gloucester sailboat crash

John Masiz of Gloucester ID’d as boater dead in Little Misery Island crash

• Published: May. 14, 2024, 4:52 p.m.
• Ryan Mancini | [email protected]

A Gloucester man was identified as the boater who died after a boat crash near Little Misery Island in Beverly on Sunday.

John Masiz, 65, was recovered from ocean waters off the North Shore, Essex County District Attorney Paul Tucker’s office confirmed to MassLive on Tuesday.

His death remains under investigation, Tucker’s office said. The cause of death remains pending on autopsy results.

The search for Masiz’ body started on Saturday when a boat was seen on the rocks near the island, according to 7News .

No foul play is believed to be involved in his death, Tucker’s office told WCVB-TV . The U.S. Coast Guard searched for Masiz by air and sea, providing aid to several local harbormasters, according to WCVB-TV.

MassLive reporter Charlie McKenna contributed to the reporting of this story.

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Man dead after boat crashes into rocks at little misery island off north shore, da says.

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The body of a 65-year-old man has been recovered from the ocean off the Massachusetts coast following a boat crash near Little Misery Island, according to authorities.

The Essex County District Attorney's Office said there is no foul play suspected in the man's death, which remains under investigation.

A representative of TowBoatUS, a marine towing and charter service, told NewsCenter 5 that at about 5 p.m. Saturday, the company received a call about a boat that had crashed into the rocks at Little Misery Island, which is in Salem Sound.

A U.S. Coast Guard representative told NewsCenter 5 that a 29-foot search vessel and a helicopter from Air Station Cape Cod responded to Salem Sound to help with the search and rescue mission near Little Misery Island.

Crews from multiple harbormasters' offices also took part in the search, according to the Coast Guard representative, who also confirmed TowBoatUS assisted with the search.

The district attorney's office did not share the man's name, as authorities were still working to confirm his next of kin have been notified of his death.

Related story:

Search underway after boat crashes against rocks on Little Misery Island off Salem

SALEM, MASS. (WHDH) - The US Coast Guard is supporting a search mission after a boat was found against the rocks at Little Misery Island off Salem on Saturday.

The search was launched after the boat was found on the rocks, according to Tow Boat US,

It’s unclear what caused the boat to crash against the rocks or if there was anyone aboard at the time.

No additional information was immediately available.

This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.

(Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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Wreck of Long-Lost Royal Battleship Discovered Off English Coast

Divers discovered the H.M.S. “Gloucester” in 2007, but authorities kept the news buried for 15 years as they waited to secure the site

Meilan Solly

Senior Associate Digital Editor, History

Three years before he ascended the throne in 1685, the future James II of England narrowly survived a shipwreck that claimed the lives of an estimated 130 to 250 people. Running afoul of a sandbank off the North Sea coast on May 6, 1682, the H.M.S. Gloucester sank on what was supposed to be a quick, celebratory jaunt to Edinburgh.

As Ben Macintyre writes for the London Times , the accident became “an instant political controversy,” with critics of James—then known as the Duke of York, heir to the English throne—pointing out that his refusal to board the Gloucester ’s sole lifeboat until the last possible moment cost people their lives. (Protocol dictated that seafarers could only abandon ship after royalty had disembarked.) To make matters worse, detractors soon accused James of placing the safety of his pet dogs ahead of that of the passengers and crew.

“This was a wreck that literally helped to change history,” cementing James’ unpopularity at a time of deep political and religious division, Claire Jowitt , a maritime history expert at the University of East Anglia (UEA), tells National Geographic ’s Roff Smith.

Almost 350 years after the maritime disaster, experts have finally pinpointed the exact location of the ill-fated ship. Per a statement from the university, brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell found the wreck off the coast of Norfolk County in 2007; authorities confirmed the vessel’s identity in 2012 after analyzing a ship’s bell recovered from the wreckage but kept its discovery under wraps until they were able to properly secure the site.

The owners of a Norfolk printing service , the Barnwells are licensed divers who searched for—and later explored—the Gloucester in their free time, conducting more than 200 dives to the wreck site over the past 15 years, reports Liz Coates for the Great Yarmouth Mercury .

“We were starting to believe that we were not going to find [the ship],” says Lincoln in the statement. “We’d dived so much and just found sand. On my descent to the seabed, the first thing I spotted were large cannon[s] laying on white sand. It was awe-inspiring and really beautiful.”

In the statement, Jowitt, who recently published a paper on the Gloucester in the English Historical Review , deems the find “the single most significant historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Mary Rose .” (A favorite warship of Henry VIII, the Mary Rose sank in 1545 at the Battle of Solent and was recovered to great fanfare in 1982.)

Speaking with the London Times ’ Jack Blackburn, Jowitt adds, “This time capsule under the sea is just incredible in what it might tell us.”

