By Patrick Anderson
A day after the clamshell-carrying Providenza capsized off of Eastern Point and its two-man crew were rescued by a nearby fishing boat, the 38-foot vessel was hauled out of the water yesterday while the Coast Guard worked to find out why it overturned.
Coast Guard officials yesterday afternoon said they had finished interviews with the crew of the Providenza and witnesses to its capsizing, but had not yet determined a cause for the accident.
The Coast Guard would not release the names of the crew, Petty Officer Luke Pinneo, a Coast Guard spokesman said.
WCVB television reported yesterday that the captain of the Providenza was David Potter. The Providenza was heading out from Gloucester harbor to dump a load of clamshells in deep water when it capsized around a mile from the Dog Bar breakwater.
Roger Brisson, the captain of the fishing boat Blue Dagger, spotted the overturned boat as he was headed out to fish, headed toward it and then saw its two crewmembers floating in the water next to the hull. He pulled the two crewmembers from the water, one with a survival suit on and one with just a life preserver on. He issued a mayday call to the Coast Guard at 9:45 a.m.
The Providenza was working for Intershell Seafood International, dumping the shells of surf clams after the clams themselves have been extracted to make clam strips.
The boat is equipped with a large dumptruck bin on its stern that lifts up using hydraulics to drop its payload into the water. According to a National marine Fisheries database, the Providenza is 30 years old and owned by Stimpson's Fisheries Corp. Calls to Intershell were not returned yesterday.
After the accident, speculation on the cause of the boat's capsizing focused on the shells in the back of the boat freezing in a solid mass to the boat and destabilizing the vessel.
After confirming that the crew of the boat was safe, the Coast Guard worked to make sure the overturned vessel did not become a hazard to other boat traffic or contaminate the water.
Yesterday, Pinneo said a pollution investigator had been sent from Coast Guard Sector Boston to the scene to test the water and had concluded that there had been no environmental impact from the capsizing.
Patrick Anderson can be reached at panderson@gloucestertimes.com
