A beachcomber spending a Saturday morning collecting seashells on a remote North Carolina beach came across a body, but it only deepened the mystery of the last hours of the fishing vessel Sea Tractor.
The body was identified as Kenneth Rose Sr., one of three crewmen missing since the Sea Tractor went down Nov. 11 during a flounder fishing trip off Cape May. The sinking took the lives of Rose Sr., 75, his son Kenneth Rose Jr., 49, both of Broad Creek, N.C., and Larry Forrest, 55, of Cape May County.
The Sea Tractor was due back to Lund’s Fisheries in Lower Township, Cape May County, on the evening of Nov. 11 as a brutal coastal storm hit the area. The crew never made port.
At first authorities thought the body found Nov. 21 on Pea Island, a remote strand on the Outer Banks, about 10 miles south of Nags Head, would provide answers. Dead bodies can do that.