Sabrina Galloway inadvertently glances at the cabin floor of the Mr. Anthony, and then its splintered wooden walls and broken windows. "I promise it used to look much prettier than this," she says of her family's shrimp boat. The 20-year-old gently grips the steering wheel, lightly scraping the wood with her fingernails.

It is a bizarrely hot, sunny day in late October and Galloway is in her usual spot, the spot she first stood in when she was 8, back when she had to climb atop a milk crate to steer, the spot she was in on that day this August when the Mr. Anthony flipped over twice, taking her father's life and trapping her for four hours in a small compartment under the deck. She was somewhere near the engine, covered in diesel fuel. Now the slightest whiff of the stuff—from the exhaust pipes of golf carts patrolling the UH campus, say, where she is a sophomore majoring in education—brings it all back.

"Hey, turkey birds. Time to get up."

It's the voice of her dad, Ronnie. He is trying to wake up two of his children, Sabrina and Cody, who are asleep at the front of the boat. "Time to go shrimping." The sun is rising but Sabrina is still recovering from her first wake-up call, at 2:30 a.m., when the trio left their Old River home for the north end of Galveston Bay.

"It made me happy, making my dad proud doing something he loved," says Galloway, back in the present, but only for a moment. Soon she is remembering their first real shrimping excursion together.

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