On a
raw Tuesday morning in late April, in a small federal courtroom on the
Boston waterfront, a fisherman sat alone on a witness stand and tried to
remember the September morning he'd spent three years and seven months trying
to forget. He folded his hands and looked past the lawyer to the water-blue and
blood-red stencil rolling along the dark wooden arches on each of the room's
white walls. The arches signified the equal contributions of everyone--judge,
lawyers, litigants, and onlookers--to the events that would unfold upon the
blue carpet. But to the fishermen who would gather here to add their shards of
memory to the emerging mosaic of a tragedy, the wooden curves resembled the
lingering image of a capsized boat.
Sitting
opposite an empty jury box was Richard Burgess. Wearing dark blue jeans, an
olive button-down shirt, and brown deck shoes, he had slung his royal blue
jacket over a chair. Embroidered on the back were his boat's name, Scotia
Boat Too, and a bluefin tuna. His forty-six-year-old,
clean-shaven face held the weathered lines of a seasoned fisherman, while his
trimmed black hair, black mustache, and silver-rimmed eyeglasses suggested a
soft-spoken, contemplative man.
Plaintiffs'
attorney Bradley M. Henry asked him what he did for a living. Burgess explained
that he owned five boats and now spent many of his days ashore running his
fishing business rather than going to sea. He wasn't asked about the hours he
spent advocating for Gloucester's commercial fishermen as vice-president of the
North Shore Community Tuna Association and chairman of the Gulf of Maine
Fishermen's Alliance. He didn't mention that he had once been appointed by
Governor William Weld to the Massachusetts Fish Recovery Commission and had
served as a member of the board of directors of the Massachusetts Fishermen's
Partnership.
Burgess
also didn't mention that he spent much of his time ashore worrying about his
boat crews working offshore--more, probably, than he would worry if he were
with them. He didn't tell the judge that every time the phone rang late at
night he hesitated to answer it, afraid something could be wrong aboard one of
his boats. That's when his wife would tell him to pick up the phone, saying,
"You have to find out what's going on."
"You
don't fish anymore?" U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris asked him.
"Just
a little bit in the summertime, maybe," Burgess said.
"Why
is that, Mr. Burgess?" Bradley Henry asked.
"I
just have a hard time sleeping at night on the vessel."
"And
why is that?"
"From
this incident."
"How
long have you been a fisherman?" Henry asked.
"Twenty-five
years."
Richard
Burgess had had his feet in fishing boots for as long as he could
remember. As a kid, he'd spent every summer with his uncles, commercial
fishermen who lived on New Brunswick's Campobello Island. He tended fish weirs
alongside them at seven years old and later joined them on longlining and
herring seining trips. At the end of each summer, he returned to
Manchester-by-the-Sea, a small coastal town a few miles south of Gloucester.
After graduating from high school, he had headed to sea full-time. Now married,
he had two young daughters and had named one of his gillnetters, Heidi &
Heather, after them. When his girls asked
where he had gone to college, he told them he'd attended North Atlantic
University. When they asked where that was, Burgess drove them to the beach and
pointed out at the horizon.
After
working more than twenty-five years at sea, he figured he'd seen and
experienced just about all the ocean could throw at him. He bought his first
Nova Scotia - built boat in 1976 and took it lobstering and Scottish seining
for gray sole and yellowtail flounder. He bought other boats and went dragging,
gillnetting, and tuna fishing. He'd seen weather in the Bay of Fundy blow the
windows out of the wheelhouse of a 55-foot seine boat. On a night the wind blew
a hundred miles an hour atop Mount Washington, he'd been caught fishing on
Jeffreys Ledge, 40 miles east of Gloucester, in seas that laid his 42-foot
Bruno lobster-style boat over on one side and forced her wheelhouse windows
into the water. Suspended on the whims of wind and waves, he prayed his boat
would right herself instead of capsizing. Finally she did. After one successful
fishing trip, his 50-foot dragger rolled over and sank at the dock. On a winter
day, he had to retrieve his nephew from frigid waters after the younger man was
snatched overboard by a lobster trawl--a string of twenty traps on a single
line--that was dropping to the ocean bottom. Burgess had helped other fishermen
and been helped by them. He had seen rough seas and calm seas. He had seen
boats sink and boats almost sink.
