F/V Alison Marie

F/V Alison Marie on the rails at Taves Boatyard, by David W. Dunlap (2010).

An inspiration to the artist Arthur Cohen and one of the oldest fishing vessels in the fleet to make it into the 21st century, the 39-foot Alison Marie was constructed in 1928, according to BoatInfoWorld. She is pictured here in 2010 up on the marine railway at Taves Boatyard, 129R Commercial. Capt. Tobin Storer, who also owns Probable Cause and who bought Ancora Praia, moved Alison Marie to Wellfleet in recent years.

More than 2,000 buildings and vessels are searchable on buildingprovincetown.com. The Building Provincetown book is available for purchase ($20) at Town Hall, Office of the Town Clerk, 260 Commercial Street, Provincetown 02657.

F/V All In

F/V All In (smaller blue boat) at a Wellfleet boatyard, by David W. Dunlap (2014).

Capt. Chris Milewski, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Capt. Chris Milewski is among the younger fishermen in town, but he has already gone through a wrenching, once-in-a-lifetime tragedy at sea, having been one of the crew members of Glutton in 2012 who tried unsuccessfully to rescue Capt. Jean Frottier aboard the sinking Twin Lights. Milewski now skippers his own lobster boat, All In, shown here at a Wellfleet boatyard (to the right of Carol and Sherry). He joined in the 2014 hunt for the sunken and abandoned fishing equipment known as “ghost gear” that disturbs marine habitats and poses perils to draggers’ nets. All told, All In pulled up about two tons of gear in two days’ work, according to the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies.

F/V Ancora Praia

F/V Ancora Praia on the Portygee railway, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

In red-and-white livery, the 58-foot Ancora Praia was an especially handsome wooden fishing vessel, built in 1963 by Hoyle Varnum in North Carolina, according to BoatInfoWorld. She was purchased in 1984 by Capt. Fernando Lomba, a native of Vila Praia de Âncora, Portugal, and steamed with a three-man crew. Disaster struck in 2007 when a spark from an acetylene torch fell into the oily bilge, starting a fire that spread through the hold before moving to the pilot house. Lomba’s efforts to recover from the fire were frustrated by the aging, uninsurable vessel and the increasingly strict federal management of the fishery. In 2011, Ancora Praia was taken out of the water. Her new owner, Capt. Tobin Storer of Probable Cause, intended to transform her into a mussel barge for an aquaculture site off Wellfleet, extending her marine service. Unfortunately, she sank at Wellfleet.

F/V Antonio Jorge

F/V Antonio Jorge, by David W. Dunlap (2012).

Capt. Manuel F. Dias, by David W. Dunlap (2010).

Christened Divino Criador (Divine Creator) after she was built in 1971 at Daly’s Boat Yard in Jacksonville, Fla., this 60-foot-long steel fishing vessel is now known as Antonio Jorge. It has been owned since the late 1980s by Capt. Manuel Dias of Provincetown. His sons are named — as you might imagine — Antonio and Jorge. They also live in town. Jorge, who works with his father on the boat, spoke dishearteningly in a 2010 article in The Cape Cod Times about the fact that many traditional grounds had been declared off-limits by regulators. “They don’t let us fish,” he said. “It’s hard to tell what the future is going to be.”

F/V Blue Ocean

F/V Blue Ocean, by David W. Dunlap (2008).

Capt. Luis Ribas, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

I felt a certain creaky identification with the 54-foot Blue Ocean, since we were built in the same year, 1952. She was constructed at Webber’s Cove Boatyard in Blue Hill, Me., as an “eastern rigger” — that is, a dragger with the pilot house at the stern of the vessel. As Charlotte G., she was the setting of a tragedy at sea in December 1999, when Capt. Fernando “Nando” Ribeiro was fatally injured in an accident in the engine room. The owner and captain of Blue Ocean in the early 2000s was Capt. Luis Ribas, the senior assistant harbormaster, who also owned Blue Skies. John and Mary Beth de Poutiloff, who own Patience Too, bought and sold Blue Ocean out of town.

F/V Blue Skies

F/V Blue Skies, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Capt. Luis Ribas, the senior assistant harbormaster in Provincetown, owned the 56-foot dragger Blue Skies, constructed in 1957 by the Morehead City Shipyard on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. She was formerly known as Kathy-Jo, Joel Grozier told me. Like several other older boats in the fleet, she was an “eastern rigger,” with the pilot house at the rear. Boxes full of iced whiting filled the deck in front of the pilot house, or wheel house, in the photograph above, taken just after twilight in September 2011. Ribas sold the boat to Joel “Bootsie” Carreiro. At last word in 2014, she was in Gloucester, awaiting decommissioning.