The Barnwell brothers and their collaborators at UEA and Norfolk Museums Service have recovered an array of artifacts from the wreckage, including clothing, shoes, wine bottles (some unopened ), navigational tools, ceramic vessels, naval equipment and personal possessions. As of now, the team doesn’t plan to raise the ship’s remains from the seabed, but a selection of artifacts and informational displays will go on view at the Norwich Castle Museum next year.

Built in 1652 , the Gloucester was involved in naval campaigns during the Anglo-Spanish War and the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars . According to the Gloucester Project portal, the ship was about to be sent on a naval mission but was reassigned at the request of England’s Protestant king, Charles II .

Because Charles’ children were all illegitimate, his younger brother, the Catholic James, was his sole heir. In 1679, after rumors of a Catholic plot against the crown sparked unrest and a concerted effort to exclude James from the line of succession, the king sent James and his wife Mary to Scotland. By 1682, tensions had eased enough for Charles to allow James’ return to England; the Gloucester was tasked with retrieving Mary, who was pregnant at the time, from Edinburgh ahead of her child’s birth.

The mood on the ship and its squadron of accompanying vessels was festive, with James and such upper-class companions as diarist Samuel Pepys ; John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough; and a host of Scottish nobles enjoying wine, gourmet cuisine and live music.

“The Gloucester was party central,” Sean Kingsley , a marine historian and the founder of Wreckwatch magazine , jokingly tells National Geographic . “The duke and his cronies were having a fine old time.”

Soon, however, an argument broke out among the ship’s crew, with pilot James Ayres calling for the Gloucester to stay close to the coast and shipmaster Benjamin Holmes advocating for the deep-sea route. James, as a former Lord High Admiral, settled the matter by picking a middle course.

“He’s clearly a man that believes in his own importance, his own beliefs and the rightness of what he’s saying,” says Jowitt in a separate UEA statement . “He thinks he knows best. But, importantly, when it goes wrong, it’s never his fault.”

The Gloucester struck parallel sandbanks at approximately 5:30 a.m. and sank within an hour. Between 130 and 250 of the 330 passengers and crew died. In the aftermath, James refused to accept any responsibility, instead blaming Ayres and calling for his immediate hanging. Though Ayres was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, he was released after serving just a year, perhaps as a tacit acknowledgement by Charles II that he’d been scapegoated.

The wayward duke took the throne in 1685. His reign proved unpopular, and he was deposed in favor of his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange, less than four years later, during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. While not the main impetus for James’ ousting, his handling of the Gloucester disaster certainly didn’t bolster his reputation.

“A tragedy of considerable proportions in terms of loss of life, both privileged and ordinary, the full story of the Gloucester ’s last voyage and the impact of its aftermath needs retelling, including its cultural and political importance, and legacy,” says Jowitt in the statement. “We will also try to establish who else died and tell their stories, as the identities of a fraction of the victims are currently known.”

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Meilan Solly | | READ MORE

Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's senior associate digital editor, history.

The Shipwreck of HMS ‘Gloucester’—Whose Sinking Nearly Killed James II—Has Been Found After More Than 300 Years

On the evening of May 5, 1682, the officers of a British fleet sailing from England to Scotland were having a heated argument. Their vessels were quickly approaching sandbanks off the coast of Norfolk, and nobody could agree on the best course forward. Master Benjamin Holmes, for one, favored a deep-sea path, while pilot James Ayres thought sidling between the banks and the coast would work just fine.

James Stuart, Duke of York, believed they should head between the deep-sea path and the banks themselves: a happy medium of caution and efficiency. In addition to being a duke, James was also High Admiral of Scotland and Ireland—and, as the brother of Britain’s sitting king, Charles II, the heir to the throne himself. In the end, the powerful James prevailed, and Ayres verified that the course should keep them out of harm’s way.

Alas, it did not.

Around 5:30 a.m. the following morning, the HMS Gloucester —on which James, Ayres, and Holmes all sailed—ran up against a sandbank off East Yarmouth. Measuring 117 feet in length and weighing 755 tons, the frigate was a full-rigged beast of a warship (not unlike Sweden’s ill-fated Vasa ) that proved much too unwieldy to break free from its sandy trap. 

Within an hour, the ship had sunk. And for the next 325 years, its whereabouts remained a mystery.

The Shipwreck of State

The Gloucester itself was far from the only casualty: Roughly 130 to 250 of some 330 total passengers and crew members perished in the wreck. James wasn’t among them; a rescue boat delivered him to the Mary , one of the fleet’s royal yachts. But he may have compounded the death count by refusing to accept that the frigate was doomed and procrastinating his evacuation until its final moments. Per custom, nobody else was permitted to leave before a member of the royal family , so he left them precious little time to save themselves.

