US Navy Declines To Raise Sunken Fishing Vessel Lily Jean
The United States Navy has declined a request from the governor of Massachusetts to salvage a fishing vessel that sank off Gloucester in January and to recover the remains of six crew members believed to be still aboard. In a letter dated 27 July, an acting assistant secretary of the navy told the governor that the service was unable to fulfil the request for salvage and recovery.
Seven fishermen died when the vessel went down in icy water. Only the body of the captain was recovered from the sea; the remaining six are believed to be inside the wreck. The letter expressed sympathy for the affected families while setting out the service's reasoning: federal investigative agencies already hold sufficient evidence regarding the incident, the navy remains in contact with the coast guard and the transportation safety board, and under the legislation governing naval salvage any services provided would be on a reimbursable basis, requiring a government organisation to make the request and to arrange contracting and funding.
That last point is the substance of the refusal. The navy's salvage organisation is not declining on capability grounds but pointing out that it does not perform work of this kind without a funded request from an appropriate authority, which in practice means somebody has to pay for a deep-water recovery of a fishing vessel. The letter does not say what such an operation would cost, and no estimate has been published.
The families are divided. A state senator called the position disappointing and said he would continue seeking answers. The sister of one crew member said she believed raising the vessel was the only way to establish exactly why it sank and to give the families closure. A relative of two other crew members, a father and son who died together, said their family supported the navy's stance and preferred that their relatives remain at rest at sea. Those are irreconcilable positions held with equal sincerity, and no decision satisfies both.
The investigative argument sits underneath the emotional one. The transportation safety board and the coast guard have confirmed that their joint investigation into the sinking is continuing, and the navy's letter asserts that the evidence already held is sufficient. Whether that is true is the question the families are effectively contesting, because a hull on the seabed contains information about flooding paths, watertight closures and stability that no amount of interviewing can reconstruct. Fishing vessels remain the most dangerous workplace in the maritime industry, and the cases where the wreck is never examined are the ones from which the fleet learns least.
