TRURO — A 70-foot groundfishing vessel, the F/V Guardian out of New Bedford, ran aground on the back shore here on Jan. 3, about a mile north of Wellfleet’s Newcomb Hollow Beach.
Firefighters from Wellfleet and Truro responded to the ship’s distress call at 8:48 a.m. on Friday, according to a press release from the Wellfleet Fire Dept., which said the National Park Service, Mass. Environmental Police, and Wellfleet and Truro police were also on the scene.
When they arrived, responders found that none of the five people on board was hurt and no significant damage to the vessel had occurred. In addition, no pollution from the vessel was present, according to a press release from the U.S. Coast Guard.
The tugboat Camdyn, from New Bedford-based Tucker Roy Marine Services & Salvaging Inc., came to the scene to pull the boat out to sea at high tide, and by 2:48 p.m., the vessel was relaunched.
The Coast Guard is leading an investigation into the grounding’s cause and effects.
The F/V Guardian is owned by Michael Walsh, who owns five New Bedford-based fishing vessels, according to the Mass. Dept. of Marine Fisheries permit database.
Walsh told the Independent that the mishap occurred because the crew was tired. The five men on board had been awake for two days fishing, he said, and two crew members were responsible for keeping watch while the others slept. One of them, Walsh said, went below deck to make a sandwich and apparently didn’t come back up, while the other one fell asleep on deck. The boat then drifted toward shore and ran aground.
Walsh noted that his boat was able to return to sea with no repairs needed. “Basically, she went up on the falling tide, and when the tide came back up, she went back out,” he said. He called the situation the “best case scenario” for a ship running aground, given that no one was injured and the boat sustained minimal damage.
Walsh blamed the unfortunate performance of his crew on the state of the industry. “The guys who are fishing nowadays are not the best there are,” he said. “We don’t have the same kind of people there were years ago. We’re working with a less experienced crew, just like everybody else.”
The two men who had neglected their watch were fired, he said.
Walsh said that the Guardian had run aground once before and had to be drydocked for 15 months for repairs, but he would not comment further on that incident.
This is not the first time in recent years that a ship has run aground in Truro. In the early morning hours of Nov. 30, 2021, the New Bedford-based F/V Carrabassett ran aground at Longnook Beach, where it stayed on the sand for four days. That rescue operation was more complex, involving two excavators and a tugboat.
Damage from groundings accounts for approximately 15 percent of lost fishing vessels in the United States, according to a U.S. Coast Guard report on lost fishing vessels and crew fatalities between 1992 and 2007.