Dolphin VII, VIII, IX, X

Dolphin VII and Dolphin VIII, by David W. Dunlap (2010).

The distinctively bottle-nosed passenger boats used for whale watching all bear the appropriate name Dolphin. The Dolphin Fleet dates to 1975, when Albert Avellar Jr. and Charles Atkins “Stormy” Mayo III began taking customers out to see right whales aboard Dolphin III. (Dolphin I and Dolphin II were Avellar’s fishing party boats.) Beginning with Dolphin V (now Cuttyhunk) in 1983 and Dolphin VI (now Starstream VIII) in 1985, every boat in the fleet has been built at the Gulf Craft shipyard in Patterson, La. The current fleet includes the 86-foot Dolphin VII of 1986; the 84-foot Dolphin VIII of 1995; Dolphin IX of 1991, originally Portuguese Princess II, until that company merged with the Dolphin Fleet in 2008; and Dolphin X of 1995, originally Captain Red. The fleet is headed by Steven Milliken, Avellar’s stepson.

F/V Donna Marie

F/V Donna Marie, pilot house, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Jared King in the rigging, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Capt. Chris King, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Capt. William King and Patricia Marie King, courtesy of Anthony L. Thomas III.

At the Blessing of the Fleet, Donna Marie flies signal flags spelling “p-a-t-r-i-c-i-a-m-a-r-i-e.” Capt. Chris King (center), the owner of this 60-foot steel vessel, is a son of Patricia Marie (Lynch) King and Capt. William “Billy” King (left), skipper of Patricia Marie, which sank while scalloping off Pollock Rip on 24 October 1976 with the loss of all seven men. Donna Marie was built as Mackenzie Page in 1969 at Daly’s Boat Yard in Jacksonville, Fla., and was a shrimper until the 1990s, when she came north. King purchased her in 2008 and upgraded her with a 400-horsepower Caterpillar 3408 engine. The routine is to go out for scallops from May to Labor Day; whiting and squid to mid-November; then cod, yellowtail, and ground fish through the new year. King’s stepbrother, Capt. Willis King, is the skipper. That’s Chris’s son, Jared, up in the rigging.

F/V Glutton

F/V Glutton, galley, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

F/V Glutton, scallop dredge, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Capt. Beau Gribbin, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

“Swift, unselfish, and courageous.” That was the assessment of the Coast Guard’s Station Provincetown of the actions taken by Capt. Beau Gribbin and his men — Tim Klekotka, Chris Milewski, and Billy Souza — to aid Capt. Jean Frottier and Eric Rego as Twin Lights sank on 18 November 2012. Glutton‘s crew saved Rego, but could not help Captain Frottier. The 48-foot Glutton — a name honoring Gribbin’s step-grandfather, Herman Tasha — was built in 2003 at Dixon’s Marine in Lower Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia, as Misty Marie. Gribbin bought her in 2009. She is powered by a 460-horsepower Detroit Diesel MTU Series 60 engine and goes out chiefly to dredge for scallops and trap lobsters, now in company with Gribbin’s Helltown. Rego is on the crew.

F/V Helltown

F/V Helltown, by David W. Dunlap (2014).

Capt. Beau Gribbin, courtesy of Captain Gribbin.

“It sounds so nostalgic, but there’s no question that when I first went fishing, I knew I was born to fish,” said Capt. Beau Gribbin, the owner and skipper of the 45-foot Helltown, built in 2001 at Mount Desert Island Boatworks in Maine. His father, Andy Gribbin, was a scalloper and draggerman; his stepfather, Carl Tasha, was a lobsterman with his brother, Paul Tasha. After a few years on the Bering Sea, Gribbin returned to Cape Cod in the 1990s and owned Poor Boy, the first Glutton (ex-Christina Marie), Glutton II (ex-Sea Otter, now Sisters Five) and Rogue (ex-Esther’s Pride), before purchasing the current Glutton (ex-Misty Marie) and then Helltown.

Hindu

Schooner Hindu, by Denise Avallon (2007).

