Andrea Gail

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• Miss Penny

The Andrea Gail was a commercial fishing vessel that was used for swordfish. On October 28, 1991, she disappeared in the North Atlantic during a heavy storm, which had been formed from the remnants of Hurricane Grace and two other weather systems.

The fishing boat was in 1978 at the shipyard Eastern Marina, Inc. in Panama City ( Florida) built as Miss Penny. The ship had a steel hull. It was diesel- driven and had a propeller, two decks, a mast and a rectangular transom.

The history of this ship was the novel The Perfect Storm and its film adaptation as a template.

The accident

On 21 September 1991, the Andrea Gail ( " Grand Banks " engl.) ran to the Grand Banks to the swordfish of Gloucester in Massachusetts from. This harbor they headed for mostly for loading their catch and to replenish fuel and supplies. There were six men, Captain William " Billy" Tyne, Robert " Bobby" Shatford, Dale " Murph " Murphy, David " Sully " Sullivan, Michael " Bugsy " Moran and Alfred Pierre, as well as supplies for almost 40 to 50 days on board. She led for the ride with 34,000 liters of diesel fuel and 7,500 gallons of water, which was stored in barrels. Due to poor catch rates the captain Northeast bearing contributed to Flemish Cap, 560 kilometers east of St. John's, Newfoundland. On October 26, the return journey began. In the evening of October 28 1991, she fell into a heavy thunderstorm. Captain Tyne reported his position at 44 ° 0 '0 "N, 56 ° 24 ' 0" W44 - 56.4, 330 km north-east of Sable Iceland. His weather reported 9- m- waves and wind gusts up to 80 knots (150 km / h). About the further fate of the ship and crew, nothing is known except liferaft, tanks, small parts and the Notfunksender ( EPIRB ) of the Andrea Gail, which was on 6 November 1991 on the banks of Sable found Iceland, was anything but lost. In all likelihood, the Andrea Gail capsized in the up to 18 -meter-high waves, the crew drowned.

The severe weather, which the Andrea Gail was undoing came about through the combination of three weather systems: a pulling from the American mainland in the east area of ​​low pressure met on a high from Canada, the cold and dry air carried with him, and was to the south go. This meeting was finally fired by the warm, moist remnants of Hurricane Grace.

The book and the film

Sebastian Junger has a novel entitled The Perfect Storm wrote about the accident, which was later filmed by Wolfgang Petersen under the eponymous English title or the German title Der Sturm. For dramatic reasons, the film aboard the Andrea Gail lets things happen that have occurred in various other fishing boats. Also, the storm in which the Andrea Gail 's lost, far from being the worst storm ever recorded, as is said in the film.

When the author was doing research for his book, he got from a meteorologist told that the above-mentioned three weather systems that came together over the North Atlantic at this time, have been the ingredients for a perfect storm. From this one of the title for the book.