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.

Mark Williams was the author of 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.