Though her hailing port is now Key West, the wood-hulled, 62-foot schooner Hindu will long be regarded proudly as Provincetown’s own. Designed by William Hand Jr., she was built as Princess Pat by Hodgdon Brothers in East Boothbay, Me., in 1925. She also sailed as Saispas and Anna Lee Ames before receiving her current name in 1938 on a voyage to India. After U-boat patrol in World War II, she was purchased by Albert Avellar Jr. and pressed into charter service. Avellar’s uncle, Justin, bought her in 1960. John Bennett, spearhead of the Great Provincetown Schooner Regatta, took over in 1988. He died aboard the boat in 2002. Kevin Foley bought her in 2004 and restored her, but lost her to an investment partner who lost her to lenders. William Rowan bought her at auction in 2011. His son, Josh, rebuilt her in 2011-12 and is now the skipper.

F/V Jersey Princess I

F/V Jersey Princess I, scallop dredge, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

F/V Jersey Princess I, shucking house, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Jersey Princess I is owned and skippered by Capt. Isaac da Lomba of Provincetown. The photos above show details of the scallop dredge and of the shucking house, aft of the pilot house, in which the crew prepares the catch for market while the boat is steaming homeward. Jersey Princess I was preceded by the 57-foot Jersey Princess II, built by Canh Van Pham in New Orleans in 1987.

My Yot

F/V Amanda Girl, now My Yot, by David W. Dunlap (2010).

There may be no graceful way for a fishing vessel to reach the end of its days, but the 66-foot-long Amanda Girl — one of the few wooden boats to make it into the 21st century — came to an especially disheartening coda. Although active as late as 2007, Pru Sowers reported in The Banner, her owner decided a year later to let the permits expire and sell the boat. The new owner, an Army medic stationed in Iraq, was in no position to tend to the increasingly derelict vessel. In 2009, she was taken over by a homeless man who briefly turned her into a floating flophouse, until a knife fight brought officials’ attention to the dysfunctional situation. Purchased by Ricky Macara, whose family owned Liberty, she has been renamed My Yot and rescued from abandonment, but is no longer fishing.

F/V Odysea

Kit “The Pirate” Vallee and Capt. Ralph Wilkins on F/V Odysea, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

In 2011, when I met Capt. Ralph Wilkins and his first mate, Kit “The Pirate” Vallee, I did not imagine I was in the presence of future reality TV stars. But there they were, a year later, on the National Geographic Channel’s series Wicked Tuna: The Reel Fishermen of New England, as was their 32-foot, fiberglass-hull BHM Downeast, Odysea, which was custom-built for Wilkins in 1988 in Brockton, Me. Wilkins, who owns the Cape Truro Cottages in North Truro, is a bluefin hunter. That’s one reason he moved to New England from New York, he told me. He landed a 980-pound tuna in 2009 and a 1,040-pound tuna in 2010. The other captains in the show were billed as “Wicked Tough,” “Wicked Fun,” and “Wicked Sneaky.” But Wilkins was “Wicked Fearless.”

F/V Pam & Todd

F/V Pam & Todd, by David W. Dunlap (2013).

Capt. Todd Silva fished with his father, Capt. Louis “Ding” Silva, aboard the scalloper Magellan II. After she was wrecked in a storm, Todd started lobstering on the 26-foot Pam & Todd, built in 1978 in Dover, N.H. He raised three daughters at 485 Commercial, where his grandparents had lived after their arrival from Pico and São Miguel in the Azores. His sale of the house in 2008 prompted an elegiac essay in The Banner, “Todd Silva Is Leaving Provincetown,” by Dennis Minsky, who mourned the departure of “one of the last watermen on the waterfront.” That’s not to say Silva abandoned fishing. In fact, he recently acquired the scalloper Patience Too from Mary Beth and John de Poutiloff.

F/V Pamet

F/V Pamet, by David W. Dunlap (2012).

To acquire the 48-foot Pamet, which was built in 1986, Capt. Fernando Lomba sold Ancora Praia. The captain’s home at 15 Jerome Smith Road is unmistakable, since he keeps fishing gear stowed in the front yard. So many houses in town once looked like his. Now, only a handful do. Presumably, Captain Lomba’s boat takes its name from the Pamet River, which bisects the Cape at Truro.

F/V Probable Cause

F/V Probable Cause, by David W. Dunlap (2008).

Capt. Tobin Storer, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Probable Cause, a 46½-foot scalloper, was built in 1973 in the yards of Capt. Elbert Gaskill in Harkers Island, N.C., according to BoatInfoWorld. She was once known as Fisher, and worked off Georgia before coming north to fish off Rhode Island under the name At Last. Capt. Tobin “Toby” Storer bought the vessel around 2006 and renamed her. After a fire, the diesel engine and the deck were rebuilt. Other than that, Storer told me in 2011, Probable Cause was “very well built.” Though Storer’s family did not go to sea, he has been fishing since he was in his mid-20s. He owned Alison Marie and bought Ancora Praia to use as a mussel bed at his aquaculture site in Wellfleet.

