Free The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger Page B

cavitation of hundreds of thousands of air bubbles radiate outward into the ocean. The sound wraps around the foreshores of Newfoundland, refracts off the temperature discontinuity of the Gulf Stream, and dissipates into the crushing black depths beyond the continental shelf. Low frequency vibrations propagate almost forever underwater, and the throb of the Andrea Gail's machinery must reach just about every life form on the Banks.
    DAWN at sea, a grey void emerging out of a vaster black one. "The earth was without form and darkness was upon the face of the deep." Whoever wrote that knew the sea— knew the pale emergence of the world every morning, a world that contained absolutely nothing, not one thing.
    A long blast on the airhorn.
    The men stagger out of their bunks and pour themselves coffee under the fluorescent lights of the galley, squinting through swollen lids and bad moods. They can just start to make out shapes on deck when they go out. It's cold and raw, and under their slickers they have sweat shirts and flannel shirts and thermal tops. Dawn's not for another hour, but they start work as soon as they can see anything. At 43 degrees north, a week after the equinox, that's 5:30 in the morning.
    The boat is at the start of the mainline, about one hundred miles outside Canada's territorial limit. You generally set into the Gulf Stream and haul into the Gulf Stream, so the previous afternoon they'd set the gear while steaming west into the warm four-knot current. Then they'd turned around and headed east again, back to the start of the mainline. That gives the entire string the same amount of time in the water, and also keeps the boat from losing too much ground to the eastward currents. Billy has hunted down the beginning of the mainline with the radio beacon signals and now sits, bow toward America, ready to haul.
    Haulback is less dangerous than setting-out because the hooks are coming inboard rather than going outboard, but the mainline still gets pulled at considerable velocity out of the water. The hooks can whiplash over the rail and snag people in all kinds of horrible ways; one crewman took a hook in the face that entered under his cheekbone and came out his eye socket. To make matters worse, the boat is rarely a stable platform, and rarely dry. Keeping one's feet while eighteen inches of deck slop pour out the scuppers can require the balance of an ironworker in a sleet storm.
    Nevertheless, you're hauling up your lottery ticket, and even the most jaded deckhand wants to know what he's hit. The line has been unhooked from the stern guide ring and now comes onboard through a cutout in the starboard rail and into the overhead block. The captain steers the boat from an auxiliary helm on deck and runs up to the wheel-house from time to time to check the radar for other boats in their path. The man at the line is called the hauler, and it's his job to unclip the gangions and hand them back to the coiler, who pulls the bait off and wraps them around the leader cart. Being a hauler is a high-stress job; one hauler described having to pry his fingers off the hydraulic lever at the end of the day because he was so tense. Haulers are paid extra for the trip and are chosen because they can unclip a gangion every few seconds for four hours straight.
    A hooked swordfish puts a telltale heaviness in the line, and when the hauler feels that, he eases off on the hydraulic lever to keep the hook from tearing out. As soon as the fish is within reach, two men swing gaff hooks into his side and drag him on board. If the fish is alive, one of the gaffers might harpoon him and haul him up on a stouter line to make sure he doesn't get away. Then the fish just lies there, eyes bulging, mouth working open and shut. If it's a good haul there are sometimes three or four half-dead swordfish sloshing back and forth in the deck wash, bumping into the men as they work. A puncture wound by a swordfish bill means a severe and nearly