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They Made Out Hunkey Dory

Here’s an old interesting commercial fishing story. On December 17, 1903, two Portuguese trawlers of Provincetown had a chilling if not thrilling experience.

(In those times trawlers were actually line trawlers or longliners that worked out of dories, not the modern trawlers or draggers of today)

They were fishing just off Provincetown, one mile south of Wood End, when suddenly their dory capsized. The sea was running rough, the wind was strong and cold. Down into the cold sea went the dory, and the two men went down with her.

She sank because of her ballast, but near the bottom the ballast fell out. Up she came, and up came the two men. They clung to her, and surfacing, yelled for help.

After twenty minutes of immersion in the near-freezing water, their cries were heard, and two fellow trawlers managed to pull them, all wet and all but frozen to death, and unconscious, into their boat. The men were rushed to the Wood End lifesaving station and soon brought to consciousness and recovery.

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