Provincetown I, II, III, IV

Provincetown II at Commonwealth Pier – World Trade Center, Boston, by David W. Dunlap (2010).

The Bay State-Spray & Provincetown Steamship Company’s Provincetown I began service in 1973 as the first big Boston boat of the modern era. Commissioned by the company founder, Dick Nakashian, she was designed by John Gilbert and built at Gamage Shipyard in South Bristol, Me. In 1981, the 1,130-passenger Provincetown II, designed by Gilbert, arrived from the Jakobson Shipyard in Oyster Bay, N.Y. She is still in service.

Provincetown III, by David W. Dunlap (2013).

The company, renamed Bay State Cruise, began running the Provincetown Express (now Friendship IV), a twin-hulled catamaran, in 1998. Travel time was halved, to 90 minutes. She was designed in Australia by International Catamaran (now Incat Crowther) and built in Somerset, Mass., by the Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding arm of the Duclos Corporation. They also designed and built Provincetown III of 2004 and Provincetown IV of 2013.

Provincetown IV, by David W. Dunlap (2015).

F/V Richard & Arnold

F/V Richard & Arnold, by David W. Dunlap (2010).

Venerable queen of the fleet and one of its great highliners, Richard & Arnold has been owned and skippered since 1979 by the irrepressible Capt. David Dutra, a town native, born David Souza. Designed — it is said — to run rum for Dutch Schultz, she was built in the 1920s at Casey’s Boatyard in Fairhaven, Mass., as a half-scale version of a Gloucester schooner, 60 feet long on deck; eastern rigged and a motor-sailer, with an engine and a set of sails. Frank Parson bought her in the ’30s and named her after two of his sons. She was owned in turn by Anthony Thomas, Charlie Bennett, Alfred Silva, and Thomas’s grandson, Anthony III.

Capt. David Dutra and Judy Dutra aboard F/V Richard & Arnold, by David W. Dunlap (2012).

Her saga is movingly told by David’s wife, Judy, in Nautical Twilight: The Story of a Cape Cod Fishing Family, published in 2011. “An old Portygee told me one day that this boat had a lucky keel,” David said to me. “It can find the fish. It’s been very good to me and my family.”

Salacia

Salacia, by David W. Dunlap (2012).

Rick and Chris Nolan of Boston Harbor Cruises bought Provincetown I in 1981, renamed her Commonwealth and used her as a tour boat. In 2000, while the Nolans were partnered with the Big Dig contractor Modern Continental, the company began service to Provincetown on Salacia, a twin-hulled aluminum catamaran with standing-room capacity for as many as 600. Like Bay State’s fast ferries, she was designed by Incat Crowther and built by Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding. Salacia is named for the Roman goddess of salt water. The boat is 146½ feet long — amazingly, only half the length of the steamships that once plied the Boston-Provincetown route — and draws less than 6 feet, a considerable advantage in this shallow harbor. She can travel up to 40 knots, powered by four Caterpillar engines.

F/V Sea Hunter

F/V Sea Hunter, fish hold, by David W. Dunlap (2010).

F/V Sea Hunter, by David W. Dunlap (2010).

F/V Sea Hunter, by David W. Dunlap (2013).

Capt. Scott Rorro, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Sea Hunter, a 45-foot scalloper built around 1989, is among the younger vessels in the fleet. And Capt. Scott Rorro is one of the youngest skippers. But Rorro’s marine heritage goes back to Joseph J. Macara and Mary Carmen (Lopes) Macara, who came here from Olhao, Portugal. Their son Joseph E. Macara founded Land’s End Marine Supply. Their daughter Mary wed Ernest Tarvis, master of the draggers Mermaid and Three of Us. The Tarvises’ daughter, Naomi Irene, married Michael Angelo Rorro in 1964. A year later, Scott was born. He purchased Sea Hunter in 2004. She takes a crew of three. The fish hold has a 45,000 pound capacity. At the time we spoke in 2010, Rorro was fishing on Stellwagen Bank, but Sea Hunter has been known to go as far afield as scalloping grounds off Maryland.

