In 1896, in George’s Bank, a fishing ship found a message in a bottle describing the last moments of the Falcon, a ship that had gone missing the year before. The note asked that whomever found it should share the fate of the crew with the larger world.

In Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1991, the Andrea Gail is preparing to set out to sea for a month-long swordfishing trip. In a room in the Crow’s Nest, a bar and flophouse, Bobby Shatford wakes with his girlfriend, Chris. Bobby’s mother, Ethel, is downstairs at the bar where she works. The Crow’s Nest sits across the street from the waterfront in Gloucester; all around are other buildings catering to the fishing industry: ice plants, repair ports, and grocery stores that sell in bulk, in order to accommodate the needs of long fishing trips. Bobby needs money to pay his debts and so has agreed to go fishing. Other young men—Bugsy and Sully among them—are in the same situation. Bobby has just returned from his first fishing trip, in which he made almost $5,000. For the last week, he and the other fishermen have been drinking hard, not wanting to return, but this is the day, and so they go around town, buying supplies, preparing for the trip.