Others, too, are visited. Murph's mother looks out the bedroom window one day and sees Murph ambling down their street in huge deck boots. Someone else spots him in traffic in downtown Bradenton. From time to time Debra dreams that she sees him and runs up and says, "Dale, where've you been?" And he won't answer, and she'll wake up in a cold sweat, remembering.
Back in Gloucester, Chris Cotter has a similar dream. Bobby appears before her, all smiles, and she says to him, "Hey, Bobby, where you been?" He doesn't tell her, he just keeps smiling and says, "Remember, Christina, I'll always love you," and then he fades away. "He's always happy when he goes and so I know he's okay," says Chris. "He's absolutely okay."
Chris, however, is not okay. Some nights she finds herself down at the State Fish Pier, waiting for the Andrea Gail to come in; other times she tells her friends, "Bobby's coming home tonight, I know it." She dates other men, she continues with her life, but she cannot accept that he is gone. They never find a body, they never find a piece of the boat, and she holds on to these things as proof that maybe the whole crew is safe on an island somewhere, drinking margaritas and watching the sun go down. Once Chris dreams that Bobby is living below the sea with a beautiful blond woman. The woman is a mermaid, and Bobby's with her, now. Chris wakes up and heads back to the Crow's Nest.
WITHIN weeks of the tragedy, families of the dead men get a letter from Bob Brown asking them to exonerate him from responsibility. The letter is polite and to the point, saying that the Andrea Gail was "tight, strong, fully manned, equipped and supplied, and in all respects seaworthy and fit for the service in which she was engaged." Unfortunately, she was also overwhelmed by the sea. For several of the bereaved—Jodi Tyne, Debra Murphy—this is the only letter they get from Bob Brown. He doesn't write a sympathy card, he doesn't offer financial help; he just sends a letter protecting himself from future legalities. It's possible that he's too shy, or embarrassed, to deal intimately with the bereaved, but they don't see it that way. They see Bob "Suicide" Brown as a businessman who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars off men like their husbands. To a woman, they decide to sue.
The deaths of the six Andrea Gail crew fall under the Death on the High Seas Act, a law passed by Congress in the early 1970s and then amended by the Supreme Court in 1990. A suit involving wrongful death on the high seas is limited to "pecuniary" loss, meaning the amount of money the deceased was earning for his dependents. Bobby Shatford, for example, was paying $325 a month in child support. Under the High Seas Act his ex-wife could—and does—sue Bob Brown for that money, but Ethel Shatford cannot sue. She has lost a son, not a legal provider, and has suffered no pecuniary loss.
The High Seas Act is a vestige of the hard-nosed English Common Law, which saw death at sea as an act of God that shipowners couldn't possibly be held liable for. Where would it end? How could they possibly do business? Had these men died in a logging accident, say, the family members could sue their employer for the loss of a loved one. But not on the high seas. On the high seas—defined as more than a marine league, or three miles, from shore—anything goes. The only way for Ethel Shatford to be compensated for the loss of her son would be to prove that Bobby's death had been exceptionally agonizing, or that Bob Brown had been negligent in his upkeep of the boat. Suffering, of course, is impossible to prove on a boat that disappears without a trace, but negligence is not. Negligence can be proven through repair records, expert witnesses, and the testimony of former crew.
Several weeks after the loss of the Andrea Gail, a Boston attorney named David Ansel agrees to represent the estates of Murphy, Moran, and Pierre in a wrongful death suit against Bob Brown. The other cases—including a wrongful death suit filed by Ethel Shatford—are handled by a Boston attorney who also specializes in maritime law. Brown's name is already known to Ansel: Ten years earlier, Ansel's law firm represented the widow of the man washed out of the Sea Fever on Georges Bank. Now Ansel has to prove Brown negligent once again. The fact that Brown acted like every other boat owner in the sword fleet—eyeballing structural changes, overloading the whaleback, failing to carry out stability tests—isn't necessarily enough to clinch the case. Ansel packs his bags and heads to St.
Augustine, Florida, where, five years earlier, Bob Brown altered the lines of the Andrea Gail.
The shipyard, St. Augustine Trawlers, has been closed and sold by the I.R.S., but Ansel tracks down a former manager named Don Capo and asks him to give a deposition. Capo agrees. In the presence of a notary public and Bob Brown's attorney, David Ansel questions Capo about the alterations to the Andrea Gail:
To your knowledge, sir, was there a marine architect on board the vessel in Mr. Brown's employ?
I don't recall any.
Were there any measurements or tests or evaluations done to determine the amount of weight being added to the vessel?
No, sir.
Were there stability tests performed, either hydraulic or reclining?