But
he had never seen anything quite like what he saw in the early morning hours of
September 5, 1996.
If
Burgess could have gone beyond what was humanly possible and recalled
the events of that day in crystalline order and photographic detail, if he
could have told a tale unaffected by hindsight, and if trial procedure had
allowed him uninterrupted scope and time, this is the story he would have told.
He
met his crew in Gloucester and untied the lines of his 42-foot black
gillnetter, Scotia Boat Too, at around
two o'clock that beautiful September morning. As they slipped past the
Gloucester Coast Guard station and out of the protected harbor, Burgess set up
on a northeasterly, fifteen-mile course toward the spot where they'd caught a
bluefin tuna the day before. He noted the bright night sky, flat calm seas, and
good visibility. The lights on the Cape Ann shoreline lingered for a long while
astern.
About
four miles off the coast, Burgess found the visibility good enough to warrant
shutting off one of his two radars, turning on the autopilot, and putting his
feet up on the dash while he listened to his gillnetting friends talk on the
marine radio. They all worked together, keeping in touch throughout the day by
monitoring VHF channel 10. He reached for his personal logbook and began making
notes about the successful day before: anchor coordinates, weather (a southeast
wind blowing 10 to 15 knots), what conditions enticed the tuna to bite his hook
(a live whiting suspended in 110 feet of water at 3:20 p.m.), and how the day
ended (a 306-pound tuna worth twelve dollars a pound was tied up alongside the boat
by 4 p.m.). He paused and looked out over the inky calm sea.
Maybe
they'd be lucky again.
Stephen
Smith and John Gilson were sleeping down below. Gilson was a family friend who
had never been tuna fishing; at Burgess's invitation, he had taken a week off
from work as an investment salesman and joined the Scotia Boat Too crew. Smith was Burgess's thirty-one-year-old
nephew, the man who had fallen overboard while lobstering with Burgess that
frigid winter day. Smith had grown up in Manchester-by-the-Sea and had owned
his first boat, which he used to fish fifty lobster traps, when he was fifteen
years old. After high school he enrolled in Burgess's North Atlantic University
and had worked with his uncle since 1983.
When
they arrived in the vicinity of the southern end of Jeffreys Ledge, ten miles
east of Cape Ann, at about 4 a.m., Smith crawled out of his bunk and joined
Burgess in the wheelhouse. They found the 32-foot Sharaban had anchored on the exact coordinates where Burgess
had caught his tuna the day before. They noticed two more boats--Jan
Ann and Blue Heron--anchored within a half mile. The small fleet set up
in a line that followed the contour of the underwater ledge; below them a
sliver of the gray sandy bottom was beginning its rise from a depth of about
250 feet to 180 feet in less than a half mile. The assembled fishermen knew
that bluefin tuna liked to cruise the edge of the ledge and chase the smaller
baitfish that feed on the nutrient-rich waters forced upward by deeper, colder
ocean currents.
Smith
dropped the anchor, on its 40 feet of chain and 300 feet of line, to the ocean
bottom about 240 feet below. Once secured to the ledge with his bow facing
south, Burgess shut off the engine. He again looked behind him at the Sharaban, about an eighth of a mile away, and took one last
look at the radar, which was set at a half-mile range. Then he and Smith went
below to catch an hour of sleep. Gilson had stayed in his berth the whole time.
The
fishing would begin in earnest with the sunrise at 6:14 a.m. Burgess set the
alarm for 5:30 a.m., but woke up a few minutes after five o'clock to a still,
dark morning. He climbed down from his top bunk, unwittingly waking Smith, who
had been dozing in the berth below him. Burgess slipped on his shoes, climbed up into the wheelhouse, and
turned on the white wheelhouse light. He looked at the radar and saw the Sharaban,
the Jan Ann, and the Blue
Heron still anchored in a line stretching a
half mile behind him. It appeared that nothing had changed since he'd gone to
sleep about forty-five minutes earlier. The time was between 5:06 and 5:10 a.m.
A
blasting air horn hammered the peaceful morning air.
Loud.
Quick.
Sharp.
