By Gail McCarthy
Thirty years ago, five men went to sea from Gloucester for the last time aboard the 50-foot, steel-hulled pilot boat Can Do.
Rockport's Motif No. 1, the red fish shack and one of the most painted buildings in the nation, toppled into the harbor. The raging ocean pounded the New England Lobster Co. at the end of Pigeon Cove wharf into the sea along with many nearby fishing shanties. Dozens of lobster boats were lost. A nearby house was ripped in half.
The sea, the waves of which reached heights of 30 to 40 feet with near hurricane winds, ravaged the Cape Ann coastline.
A total of 32 inches of snow fell in a period of 24 hours from Monday night throughout the next day making it the heaviest one-day snowfall in the city's recorded history.
The Blizzard of '78 brought activity to a standstill as a state of emergency was declared, schools and businesses closed, and most driving was prohibited while the National Guard was called in to clear roads. The damage stretched from Lanesville to Manchester where the surging surf ripped Manchester Bath and Tennis Club off its foundation and threw it into the sea. Magnolia's Shore Road and East Gloucester's Back Shore were strewn with boulders. The Essex Causeway flooded.
Sea walls everywhere were undermined or destroyed.
Gloucester High School's football field at Newell Stadium remained under 5 feet of water. The Cut Bridge was closed in the aftermath with the mechanical system of the drawbridge damaged by seawater.
In some places, the wind blew the snow up to two stories high.
President Carter declared eastern Massachusetts a federal disaster area. Damage to Cape Ann communities climbed into the millions of dollars. Damage for the region totaled about $200 million. Michael Dukakis was governor, and Leo Alper was Gloucester's mayor.
The Can Do
On Feb. 6, 1978, Frank Quirk and some of his crew had lunch at Cape Ann Marina when he learned that a 682-foot Greek tanker was in trouble off the Marblehead coast. Later, a 44-foot Coast Guard patrol boat also ran into trouble on its way to help the tanker.
Quirk, who twice received the Gloucester Mariners Medal, in his usual manner, went out to provide assistance to both vessels, leaving Gloucester Harbor in his pilot boat Can Do around 7:30 p.m. But the rescue attempt would prove fatal. The crew was composed of Donald Wilkinson and Kenneth Fuller Jr. of Rockport, Norman Curley of Magnolia and Charles Bucko, a former Gloucester Coast Guardsman.
About two hours after leaving the harbor, the sea smashed the windshield of his vessel and water knocked out the electronic equipment. Another wave came across the smokestack and doused the engine. He last reported that the crew stuffed mattresses in the broken window as they tried to restart the engine. Quirk estimated their location off the shores of Magnolia.
Deputy Harbormaster Keith Trefry and his assistant John McCarthy, and then police Sgt. James Marr, searched throughout the night.
"We all knew Frank Quirk very well," said McCarthy, now a Gloucester police sergeant. "He was always helping out around the harbor. When we got word he was out in the storm, Jim Marr got his four-wheel-drive plow and we went to Magnolia where civil defense had set up on the shoreline with a big spotlight trying to give the Can Do a reference point, to give them some type of idea where he was," recalled McCarthy. "It was whiteout conditions and he had lost all electronics."
They were driving in Marr's old International Scout.
"I remember going over the Cut Bridge and it was flooded with a foot of water. He put the plow down to push the water away to get over the bridge," said McCarthy.
Gap Lafata, a former city councilor, said Quirk had a reputation for always lending a hand.
In 1978, he was working for the telephone company as a repairman.
"My brother Peter, who also worked for the telephone company, and I were sent to the Coast Guard station to look for wires being down and there was nothing but whiteouts. You couldn't see anything," he recalled.
Later when he went home, he was listening to Quirk's distress calls over the shortwave radio.
"It was a terrible night. Anybody on the radio that night could hear the communications," said Lafata.
The account of the Can Do was written about in the book, "Ten Hours Until Dawn," by Michael Tougias.
Other accounts
Rockport police Chief Thomas McCarthy, an engineer at the time, also was working as a part-time police officer.
"I was with Cliff Brooks and we responded to a call at Bearskin Neck from a woman whose house was being beat up by waves. When we got there, the house was gone. It was swept right off the face of the Earth into the harbor," he said.
"She was just sitting there with a backpack and there was water shooting out where the water service was. Then we went to Pigeon Cove wharf and that was gone."
Nicola Barletta, then the Rockport Board of Selectman chairman, remembers well the stormy scenes.
"The cars on Bearskin Neck were up to their hubcaps with water from the high tide and wind. The wind was blowing so hard and we ducked around the corner of a store. I thought I saw the Motif move a little. When we stepped out again, the Motif had blown overboard. It really did move," said Barletta.
Bearskin Neck was evacuated.
"You could see debris floating out to sea. The house in Pigeon Cove was split in two. Part of it moved and it looked like a dollhouse where you could look in. The car parked in the garage floated into the house," he recalled.
Barletta saw five cars, which were washed overboard from White Wharf, in the middle of the basin.
He saw a refrigerator in the water near Pier Avenue with its door open and the contents still on the shelves.
"When the tide went down, you could see a rocking chair in the mud flats with a book on the chair," said Barletta. The book was titled "The Gathering Storm" by Winston Churchill.
At the time, Barletta was working as an engineer in Cambridge but had to take the train because Route 128 was shut down for about a week.
In Gloucester, Rosie Verga remembers being stuck in the house. She and her husband, Jim Verga, went next door to their neighbors' house on Exchange Street to play Scrabble with Phyllis and Dick Moore.
"At one point, the electricity was out but our house had gas so I could cook and everyone came over to our place. I remember I made chicken soup," said Verga, who surely would have cooked pasta for her large extended Italian family.
Brian Tarr, now assistant superintendent of Gloucester pubic schools, was out towing stranded cars on Route 128 for his uncle's towing company, Tally's.
In spite of the storm, the Times still got out because Tarr's brother Brent "Ringo" Tarr was asked by an employee of the newspaper to drive to Beverly, where the paper was printed, because he had a four-wheel drive, an International Scout.
"I needed a legal letter to say because of the First Amendment, I could be out on the road because it was a state of emergency," said Tarr. "I remember being the only one on the highway. I was never stopped because no one was on the road to stop me."
