Please don't call her a fisherwoman

When Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm was published to critical acclaim two years ago, it came with a slightly misleading sub-title.

Yes, this was a gripping "true story of men against the sea," as the author described it. Yes, without moving from a Massachusetts shore, Junger was able to live the last hours, minutes and seconds of six fishermen caught in a hopelessly violent storm off Newfoundland. However, among several female heroes to emerge from his riveting account of the events of late October, 1991, was the captain of a Grand Banks swordfishing vessel, Linda Greenlaw.

Introduced by Junger as one of the few women in the business and "one of the best captains, period" on the entire east coast of North America, Greenlaw was skipper of the Hannah Boden, sister ship of the ill-fated Andrea Gail. She was the sole concerned voice among the captains in the swordfish fleet after the Andrea Gail reported the early signs of the emerging maelstrom on ship's radio.

"Those boys sounded scared, and we were scared for them," she said, and she was right. She had lived through a 100-mile-an-hour blow herself, when the wind registered a sound she had never heard before - "a deep tonal vibration like a church organ" with no melody, like "a church organ played by a child."

The Andrea Gail crew never returned to port alive, and the author's description of the pain in not finding a body is one that could be appreciated by many families off this coastline.

"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 wilfully extract these men from their lives and banish them to another world."

Now Greenlaw has written her own sequel to Junger's classic - the latter now out in a Fourth Estate paperback. Her subject is a typical trip made by a sword-fishing skipper on the Atlantic Ocean - with unpredictable and impossible conditions to cope with both at sea and on shore, she constantly asks herself why she hasn't chosen a nine-to-five career. But then she admits: "I am a woman. I am a fisherman. As I have said, I am not a fisherwoman, fisherlady, or fishergirl. If anything else, I am a 37-year-old tomboy."

The tomboy dodged a potential law career to pursue a calling which first registered at the age of 12, when she turned her back on the forests of her idyllic Maine childhood and followed the scent of seaweed and tidal pools. Almost every day for the next 20 years, she was in some sort of a boat, and was soon crewing on fishing vessels. She says she never encountered any problems as a female, and if anything it was an advantage: as a skipper, she was able to bring out the best in any crew she worked with, for "no self-respecting fisherman will allow himself to be outworked by a woman."

The pressure of a short season with quick turn-arounds, tightening quotas, fickle weather, moody crew, and the toll taken by long watches at sea are well described in her account, which is free of the typical seafaring cliches and illuminating in terms of its treatment of technical detail. On the Grand Banks sword fishery, the pay is good, but the work is desperately hard and dangerous over a hectic four to five months. Preparation ashore must leave nothing to chance. As she points out: "At sea you need to maximise your control over everything you can, to minimise the effects of those things you can't control, such as Mother Nature, who is known by all fishermen to be quite temperamental, and often a nuisance."

It is a life that turns many a skipper into a psychologist - though some might say that such insight is a prerequisite for handling any crew. Greenlaw has the gift, and she is well able to tell a story which is often terrifying, often moving, and transparently honest. She admits that before she started, the thought of a new career as an author was "strangely appealing." However, one year later, "writing has proven to be hard work, often painful. I can honestly say that I would rather be fishing."

Illustration by Andy Bridge from the jacket of The Hungry Ocean