Four years later, U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro in Boston ruled that the National Weather Service was negligent in their failure to repair the broken data buoy. Had it been working, he wrote, the Weather Service might have predicted the storm; and furthermore, they failed to warn fishermen that they were making forecasts with incomplete information. This was the first time the government had ever been held responsible for a bad forecast, and it sent shudders of dread through the federal government. Every plane crash, every car accident could now conceivably be linked to weather forecasting. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration appealed the decision, and it was quickly overturned by a higher court.
None of this was Bob Brown's fault, of course. There's nothing irresponsible about going to Georges in November—he'd done it his whole life, and worse—and the storm was completely unforecast. Moreover, a larger steel-hulled boat sank while the Sea Fever remained afloat; that said a lot about her crew and general state of repair. Still, a man had died on one of Bob Brown's boats, and that was all a lot of people needed to know. A story went around about how Bob Brown once spotted the biggest wave of his life—an enormous Grand Banks rogue—and didn't even stop fishing, he just kept hauling his gear. People started calling him "Suicide" Brown, because working for him meant risking your life. And then it happened again.
It was the mid-eighties and boats were making a million dollars a year. Brown was out on the Grand Banks on the Hannah Boden, and he found himself having to haul back a full set of gear in a sixty-knot breeze. At one point a wave swept the deck, and when the boat climbed back out of the whitewater, two men had gone overboard. They were wearing rain gear and thigh-high rubber boots and could hardly move in the freezing Newfoundland water. One of them went under immediately, but the other man was smashed back against the hull, and a quick-thinking member of the crew extended a gaff hook over the side for him to grab. The hook went through the man's hand, but the situation was too desperate to worry about it and they hauled him on board anyway. They had to steam four hundred miles just to get him to within helicopter range to be taken to a hospital.
Brown's reputation is no concern of Billy's, though. Brown's not on the boat, he's twelve hundred miles away in Gloucester, and if Billy doesn't want him in his life, he just doesn't pick up the radio mike. Furthermore, Billy's making money hand over fist on his boat, and that makes Brown's scruples—or his judgment—or his lack of empathy—all but irrelevant. All Billy needs is five men, a well-maintained boat, and enough fuel to get to and from the Flemish Cap.
The first five sets of Johnston's trip are on what's called the "frontside" of the moon, the quarters leading up to full. Boats that fish the frontside tend to get small males on the line; boats that fish the backside get large females. Johnston's record is twenty-seven consecutive hooks with a fish on each, mostly small males. On the day of the full moon the catch abruptly switches over to huge females and stays that way for a couple of weeks. "You might go from an average weight of seventy pounds, all males, to four or five 800-pounders, all females," Johnston says. "They lose their heads on the full moon, they feed with reckless abandon."
The full moon is on October 23rd, and Johnston has timed his trip to straddle that date. There are captains who will cut a good trip short just to stay on the lunar cycle. The first four or five sets of Johnston's trip are spare, but then he starts to get into the fish. By the 21st, he's landing six or seven thousand pounds of bigeye a day, enough to make his trip in a week. The weather has been exceptionally good for the season, and Johnston gets on the VHF every night to give the rest of the fleet a quick update. As the westernmost boat, the fleet relies on him to decide how much gear to fish. They don't want forty miles of line hanging out there with a storm coming on. On October 22nd, the Laurie Dawn 8, a converted oil boat captained by a quiet Texan named Larry Davis, leaves New Bedford for the Grand Banks. She's the last boat of the season to head out to the fishing grounds. The same day a containership named the Contship Holland leaves the port of Le Havre, France, for New York City. Her voyage is a classic rhumbline course from the English Channel straight through the fishing grounds. Scattered south of the Flemish Cap are the Hannah Boden, the Allison, the Miss Millie, and the Seneca. The Mary T and the Mr. Simon are southwest of the Tail, right on the edge of the Gulf Stream, and Billy Tyne is nearly 600 miles to the east.