Burgess
shot a glance through his open aft cabin door and saw a tugboat illuminated by
amber deck lights three quarters of a mile north off his starboard aft corner.
He could see both its red and green running lights and realized it was headed
straight toward him.
After
about twenty seconds of intermittent blasts, the horn stopped. A diesel engine
roared like thunder as it slowed to what Burgess assumed was a dead stop. Three
distinct crashes--two sharp bangs and one soft boom--followed quickly.
"You
should have heard the noises I heard," he said three years later. "I
still have nightmares about that."
Down
in his berth, with his ear next to the fiberglass hull as you might lay your
ear on a railroad track, Smith heard the rumbling of an approaching boat
through the water. He heard the horn blast. Sharp crashes. A few soft,
repetitive bangs.
"It
was like a boom, boom, boom," he said later. "It was boom, boom,
boom."
Gilson
awoke from a dead sleep to a loud scraping, metal-on-metal sound, one you don't
hear very often.
"Hey!
Did you hear that?" Burgess screamed, as he started up the engine. "Someone's
been hit!"
Smith
jumped out of his berth and ran up to the bow to release the anchor, which was
tied to an inflated orange ball--as tuna fishermen routinely do, so they can
find it on their return. They sped toward the tug to see if they could help,
something any fisherman does when suspecting another fisherman is in trouble.
"Your
first reaction is to go and try to save a person, or two, or three,"
Burgess said later. "You hear a noise and scream to your crew to get
ready, whether they're in their underpants or full dress, you go and see what
you can do to help."
Burgess
turned north and steamed toward the tug at about eleven knots, as fast as he
could go. It would take less than four minutes to cover the three quarters of a
mile. As they approached, the thought crossed their minds that the tug might
have run them down if it had not hit another boat first. They figured that this
tug with a barge in tow was trying to make its way through a fleet of anchored
tuna boats, and they had been next in line.
"We
were fifty to seventy-five yards away from the same thing happening to
us," is how Gilson remembered it. "It looked like he was trying to
thread a needle."
On
board the Sharaban, the crew felt the
same way. They heard the horns, saw the tug, and started their two engines just
in case they had to get off their anchor and scramble out of the tug's way.
Then they saw the tug start to turn as Burgess sped toward it.
When
Burgess approached the tug at 5:18 a.m., it was turning hard to port--to the east--so
Burgess too veered east, then slowed down. He heard a man identifying his
vessel as the tug Houma call the U.S.
Coast Guard via the marine radio. When a watch-stander at Coast Guard Station
Gloucester answered, the man on board the Houma reported in a slow, shaken voice, "Yeah, we've
got a Mayday situation. We're at latitude, uh, 42 41.75 north, 70 22.4 west.
We're right off Cape Ann. [A] fishing boat, uh, just crossed right in front of
the barge we're towing and went under it and apparently sunk. We're looking for
survivors in the water."
"Roger,"
the Coast Guard watch-stander said. "Stand by."
Burgess
hailed the tug Houma on the radio.
"Skipper
on the tug," Burgess said, "you still on here?"
The
tug did not reply. After twenty seconds, the Coast Guard called the tug and
asked for the length of the vessel that went under the barge.
"It
was about a fifty-foot fishing vessel," the Houma said. "He cut right between the [tug] and
the barge. Tried out the course of blowing the whistle for him. Uh, he went
right in front of the barge."
"Roger,
sir," the Coast Guard said. "Stand by."
Burgess
again tried to call the Houma.
"Skipper on the tug, you still on this channel?" Burgess heard no
reply and instead heard the Coast Guard call the Houma to confirm its position.
"That's
correct," the Houma said.
"We're trying to round up, see if we can see survivors."
"Roger,
sir," the Coast Guard said. "Have you found anybody in the
water?"
"I'm
trying to get a hold of my barge," the Houma said. "I think I still see something floating back there. It's a
little hazy here. We've got six or seven hundred feet of hawser out," he
added, referring to the towline. "We'll see if we can get back in that
area."
Houma answered a call from its barge Essex
and asked, "Do you see anyone in the water back there?"
"No,
we've been looking," the Essex
said. "The boat is right here though, right behind us, Mike."
