Gloucester

City and port in Essex County, northeast Massachusetts, USA, on Cape Ann, 50 km/31 mi northeast of Boston; population (2000) 30,300. It is America's oldest fishing port, first settled in 1623, incorporated as a town in 1642 and as a city in 1873. Its industries include tourism (including whale watching), fishing and fish processing (especially lobster, whiting, and cod), electronic equipment, and clothing.

It is estimated that over 8,000 fishermen have lost their lives here through the centuries; a bronze statue in the city is dedicated to their memory.

The city has 28 entries on the national register of historic places, including Beauport, also called the Sleeper-McCann House, a 0-room mansion built by interior designer Henry Davis Sleeper between 1907 and 1934. The oldest Universalist church in the USA (founded 1770) is also situated in Gloucester. Offshore, to the southwest, is the reef known as Norman's Woe, which featured in Henry Longfellow's ballad ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’. Gloucester was featured in the film The Perfect Storm (2000), as the home port of the fishing boat whose loss in 1991 was the subject of the film.