About the Book

John N. Morris’s grandfather, Steve Olsson, was a Gloucester doryman who disappeared at sea without a trace in 1935. Olsson and his dorymate lost contact with their schooner and were never seen again. Morris set out on a quest to discover what might have happened to his grandfather and what a doryman’s life was like. The result—after ten years of exhaustive research and dozens of interviews—is the most complete and authoritative history of the Gloucester fishing industry ever written. Life at sea, life at home, and the industry that connected them, growing and then fading over more than 300 years—it’s all here in an epic illustrated with over seventy period photographs and maps.

As esteemed maritime historian of Gloucester Joe Garland writes in the foreword: “John Morris is about to tell you all there is to be told about Gloucestermen and their wives and widows and fatherless kids, and ways of life, and of death by the thousands, of good times and of bad, in a masterpiece that’s been waiting for generations to be told.”