As
Burgess drew closer to Houma, a man on
board hailed him on the radio. "The Houma to the fishing vessel off
my starboard bow."
"Yes,
sir," Burgess replied in a soft, calm voice. "We've just come over
here to give you a hand if we can."
"OK,"
an agitated voice replied. "This guy just cut right in front of the barge,
went right under us, and, uh, it looks like he is still floating right there. I
don't know what the situation is. They're looking, back on the barge."
"All
right," Burgess said. "Well, if you can put your spotlight down that
direction there, we'll be right over to 'em there."
"OK,"
Houma said. "We're rounding up to
come [to] port, all the time, Cap. Just watch around by our bow. You see where
I've got my port spotlight there?"
As
Burgess idled along the beam cast on the water by the tug's giant spotlight, a
school of herring skittered through the sea surface. Sunrise was still an hour
away, and several fishermen later recalled that during the first half hour
after the collision it was "pitch-black dark." In fact, nautical
twilight had begun at 5:10 a.m. that morning off Cape Ann. At morning twilight,
which begins when the sun is still 12 degrees below the eastern horizon, faint
outlines of objects begin to materialize from the darkness, though the horizon
remains indistinct.
Smith
grabbed two life rings and climbed onto the roof of the Scotia Boat Too. He stood there with Gilson, who could feel the hair
standing up on the back of his neck. They each held a life ring in one hand and
hollered into the dark. They could not see the barge except for one small, red
light on its port bow. "I don't know what we're going to see,"
Burgess had told them, "so keep your eyes out. Be prepared for
anything."
What
Burgess saw next was a green shadow emerging on his radar screen. He looked out
the pilothouse window and saw a smudge of light rise from beneath the water a
fair distance away, behind the barge. He realized it was the stricken fishing
boat--her lights momentarily still aglow--returning to the surface amid a field
of debris. There was a lot of debris in the water at first, Smith remembered,
but then it just disappeared.
"Yep,
I gotcha," Burgess told the Houma.
"I just want to stand it tight, not get near the cable, so we'll come
around easy. I got them on the radar here."
Coast
Guard Station Gloucester broke into their transmission to hail the Houma, but the tug told the Coast Guard to stand by and
nervously hailed Burgess.
"The
fishing boat," Houma yelled.
"Skip, just keep away from me, skip! I'm coming around. We don't want
another problem. Just stay away from my bow, OK?"
"Yep,"
Burgess said in a calm voice. "I got you there fine, sir, yep."
"You
see me coming around there?" Houma
repeated. "I'm coming around also to see if I can see anybody in the
water. I've got six hundred feet of hawser out."
"Yep,
that's right," Burgess said. "I understand."
As
Burgess eased toward the overturned boat on the edge of the spotlight's beam,
Coast Guard Station Gloucester again called the Houma, which was circling back on itself as it prepared to
haul in its hawser and secure its barge.
"Let
me get back to you after a couple of minutes," Houma replied. "We're coming up to the boat and we're
a hundred, two hundred feet from it, and I'd like to see if I can't see anybody
in the water. I'll get right back to you."
"Roger,
sir," Coast Guard Station Gloucester said at 5:27 a.m. "Be advised
we've got a vessel underway [to] your position."
After
three minutes of radio silence, Houma
called Burgess and asked, "Cap, can you get up to this capsized boat and
see if you can hear or see anything?"
"Yeah,
we're trying to get right on it, Captain," Burgess said softly.
"We're gonna--we just didn't want to hit anybody in the water, you
know?"
"I
hear that," a man on board the Houma
sighed.
Burgess
eased alongside the target that had emerged on his radar screen. In the eerie
darkness, he and his crew saw the ghostly, still, forest-green hull of an
upside-down fishing boat. It reminded Gilson of the murky nighttime scene in
the movie Jaws when Police Chief Martin
Brody and ichthyologist Matt Hooper approach Ben Gardner's lifeless, half-sunk
fishing boat and, with wide eyes, whisper, "What happened?" About the
same size as his Scotia Boat Too,
this turtled boat looked to Burgess like his own boat upside down. Her keel
faced the fading stars. He wanted to know her name, so he worked his way past
her stern. On her transom he read large, upside-down white letters painted
above a white handlebar mustache: "Heather Lynne II, Newbury MA."
