| Notes |
- http://www.pressherald.com/news/Lost-at-sea-10-years-ago-today-Tragedy-of-the-Starbound_2011-08-05.html?pageType=mobile&id=1
Posted: August 5, 2011
Grief lingers 10 years later
By Tom
Belltbell@mainetoday.com MaineToday Media State House
Writer
BY TOM BELL
The Portland Press Herald
About 1 a.m. on Aug. 5, 2001, a Russian oil tanker collided with a fishing
boat bound for Rockland from Georges Bank with a hold full of herring.
The 541-foot tanker, which had left Boston, continued its journey to
Newfoundland. The 83-foot trawler sank in about a minute, dragging three men
trapped inside to their deaths. The boat's captain scrambled into a lifeboat and
survived.
The story, which held the attention of the news media for about a year, was a
mix of maritime tragedy and international intrigue as the U.S. Department of
Justice wrangled with authorities in Canada and Russia. The case was complicated
by maritime law, which doesn't give the United States jurisdiction over
international waters.
The captain and two crew members of the Russian ship were charged in
Newfoundland with manslaughter. Released on bail, they returned to Russia. The
charges eventually were dropped.
The media moved on from the story long ago, but the families of the men who
died have not. Today, the 10th anniversary of the crash, the grief remains for
the family of Mark Doughty, a fisherman from Yarmouth who was 33 when he left
behind a wife and two young daughters.
"We don't want anybody to forget them or what happened to them boys, all of
them," said his sister, Sharon Brown. "All the families are feeling the same
right now. It's a horrible way to lose a child or a brother."
A Coast Guard investigation concluded that there was no reasonable
explanation for why the crew of the tanker, the Virgo, failed to prevent the
collision 130 miles east of Cape Ann, Mass. The circumstances required the
tanker to give way to the smaller vessel, the Starbound.
The Starbound's radar was functioning, but its collision alarm did not
activate.
Starbound crew members James Sanfilippo of Thomaston and Thomas Frontiero of
Gloucester, Mass., perished along with Doughty. One of Doughty's closest
friends, the captain, Joseph Marcantonio of Gloucester, survived.
He said this week that he remains too upset about the crash to talk about
it.
The fact that the Coast Guard never recovered Doughty's body made his death
harder to accept, Brown said.
Doughty's mother, Shirley Doughty Horr, who lives in Portland, said that at
times she expects Mark to walk through the doorway of her apartment. He was an
outstanding swimmer, she said, and for a long time she held out hope that he had
managed to reach an island somewhere.
"When I went to the funeral, nothing was real to me," she said. "People kept
telling me he was gone," but it didn't feel that way.
Horr's grief was so deep after the death of her youngest child that she
remained in bed for months. Within a year, she had lost 50 pounds.
She finally escaped her depression, she said, after she became a regular
volunteer at a nearby nursery school. She loves children, and there's nothing
more healing than spending her days with them, she said.
Horr and her former husband, Robert Doughty, raised five children on
Chebeague Island. Mark was adored as the baby of the family and developed a
happy-go-lucky nature that put him at the family's center.
Brown, who was 10 years older, said her bond with him was especially strong
because he was like her own child.
Brown has hung photographs of Mark Doughty all over her home in
Phippsburg.
In her living room, Horr has a 6-foot-tall glass case that displays photos of
Mark as a baby, a Boy Scout, a teenager at his high school graduation, and a
fishermen. There's also a copy of his captain's license, issued by the Coast
Guard, and statuettes of various religious figures and angels.
She also keeps a chest filled with newspaper clippings, some of Mark's
clothing, VHS tapes of television news stories about the accident, and
correspondence with the staff of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who had worked on the legal case
with the Department of Justice.
Robert Doughty of Greenville, Mark Doughty's oldest brother, said he still
thinks of Mark every day. He went to Gloucester recently to see some old
friends. At the Crow's Nest, a waterfront bar that's popular with fishermen, he
saw a photo of the Starbound hanging on the wall behind the bar.
"I said, 'That's my brother's boat.' There were two older guys there. They
thought the world of Mark. They had tears in their eyes."
Brown said she cried almost every day for two years after her brother's
death. She has finally accepted the loss.
"I have come to realize, after 10 years, that my little brother is an angel,"
she said, "and his grave is the ocean."
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The H600 Project Genealogy DB
Abt 1968 - 2001 (~ 33 years)