No Mayday call came from the Lily Jean. When Coast Guard crews reached the spot off Cape Ann on Friday morning, the 72-foot fishing boat had already slipped under, and a scatter of floating wreckage was all that marked the place. One person was dead. Six more were missing.
The alarm came from the boat’s emergency beacon at about 6:50 a.m., roughly 25 miles out. A Coast Guard helicopter and a small boat went first and found a debris field with a body in the water nearby. The sea there was about 40 degrees.
“Once we arrived on scene, the ship was no longer on the surface, and it was just the remnants of any floating debris that would come off the boat as it would sink,” said Timothy Jones of the Coast Guard.
The boat’s life raft turned up empty. The man pulled from the water had no survival suit on, the Coast Guard said. Officials have not named him or any of the missing.
Heading home with a full hold
Jones said the crew had been on the way back to port. “Our understanding is they were coming back in full of fish,” he said. “We understand that they might have had a casualty to their fishing gear which required them to come in to fix it before they could go back out to do more fishing.”
An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, several Coast Guard cutters and a fixed-wing aircraft joined the search. Jones said it would run through the night. “We will continue to search throughout the night with the cutter and hoping to find some additional folks as we continue,” he said.
A port that knows the skipper
For Gloucester, about 35 miles northeast of Boston, the news landed on people who know each other by first name. State Sen. Bruce Tarr said the vessel’s skipper is known to everyone in town. “He’s one of the kindest, nicest individuals on the face of this earth,” Tarr said. “He is very skilled, his family comes from a tradition of fishing, and he is one of those in this port that is considered among the best.”
Al Cottone, the city’s Director of Fisheries, is a commercial fisherman himself. “We share a brotherhood out there that it’s hard for some people to understand,” he said. Then he stopped short: “This one is very personal to me, and I don’t think I can add any more than that.”
Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement that she was “heartbroken.” She said she was praying for the crew and sending her thoughts to their loved ones and to Gloucester’s fishing families. “Fishermen and fishing vessels are core to the history, economy and culture of Gloucester and Cape Ann,” Healey said, “and this tragedy is felt all across the state.”
The families of the six missing men were still waiting for word as the search went on.
