5 men disappeared on a fishing trip in 2013. Quentin Casey tells their story
On a cold night in February 2013, the fishing vessel Miss Ally sank off the coast of Nova Scotia. All five men on board disappeared. Who were these men, lost at sea in the dead of winter? What happened to them? These are the questions that form the foundation of Quentin Casey's nonfiction book, The Sea Was in Their Blood.
The journalist and maritime history expert pieced together that fateful night with personal interviews and research. In his own words, Casey discusses how he wrote The Sea Was in Their Blood.
Wanting to go beyond the headlines
"It was national news at the time. I started wondering who the guys actually were, because there wasn't a lot written about them. I wonder, 'What does it take to go 200 km off shore in the middle of winter in a small boat, fishing for halibut?' It was something I would never be able to do. I was curious about what motivates people to do that and what type of person it takes to do that. I wanted people to understand who these guys were and why they were out there. In the early reports, it's just a name and an age, and you don't know much about them. I wanted to bring them out in the pages as much as I could."
Talking to the families
"It was definitely difficult. I didn't know what people's responses would be. I started with George and Mary Hopkins, whose son Joel was on the boat, because I had read a National Post article where, at the end, Mary said to the reporter, 'Call back any time, I can talk about Joel any day or any time.' I felt that they would probably be a good place to start.
"The first night I met with them, Mary brought out a shoebox full of photos, they took me through all the little events of Joel's life. I found, generally, everyone was welcoming and willing to talk about it. Obviously, it was very hard and there were time when people were very upset talking about different aspects of it. But I think people were happy just to talk about the person they were missing the most."
No easy answers
"There were reasons why the crew was out there, reasons why they stayed. I think there was more agency involved than people initially thought. At the time when it was reported, they didn't realise that the captain had been warned about the bad weather, and that the other boats out there were telling him that he should get his gear up and get going as quickly as possible. There was grey to the story; it wasn't just black and white."