The extent of James’s role in the shipwreck not only threatened his credibility as a naval commander, but also had the potential to derail his entire political future. At the time, it was common to view a nation as a metaphorical ship and its monarch as the ship’s commander—a trope known as the “ship of state.”

“The captainless, rudderless boat was an enduringly popular early modern [theme], used in various ways … to represent allegorically the problems of governance,” Claire Jowitt , professor of English and history at the University of East Anglia, explained in “ The Last Voyage of the Gloucester (1682): The Politics of a Royal Shipwreck ,” published this month in The English Historical Review . 

In other words, if you couldn’t keep a ship afloat, people might not trust you to keep a country afloat—and James had plenty of Parliamentary foes who would appreciate the chance to make that very argument about him. Britain had just emerged from what’s known as the Exclusion Crisis , when Protestant politicians attempted to pass legislation that would prevent James, a Roman Catholic convert, from succeeding his Protestant brother.

“A future monarch that can’t steer the ship of state offers an opportunity for [the Duke of York’s] political enemies to attack him, and it’s clear in particular that his supporters really seek very quickly to control how the event is told, presumably to neutralize the possibility of negative press,” Jowitt tells Mental Floss.

As Jowitt lays out in her paper, they accomplished this in part by producing artistic works—plays, ballads, etc.—that lionized the Duke. Tory poet Matthew Taubman composed a heartfelt ode likening him to Jonas, whom God had saved from a harrowing storm. (Taubman also claimed that the shipwreck was divine retribution for the Exclusion Crisis.) Royal medalist George Bowers celebrated James’s apparently valorous survival by designing a silver medal bearing the sinking Gloucester on one side and James’s regal silhouette on the other.

James fared well in the official investigation of the incident, too, mainly by pointing the finger at Ayres. The hapless pilot was sentenced to life in prison, though Charles II did release him after only a year. When Charles died in 1685, his brother took over as planned, becoming James II of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland. 

His reign was short-lived. In 1688, William of Orange—husband of James’s daughter, Mary— deposed James II by force. Within months, the couple were crowned William III and Mary II . According to Jowitt, it’s possible that William and Mary would have ended up on the throne a little earlier had James died when the Gloucester went down. As James’s oldest legitimate child, Mary had a tenable claim to the throne, maybe even better than that of Charles II’s oldest illegitimate son, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth. William himself was also a nephew of Charles II and James II, not to mention “arguably the most powerful prince in Europe at the time,” Jowitt explains. But the Duke of Monmouth had advantages of his own—namely, being Protestant, British, and male.

“I genuinely think this would have been a difficult choice for the nation, but if Charles II had decided to favor his son over his niece and nephew, then I think he had every chance of managing the situation to ensure he got what he wanted in those three years,” Jowitt says.

A 15-Year Secret, Revealed

While the sinking of the Gloucester narrowly avoided altering the course of British history, it’s a fascinating example of what the intersection of pop culture, propaganda, and politics looked like in late 17th-century Britain. And for the last few centuries, the story has ended with a tantalizing cliffhanger: Where exactly is the shipwreck? 

In June 2007, after searching for four years across 5000 nautical miles, brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, along with their late father and two other companions, finally found out. As The Guardian reports , the divers spotted a cannon that led them to the cleaved keel and mostly buried hull of the actual wreck. It would be another five years before the ship’s bell was unearthed , which officials used to confirm that the Barnwells’ discovery was indeed the Gloucester . Another decade passed—long enough for the site, which is in international waters, to be fully secured—before the news was made public.

But researchers haven’t passed the time idly. Clothes, shoes, spectacles, a jar of ointment, naval instruments, and a number of wine bottles have already been recovered from the wreck. When asked about the most exciting detail she’s learned thus far, Jowitt says, “That 17th-century air survives in the intact and full wine bottles that Julian and Lincoln Barnwell have rescued from the seabed. I have learnt a new word, ullage , which is the space for air between the wine and the cork in the bottle.”

As French wine was prohibited in England at the time (due to France’s association with Catholicism), the researchers are eager to find out if any jugs in the Gloucester ’s stash hailed from there. It was fairly common contraband, especially among Tories.

Right now, there aren’t any plans to exhume the shipwreck from its final resting place, but the Norwich Castle Museum is set to host an exhibition of artifacts from February 25 to July 25, 2023. Jowitt and her colleagues at the University of East Anglia have also launched The Gloucester Project , a site that will chronicle a “cradle-to-grave history” of the ship, explore its cultural significance, and more.

“I’m keen that we tell the stories of all the people onboard that day, rich and poor, and chart the impact the wreck had on the lives of all those touched by the tragedy. I’m also hopeful of telling in full, through the rich archaeology of this site, the material reality of how luxurious royal travel by sea was undertaken in the 17th century,” Jowitt says. “And, of course, I’d love to know exactly what they were all drinking.”

