CAPE MAY HARBOR — The annual Blessing of the Waters ceremony is set this year for 11 a.m. April 11 at the Fisherman’s Memorial overlooking Cape May Harbor.
Located where Missouri and Baltimore avenues intersect with the harbor, the memorial features a wall where the names of 79 Cape May-area fishers who have gone to sea and never returned are engraved.
That wall, along with a flagpole and benches, accompany a statue of a woman — perhaps a wife and mother — standing with her arms around two children. All three gaze out across the harbor toward Cold Spring Inlet.
It is a quiet and poignant place to reflect, remember and visit with old friends whose names are engraved there.
Six of those names were etched there as the result of a single tragic accident whose anniversary recently passed.
Very early on the cold morning of March 24, 2009, a frantic “Mayday” went out from the fishing vessel Lady Mary.
After a one-second broadcast, nothing else would be heard from the vessel or her seven crewmen until the U.S. Coast Guard managed to decipher the vital information regarding her plight and location.
Later it was revealed that her Electronic Positioning Indicating Reporting Beacon (EPIRB) had not been properly registered due to a simple clerical error, causing a much-delayed response from the Coast Guard.
Lady Mary was a 71-foot steel former shrimp boat that had been reconfigured as a scalloper by her owner, Royal “Fuzzy” Smith.
Homeported at the Cold Spring docks, Lady Mary was a family boat as evidenced by the composition of her crew that night. There were four from the Smith family on board — Fuzzy’s brother, Bernie, along with sons Bobo and Timbo. The Smiths were accompanied by a cousin, Frankie Credle; deckhand Jose Arias; and a pair of rookies, Frank Reyes and Jorge Ramos.
The Lady Mary was returning after completing a routine early- season scallop trip 66 miles off Cape May. The ship had set sail March 18 in hopes of securing a quick payday. The crew had expected to harvest at least 300 50-pound muslin bags of scallops, 15,000 pounds, and then return to the Cold Spring docks.
Scalloping pays well. Even a novice deckhand can earn more than $15,000 in just one six-day trip, while the entire boat might garner $120,000. But it is back-breaking, repetitive and dangerous work. Worse, losing a man overboard is not unusual, but, more significantly, there is the constant threat of collision with one of the many huge container-carrying vessels or oil tankers that ply the same waters as the scallopers.
A look at a chart illustrates the problem. Whereas Cape May’s commercial fishing vessels run a basic east-west course offshore to their fishing grounds, container vessels and oil carriers follow a more north to south course, perpendicular to that of the fishing vessels. It is a reality ripe for conflict and collision. Additionally, a 50-foot scalloper under trawl has very limited speed and maneuverability, while the 1,000-foot behemoths typically plow along at upward of 24 knots. It’s truly a recipe for disaster.
Nobody can say for certain what happened on that early morning. Arias was the only survivor. Bobo Jr. was at the helm. Fuzzy’s other son, Timbo, was in his bunk, as was Credle. Bernie Smith, Ramos and Reyes were also resting.
Exhausted after their six-day ordeal, all were looking forward to a homecoming. Satellite tracking data indicates that some time after 5 a.m., the Lady Mary suddenly jinked or was pushed hard to port, so hard that she heeled over and instantly took on water.
Unable to recover from the uncontrolled list, Bobo must have realized that the heavy-laden Lady Mary was doomed and instructed the crew to get into their survival suits. But it was already too late. The list increased and the vessel settled, stern first, and began her plunge to the bottom, 211 feet below. The Coast Guard finally interpreted the EPIRB and scrambled a rescue helicopter, but by then everyone except for Arias had already drowned or succumbed to hypothermia. Two bodies were never found.
The exact cause of the sinking has never been determined. Questions were asked; some were never answered. Did a sudden swell or bow wave overtake her? Was a hatch left open to the seas? Had she been overtaken and sunk by the 722-foot container ship Cap Beatrice, which had been inbound to Philadelphia that morning? Or were modifications made to the vessel without benefit of a marine architect the culprit?
In his haunting song about another tragic shipwreck, Gordon Lightfoot lamented, “All that remains are the faces and names of the wives, the sons and the daughters.” He begs the question, “Where does the love of God go when the waves turn the minutes into hours?”
After the tragedy of March 24, 2009, six names were added to the wall at Fishermen’s Memorial. More names have since been added, including my friend Aaron “Reds” Greenberg in 2020. All are welcome at the ceremony.
– By MARK ALLEN/For the Cape May Star and Wave
