August 27, 2012 — At least 5,384 fishermen sailing out of America’s Oldest Seaport have gone “down to the sea in ships,” as the psalm at Gloucester’s Fishermen’s Memorial notes.
Saturday night, local fishing activists, officials, relatives from others some of the city’s longtime fishing families turned out to recognize all of them and others lost to the nation’s most dangerous industry at the annual Fishermen’s Memorial Service and procession, which carried from the American Legion hall to the Memorial and its iconic Man at the Wheel statue on Stacy Boulevard.
Saturday’s memorial program marked the first since the addition of several names to the memorial’s Cenotaph earlier this summer, with the names of John B. Orlando, Jaime Ortiz, Matteo A. Russo, Duane Charlie Rine and Peter K. Prybot all added to the last of the 10 brass plaques through the efforts of the Cenotaph Committee chaired by Gaspar “Gap” Lafata.
Russo and Orlando – captain and crew of The Patriot — were lost in 2009, as was Ortiz, while Rine was lost in 2010 and Prybot in 2011.
Read the full story in the Gloucester Times