Twenty-five years ago, on August 5, 2001, my life changed forever.
The F/V Starbound, the fishing vessel I captained and co-owned, was struck and sunk at sea.
Three members of my crew never came home:
Thomas Frontiero.
James Sanfilippo.
Mark Doughty.
I survived.
For twenty-five years, I have carried those three men with me.
Today, Tom and Jimmy’s names are engraved on Gloucester’s Fishermen’s Cenotaph.
Mark’s name is not.
After all these years, I am asking the people of Gloucester to help me bring my last crewman home.
Why Mark was left off
For years, the explanation for Mark’s omission was that he was from Maine and that the Starbound was considered a Maine boat.
On the 25th anniversary of the tragedy, I asked the Gloucester Fishermen’s Cenotaph Committee to reconsider that decision.
They recently denied my request.
In their response, however, the Committee provided its eligibility criteria in writing. One of those criteria says that a fisherman can be included if he was lost while working aboard a Gloucester fishing or lobster vessel, regardless of his place of origin or residence.
That means Mark being from Maine is not necessarily the issue.
The real question is:
Was the F/V Starbound properly classified as simply a Maine boat twenty-five years ago?
I don’t believe the complete story was known when that decision was made.
I wasn’t only the captain. I was a co-owner.
This is the fact I have been trying to get the Committee to address.
I was not merely the captain of the Starbound. I was also a co-owner.
The vessel was owned by Atlantic Mariner, Inc., a corporation in which I was a shareholder. I now have the State of Maine’s 2001 Annual Report for Atlantic
Mariner, Inc., filed less than five months before the Starbound sank.
That official government document lists me among the shareholders:
Joseph A. Marcantonio
4 Finch Lane
Gloucester, Massachusetts
I was a Gloucester resident, a Gloucester fisherman, the captain of the Starbound, and an owner through my interest in the corporation that owned her.
I do not believe the people who made the original Cenotaph decision in 2001 knew that.
If they didn’t, I don’t blame them.
They may have seen a Maine corporation and a vessel operating from Maine when she was lost and understandably concluded that the Starbound was a Maine boat.
But that wasn’t the complete history of my vessel.
The Starbound worked from Gloucester
We participated in the migratory Atlantic herring fishery.
We followed the fish along the Northeast coast. As the herring moved from the waters around New York Harbor north toward the Canadian border, the boats moved with them.
That was the nature of our livelihood.
During those seasons, I regularly brought the Starbound to Gloucester and fished from here for extended periods. My crew lived aboard while we operated from this harbor.
Gloucester wasn’t somewhere the Starbound simply passed through.
She worked here.
Her crew lived here while fishing from here.
Her captain lived here.
And one of her owners lived here.
The fact that the fish had taken us to Maine when the Starbound was lost does not erase that history.
I’m not asking anyone to change the rules
I want to be very clear about this.
I am not asking anyone’s name to be removed from Gloucester’s Fishermen’s Memorial.
I don’t question the sacrifice of anyone honored there.
I am not asking the Cenotaph Committee to rewrite its rules.
And I am not asking them to make a special exception for Mark.
I am asking them to reconsider whether the Starbound was properly classified in the first place.
If the Committee looks at the ownership, captaincy and operational history of the vessel and determines that the Starbound qualifies as a Gloucester fishing vessel under its own criteria, then Mark needs no exception.
Under the Committee’s own rule, where he lived would no longer disqualify him.
I have asked the Committee to address that question.
I have also asked for the opportunity to stand before them personally and explain the history of my own vessel.
After twenty-five years, I don’t believe that’s too much to ask.
There is another part of this story that is harder for me to tell
I have spent a lot of time talking about rules, vessel ownership, corporate records and historical classifications.
Those things matter.
But they don’t explain why I am still fighting.
If people knew how much this breaks my heart, perhaps they would understand.
Most people don’t see the tears.
They don’t see the private moments when something takes me right back to that morning. They don’t know how many times over twenty-five years I have thought about the men who were with me or wondered whether there was something—anything—I could have done differently.
I survived the Starbound.
But surviving did not mean that morning ended for me.
I was the captain.
Those men were my crew.
I came home.
They didn’t.
That is something I have had to learn to live with for twenty-five years.
Long before the Starbound, I also knew what it meant to be the family waiting ashore. I was a boy when my own father, Captain Cosmo Marcantonio, was lost to the sea.
I have lived both sides of Gloucester’s fishing story.
I have been the child whose father didn’t come home.
And I have been the captain who came home without his crew.
There are wounds the passage of time softens but never completely closes.
This is one of them.
I want to finish this
I don’t want to spend the next chapter of my life fighting with a committee.
I don’t want anger.
I don’t want enemies.
I want finality.
I want to know that I did everything within my power for the three men who were under my command and never came home.
This renewed fight over Mark’s name has reopened something in me that I have spent twenty-five years trying to put to rest.
A name carved into stone will not erase what happened.
Nothing can.
But seeing Tom, Jimmy and Mark together would mean something very personal to me.
It would mean that Gloucester finally remembered the Starbound crew the way I have carried them all these years:
Together.
Three men.
One crew.
One tragedy.
Maybe then I could stand in front of those tablets, see all three names, and finally say something I have wanted to say for twenty-five years:
I brought you all home.
Gloucester, I’m asking for your help
I tried to handle this privately.
I respected the process.
Now I believe the community deserves to know the story and see the evidence for itself.
I’m not asking Gloucester to attack the Cenotaph Committee.
I’m asking Gloucester to help me convince them to take another look.
If you believe the documented Gloucester ownership and operational history of the Starbound deserve to be considered, please lend your voice to mine.
Ask the Committee to reconsider the original classification of the F/V Starbound.
Ask them to explain what constitutes a “Gloucester fishing vessel.”
Ask them to consider whether the people making the decision in 2001 knew that the vessel’s Gloucester captain was also one of her owners.
And ask them to give me the opportunity to stand before the full Committee and make my case.
I don’t want special treatment.
I want a fair hearing based upon the complete history of my vessel.
Twenty-five years ago, Tom, Jimmy and Mark went to sea together.
Only I came home.
Today, two of their names stand together on Gloucester’s Fishermen’s Memorial.
Please help me bring the third home.
Thomas Frontiero.
James Sanfilippo.
Mark Doughty.
For twenty-five years, I have carried their voices.
I am asking Gloucester to help carry them with me now.
It is time to finish the Starbound crew.
With gratitude,
Joseph A. Marcantonio
Captain and co-owner, F/V Starbound
Sole Survivor