Seeing
that name was heart wrenching. He and Smith knew the Heather Lynne II. She was what they considered a highliner, a boat
that stands out among the fleet as a top producer, captained by a seasoned,
skilled fisherman. Burgess had known her owner, Ted Rurak, for several years.
As they idled alongside her, just inches away, they saw smoke or steam rising
from a through-hull fitting on the starboard side. Her propeller was not
moving. They did not hear her engine. Bubbling air purged from the hull. A
high-flyer buoy that would be attached to a gillnet stuck out from under the
boat and clung to the surface. Any lights that had been on were now
extinguished.
Smith shined a deck light into the water. A strobe light from the Heather
Lynne II's emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB)
flashed under the surface.
A yellow, 5/8-inch-diameter polypropylene line floated
from the bow to a nearby orange ball--what these fishermen assumed had been
an anchor ball. From there, the line ran straight down into the depths.
"Oh,
my God," Burgess said to his nephew. "They must have been on
anchor."
Burgess reached for his marine radio and called, "Yeah, tugboat,
you on here?" When Houma answered,
Burgess said, "Yep, we know the guys there. Yeah, we know the boat. We
just, uh, I don't know what to do. I--" He paused and sighed.
He whispered, "There's not much we can do here."
"Can
you get anywhere close to him so you can see if you can hear any noise or
anything?"
"We're
right alongside of it here. Hang on. Stand by a second. We're almost touching
it here."
Smith
reached for a harpoon and started hitting the hull in a systematic way that
would sound like help and not another collision to anyone trapped within. He
heard no reply. He banged on the hull some more. Gilson wondered if they weren't
listening hard enough for a response, or if someone might be alive but no
longer conscious.
At
5:34 a.m., 16 minutes after the Mayday call, Coast Guard Station Gloucester
called the Houma and announced that a
helicopter was en route from Air Station Cape Cod.
"OK,"
the Houma said. "The name of the
fishing vessel is the Heather Lynne.
It's capsized. Uh, Scotia Boat Too
is right at it now, putting the boat up on it to see if they can see anyone. I
don't see anyone in the water around here." A minute later he asked,
"Is the [Coast Guard vessel] that's coming going to have divers on
board?"
"Negative,"
the Coast Guard said. "The helo has a rescue swimmer."
"OK,"
Houma said. "Well, this vessel Heather
Lynne is capsized. Uh, there may be
survivors in the hull."
At
5:36 a.m., Burgess called Coast Guard Station Gloucester, which he had
overheard talking with the Houma.
"Did you say there's a helicopter on its way?"
"Roger,
Cap," came the reply. "En route from Cape Cod."
"Yeah,
I got you. We're touching it here. It's right upside down, bow's in the water,
stern's coming up here. I--." Again Burgess paused. "There's not much
we can do."
"Roger,
sir," Coast Guard Station Gloucester said at 5:36 a.m. "Be advised,
we're gonna call some divers."
"OK,"
Burgess said. "Very good. Thanks."
Nineteen
minutes after the Mayday call, Coast Guard Group Boston issued an Urgent Marine
Information Broadcast (UMIB) on hailing and distress VHF channel 16:
Pan Pan, Pan Pan, Pan Pan, hello
all stations. This is the United States Coast Guard Boston Massachusetts Group,
United States Coast Guard Boston Massachusetts Group. Break quote. Time 0936
Greenwich Mean Time. The Coast Guard has received a report of a vessel capsized
in position 42 41 decimal 75 degrees north, 070 22 decimal 4 degrees west,
approximately ten nautical miles off Cape Ann. All vessels are requested to
keep a sharp lookout, assist if possible and report all sightings to any Coast
Guard unit. Unquote break. This is the United States Coast Guard Boston Massachusetts
Group, out.
Burgess
heard this broadcast aboard the Scotia Boat Too while Smith continued pounding on the thick fiberglass hull of the Heather
Lynne II with his harpoon. He'd yell,
"Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?" They'd pause and listen for a
response. Again he'd pound and they'd shout.
Then Gilson said
to Smith, "Dude, I think I hear something."
-end-