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I met Mark S. Williams
in May 2004 when he called me to ask for help with publishing his
book F/V Black Sheep. Over the years that we worked on his book we
became very close spending time together nearly every day. In that
time I came to appreciate him for many things -- his intelligence,
his humor, his strength and, above all his sensitivity. His book
was published in June 2006 and he was very proud of it. Mark died
unexpectedly in May 2008. This site is my way of honoring a talented
writer, a Gloucester native son and fisherman, and my dear friend.
- Kathleen Valentine
The Gloucester
Historic Commission awarded Mark S. Williams and F/V Black
Sheep a Preservation
Award for contributing to preserving the history
of Gloucester. The Commission cited the depiction of the working
waterfront at Empire Fish Company and the descriptions of lobster
fishing as being especially meritorious.
F/V Black Sheep: Working alone
on a September afternoon, Gloucester, Massachusetts fisherman Mark
Williams was setting back lobster pots aboard his boat f/v Black
Sheep, five miles off of Good Harbor Beach where he grew up. Suddenly
a trawl line cinched around his leg and within seconds he was being
dragged overboard to a sure death twenty fathoms below. As he clung
desperately to the stern of the Black Sheep his life literally
passed before his eyes. In those pain-filled terrifying minutes
he recalled his boyhood, growing up on Good Harbor Beach, the son
of one-time professional football player Ted Williams, and the
lessons his father taught him that would save his life. Williams
lived to record the memories that filled those minutes - from a
boyhood working for his father in a fish-packing plant on the Gloucester
waterfront to his own career lobster-fishing alone in the North
Atlantic.
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F/V
Black Sheep is the story of that afternoon and the memories
that came rushing back. Williams takes us from the violent world
of the Gloucester waterfront where he once spent a summer shooting
rats for the owner of Empire Fish Company through brawls with vicious
men, encounters with enticing women, and the omnipresent dangers
of a life lived working on the ocean. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes
breath-taking, always entertaining (including a humorous recollection
of an evening spent drinking with "Sully" who was to die
aboard the Andrea Gail shortly afterwards) the stories that comprise F/V
Black Sheep build to a heart-stopping conclusion as Williams
is dragged overboard, descends to the bottom of the ocean, and
a rescue so remarkable it took him years to acknowledge it.
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