Gloucester

On Gloucester’s fine seaside promenade is a famous statue of a man steering a ship’s wheel, his eyes searching the horizon. The statue, which honors those who go down to the sea in ships, was commissioned by the town citizens in celebration of Gloucester’s 300th anniversary in 1923. The oldest seaport in the nation (with some of the North Shore’s best beaches) is still a major fishing port. Sebastian Junger’s 1997 book A Perfect Storm was an account of the fate of the Andrea Gail, a Gloucester fishing boat caught in the storm of the century in October 1991. In 2000 the book was made into a movie, filmed on location in Gloucester.