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Saved from a Watery Grave

 

Monday, January 14, 1935

Save Four Fishermen From Watery Grave
Local Craft Goes To Aid of Disabled Trawler
Men Landed Here -- C. G. Picks Up Boat

Four Boston Italian fishermen were saved form a watery grave Saturday afternoon through the pluckiness of the crew of the local schooner Natalie Hammond, Capt. Frank Rose, who, with his men, rescued the quartet from their disabled small trawler Mariana, Capt. Cosimo Parco, 38 miles east by sough of Eastern Point, and brought them into port.

The Hammond was unable to get a towline on the 37-foot craft, and was obliged to let her go adrift. The Coast Guard Cutter Cayuga, Capt. Wilfred N. Derby, picked her up at 3.15 o’clock yesterday afternoon, 22 miles east of North Truro, and towed her into Provincetown, the nearest port. Capt. Parco said yesterday that he is all through with fishing, the jinx having followed him the past few trips. He intends to try for a safer and easier post ashore. He came within an ace of losing his life on the previous trip when he fell overboard and was rescued by one of his men.

The Mariana, a small boat of 14 gross tonnage, was built at Winthrop for Tony Orlando on Boston, in 1929, and is 37.3 feet long, 12.5 feet beam, and 4.9 feet depth. She had been fishing out of this port up to a month ago when she changed to Boston and there Parco recruited three Italian fishermen to make up his crew. They sailed from Boston Thursday night, for Jeffrey’s Ledge, their usual fishing grounds, and having 1500 pounds of mixed fish aboard after several hours work, they decided to make for the Hub market when the crank shaft of their small engine broke and crippled the craft. They threw out the anchor, but during Friday night, a gale sprung up, whipping a nasty sea, which caused the frail craft to drift at the mercy of the combers. All feared for their lives, and suffered from exposure as the wind-swept spray froze to the rigging.

With the break of dawn on Saturday morning hope came, that a passing fisherman might see their plight and save them. During the morning, they heard on their radio receiving apparatus, the weather forecast for the coming night which prophesied a blizzard, and continued high winds. Parco told a reporter that the announcement seemed a death sentence, for he could not see how his boat could weather another such night. Then about 1 o’clock in the afternoon he espied two sails, apparently Gloucester fishermen, approaching. He had set the American flag upside down, in the rigging, a marine signal of a boat in distress, while all hands stood on deck and waved their arms and hollered to attract the attention of the schooners. The first one, sch. Laura Goulart, apparently failed to note the small boat’s peril, and continued on her way, but the second, sch. Natalie Hammond, Capt. Rose, was the boat and came to the rescue.

Capt. Rose did what he could to get a tow-line to the small craft and when within 30 feet of the Mariana, he tossed a line and the crew made it taut, but it suddenly snapped and the craft was left once more to the mercy of the heavy seas. The skipper dared not try it again for fear of swamping the Mariana if the sea should bring him too close to her, and as he heard the crew of the latter shout to forget the boat and save them, he called for volunteers to get into a dory and to the aid of the men. Every man on the Hammond stepped up and offered to go. Capt. Rose chose Ralph Jensen and Jack Meade, and after much difficulty, they succeeded in launching the dory, and soon had her near enough to the Mariana to allow the four fishermen to jump aboard. This done they made once more for the Hammond, were helped aboard by eager hands, and taken below where hot coffee and a fisherman’s "mug-up" were awaiting them.

The Italian fishermen were mighty thankful for they had about given up hope of ever seeing their loved ones again. Capt. Parco told Capt. Rose that he was all done with fishing, and would get rid of the boat. He declared that a jinx had chased him for the past month, and that only on his recent trip two weeks ago in the heavy gale which lashed the North Atlantic, he and his men had been caught in the blow, during which Parco had been swept overboard. But for the alertness of one of his crew he would have perished then and there. The craft lost 14 tubs of trawl in that gale.

The trip back to this port was a slow one for the Hammond for she had to fight the gale the whole way, and her 120 horsepower engine had to do extra duty with her canvas spread. She iced up heavily, and it was not until 3 o’clock Sunday morning that the craft arrived off Eastern Point light. The rigging had iced so badly that it was impossible to lower the sail. Since Capt. Rose did not dare to risk maneuvering through the harbor with his sail uncontrollable, he jogged outside until dawn, until the crew could break off the bulk ice, and give the sail free-play. The craft finally docked at the Pew wharf in the inner harbor at 6:30 o’clock yesterday morning. The Mariana’s crew went to the home of Capt. Benjamin Curcuru on Western avenue, where they telephoned Coast Guard at Base 7, requesting them to search for the craft

 

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