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The Andrea Gail and the Movie "The Perfect Storm"

"Commercial fishing simply wouldn't be possible without ...There is no other way to get fresh fish to market."

Written by Sebastian Junger about the October 1991 storm of the century, and the fate of the sword fishing vessel Andrea Gail with her crew of six, out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, lost in the storm.

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Counting down photo (above) shows Warner Brother's cast playing Andrea Gail crew, including John Hawkes ("Bugsy") front, wearing his Cape Pond cap.

Warner Bros. actor John Hawkes, aka, "Bugsy" Moran of the crew of the ill-fated F/V Andrea Gail, who wears a "Cape Pond - The Coolest Guys Around" Shirt throughout the movie version of The Perfect Storm.

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Gloucester & Perfect Storm Landmarks: Download a map of d owntown Gloucester, Mass, and "The Perfect Storm" Landmarks (includes information and phone numbers for
other area attractions), or get directions to Cape Pond Ice Company in Gloucester.


	The Andrea Gail at Sea (photo courtesy of Les Nagy)

Excerpt from "The Perfect Storm"
"The Andrea Gail has a small refrigerator in the galley and twenty tons of in the hold. The ice keeps the baitfish and groceries from spoiling on the way out and the swordfish from spoiling on the way home. (In a pinch it can even be used to keep a dead crew member fresh: once a desperately-alcoholic old fisherman died on the Hannah Boden, and Linda Greenlaw had to put him down the hole because the Coast Guard refused to fly him out.) Commercial fishing simply wouldn't be possible without ice. Without diesel engines, maybe; without loran, weather faxes, or hydraulic winches; but not without ice. There is simply no other way to get fresh fish to market. In the old days, Grand Banks fishermen used to run to Newfoundland to salt-dry their catch before heading home, but the coming of the railroads in the 1840s changed all that. Suddenly food could be moved faster than it would spoil, and ice companies sprang up practically overnight to accommodate the new market. They cut ice from ponds in the winter, packed it in sawdust and then sold it to schooners in the summer months. Properly-packed ice lasted so long -- and was so valuable - that traders could ship it to India and still make a profit...


	The Andrea Gail

Fishing boats still make the same mad dashes for shore they were making 150 years ago, and the smaller boats -- the ones that don't have machines-- are still buying it in bulk from Cape Pond Ice, located in a low brick building between Felicia Oil and Parisi Seafoods. In the old days, Cape Pond Ice used to hire men to carve up a local pond with huge ice-saws, but now the ice is made in row upon row of 350-pound blocks, called "cans." The cans look like huge versions of the trays in people's refrigerators. They're extracted from freezers in the floor, skidded onto elevators, hoisted to the third floor, and dragged down a runway by men wielding huge steel hooks; the men work in a building-sized refrigerator and wear shirts that say, "Cape Pond Ice - The Coolest Guys Around." The blocks are shoved down a chute into a steel cutting drum, where they jump and rattle in terrible spasms until all 350 pounds have been eaten down to little chips and sprayed through a hose into the hold of a commercial boat outside."

From "The Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Junger. Copyright © 1997 by Sebastian Junger. Reprinted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
To find out how you can help Gloucester's fishing families, contact The Perfect Storm Foundation www.perfectstorm.org