F/V Sentinel

F/V Sentinel, engine room, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Capt. Jeffrey Richardson, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

The dragger Jesse James was a familiar sight even though her hailing port was Point Judith, R.I. As of 2011, however, she briefly made Provincetown her home, as Sentinel, under Capt. Jeffrey Richardson. He converted the 76-foot-long vessel, with a 400-to-500-horsepower Caterpillar D353 engine, into a sea clammer, to follow his Guardian. Richardson is a third-generation fisherman and this was the boat’s third incarnation. She was built as Sun-Dance in 1976 by S. & R. Boat Builders of Bayou La Batre, Ala. Joshua Spearman bought the boat and renamed her for his wife, Jesse, and his brother James. Not long after rehabilitating Sentinel, Richardson sold her and acquired the Carol Ann, which he renamed Integrity. Sentinel now fishes from Martha’s Vineyard.

F/V Teri M.

F/V Teri M., by David W. Dunlap (2011).

An unusual sight for a landlubber is a dragger with outriggers extended during a trawl, enhancing the boat’s lateral stability. (Think of how you’d position your arms outward if you were trying to walk a tightrope or a fence rail.) Teri M. is slightly over 22 feet abeam, but with these arms out, she has a profile about 100 feet wide. She was built in 1969 by Toche Boat Builders in Ocean Springs, Miss., and is 68½ feet long, one of the largest boats in the Provincetown fleet. Capt. Michael Silva, the owner, comes from a fishing family.

F/V Terra Nova

F/V Terra Nova, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Capt. Peter Cabral, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

F/V Terra Nova, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Provincetown lost a significant landmark when the 65-foot, wood-hulled, “eastern rigged” dragger Terra Nova steamed away. Built in 1965 as Little Infant, at the Newbert & Wallace yard in Maine, she had been owned for many years by Gerald Costa. Capt. Peter Cabral bought her in 2002. Within a decade, and after at least one interim owner, the boat was derelict. A new owner, David Oakes of South Thomaston, Me., was taking her home in 2013 with his son-in-law, Jason Randall. Terra Nova was three miles off Rockport, Mass., when she began to take on water. As she sank, Randall slipped. Oakes grabbed him and pushed him overboard to clear the vessel. “That was the last time I saw him,” Randall told The Bangor Daily News. “His last act was to save my life.”

F/V Terra Nova, view up companionway to mast, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

F/V Torsk

F/V Torsk, by David W. Dunlap (2014).

Capt. Ryan Nolan, courtesy of Captain Nolan.

Capt. Ryan Nolan’s grandfather fished for tuna and jigged for cod out of Wellfleet and called his boat Torsk — Swedish for cod. Nolan honored him in 2012 by rechristening, as Torsk, his newly purchased 37-foot fiberglass scalloper, built in 2001 by David MacDonald Boats Ltd. in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Before becoming his own skipper, Nolan fished on Sea Wolf and Sisters Five, among others. He told me in 2014 that he had begun lobstering, in addition to scalloping.

F/V Twin Lights

F/V Twin Lights, heading out, by David W. Dunlap (2011).

Jean Frottier, as owner of Gifford House, by David Jarrett (1981).

There had been recent tragedies at sea — Fernando Ribeiro died on Charlotte G. in 1999 and John Woods aboard Dixie II in 2010 — but the town had gone 28 years without a fatal sinking until 18 November 2012. Capt. Jean Frottier, a charter member of the Provincetown Fishermen’s Association and former owner of the Gifford House, was scalloping with Eric Rego aboard the 40-foot fiberglass Twin Lights, built in 1985 by Young Brothers & Company of Maine. Two miles north of Race Point, the scallop rake became entangled. As Twin Lights came around to straighten it out, she rolled over in a swell. The crew of the nearby Glutton rescued Rego, but their efforts to make contact with Frottier by knocking on the overturned hull were fruitless — a chilling echo of the S-4 disaster. After 40 minutes or so, Twin Lights sank in about 190 feet of water, bearing her captain along.

Building Provincetown

The History of Provincetown Told Through Its Built Environment

Tag Archives for Vessel

F/V Alison Marie

F/V All In

F/V Ancora Praia

F/V Antonio Jorge

F/V Blue Ocean

F/V Blue Skies

Dolphin VII, VIII, IX, X

F/V Donna Marie

F/V Glutton

F/V Helltown

Hindu

F/V Jersey Princess I

My Yot

F/V Odysea

F/V Pam & Todd

F/V Pamet

F/V Probable Cause

Provincetown I, II, III, IV

F/V Richard & Arnold

Salacia

F/V Sea Hunter

F/V Sentinel

F/V Teri M.

F/V Terra Nova

F/V Torsk

F/V Twin Lights