the Andrea Gail was inspected and assessed on various occasions, there were plenty of things that might concern...
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The Barrel of the Gun
...of sinking is unthinkable to many captains, so they don’t even take precautions. But the Andrea Gail is too far from home to summon the Coast Guard anyway. While it’s very likely...
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When the Andrea Gail moves into the storm, the change would have been as dramatic as if a person...
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...latest weather report, Tommy Barrie calls Billy. He’s 600 miles to the east of the Andrea Gail and is wondering if he should set out bait that night. He asks Billy how...
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Nobody knows exactly what would have been happening on the Andrea Gail at this time. Charlie Reed imagines the crew staying huddled belowdecks, reading books. He figures...
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Graveyard of the Atlantic
...would have been dispatched immediately, and other boats would have tried to converge on the Andrea Gail to help. But the Coast Guard is never called, suggesting that the Andrea Gail’s radios...
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The Zero-Moment Point
No matter whether the Andrea Gail pitch-poles or founders, she reaches what’s called the “zero-moment point”—a position from which she can’t...
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If the boat got inundated with water, the men aboard the Andrea Gail probably weren’t as fortunate as Ernie Hazard. They would have had, at most, a minute’s...
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The World of the Living
Albert Johnston gets hit by the storm a few hours after the Andrea Gail did, but the center of the Sable Island storm skirts back toward the coast of...
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Into the Abyss
...her apartment. She seems uncomfortable. Finally, she tells Chris that they’re having trouble reaching the Andrea Gail . Chris is shocked, and she immediately senses that Bobby is dead. She rushes to...
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...hasn’t heard from Billy in a couple of days and is worried. Bob reports the Andrea Gail as missing to the Coast Guard in Boston. Without any kind of distress call or...
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That night, the sword fleet captains confer over the radio and speculate about where the Andrea Gail may have drifted. Bob Brown also alerts the Canadian Coast Guard, and soon, half a...
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The Dreams of the Dead
...nightfall on the 31st, the Coast Guard is dealing with two search-and-rescue missions: for the Andrea Gail and for Rick Smith. Just before evening, a plane spots emergency green dye in the...
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Meanwhile, 15 aircraft are still searching for the Andrea Gail . On November 1st, Albert Johnston is heading home on the Mary T when he...
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...members receive a letter from Bob Brown asking them to exonerate him from any responsibility—the Andrea Gail , he claims, was fully seaworthy. Several of the bereaved decide to sue Brown, but...
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