Crime & Public Safety | Two people and a dog were rescued after…

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Crime & Public Safety

Crime & public safety | two people and a dog were rescued after gloucester boat explosion.

A dog was also rescued following the boat explosion in Gloucester Harbor, the city’s police chief reported.

Gloucester firefighters just before 9 a.m. responded to reports of a boat on fire near the Blynman Bridge, with people in the water. Upon arrival, crews saw that a boat was engulfed in flames.

Rescuers were able to pull the two people from the water, and they were transported to area hospitals for what are believed to be non-life threatening injuries.

Gloucester Police Boat then began a direct attack on the flames. The Gloucester Harbormaster towed the vessel back to shore, where Gloucester Fire extinguished the fire.

The U.S. Coast Guard provided assistance in managing the waterway while these efforts were ongoing.

The Blynman Bridge was closed during the response. It has since reopened.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation by the Gloucester Fire Department.

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The sailboat, the skateboarder, and the shipwreck Gloucester was left to clean up

A daring middle-of-the-night rescue in gloucester harbor has left a mess of questions.

GLOUCESTER — It was just past 1:30 a.m. in the middle of a howling wet night on Cape Ann when two Gloucester police officers walked onto the rocky beach in Stage Fort Park.

A thousand feet to their right, in a minefield of giant boulders, a sailboat was smashed port-side against the rocks and getting pounded by the ocean.

The sailor had called 911 to say he was abandoning ship, according to police reports. But there was no sign of him on deck, and it took the officers a ton of slipping and falling on seaweed-covered rocks the size of refrigerators just to get close enough to yell.

Finally, a man emerged from the cabin, but the officers could only get within 20 yards of the boat and the wind made it impossible to hear each other. The gales and waves kept hammering the boat, and it listed further and rotated on the rocks with the man below deck, and appeared to be in danger of capsizing, according to police.

Eventually, the man launched a small life boat and gathered supplies to take with him. “The sailor kept going below deck,” Officer Clifford Alves wrote in his report. “It appeared he was looking for a life jacket, but he came out of the cabin with a skateboard and helmet.”

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He never did grab a life jacket, or an oar. When he finally jumped in the raft he was adrift as police failed to reach him with a throw rope. Eventually, the waves and the incoming tide carried him safely across the boulders to shore.

The officers helped him to an ambulance, and bits of his story began to emerge.

He told them he was a homeless man from Sweden named Christian Hayden, and he was sailing to Maine. He said he was sleeping aboard the boat when it broke free from its mooring and got blown into the rocks.

Other than that, he evaded questions, according to police. “It appeared,” Alves wrote, “that he really didn’t want us to know what actually happened.”

The only thing he seemed to care about was getting out of there and finding someplace to sleep, and he soon disappeared with his skateboard into the night. That was on Nov. 7.

“We’ll never see this guy again,” said T.J. Ciarametaro, the Gloucester harbormaster, who took over the mess of what to do with the boat, the Nomadic, which was continuing to get pounded as the wind blew for three days straight. “We figured out that was a fake name — the guy from Star Wars who plays Darth Vader, Hayden Christensen.”

As for what to do with the sailboat, Ciarametaro said “Vader” had left the city with the chore of getting it out. “If you asked me the worst possible place to have a boat go aground, he nailed it.”

No boats could get anywhere near it, and they needed a large ship to drag the Nomadic painfully over the rocks, its hull wincing with the sounds of a boat that will never sail again.

The boat was hauled out to be salvaged, and upon inspection, Ciarametaro said the cabin was filthy and the hull was covered in two inches of mussels. “Wherever he was going he wasn’t going fast,” he said. “I can’t believe he could sail this thing honestly.”

Authorities also found a New Hampshire driver’s license for Clinton Piper, of Plaistow, which they’ve determined to belong to the sailor. They’ve been unable to reach Piper, but his family told police he is homeless and this was the fourth sailboat he’d destroyed in a crash or by washing up on shore.

Ciarametaro said they’ve learned the boat, which was purchased in Maine two months previous, spent time in Salem harbor weeks ago, but they know nothing else about its journey.

To tow it and salvage cost the city close to $10,000, Ciarametaro said, “but if we’d left it out there it would have been in a million pieces all over the harbor for five years.”

A voicemail left at a number listed for Piper was unreturned. The Nomadic has been cut up and scrapped.

Billy Baker can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him on Instagram @billy_baker .

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Good Morning Gloucester

My View of Life on the Dock

Information regarding Blynman Bridge

Reblogged from Gloucester Police Facebook

The Blynman Bridge is currently closed due to damage from a boating accident. Emergency services are on scene and MASS DOT is enroute to assess the extent of the damage and make repairs. Please avoid the area for the time being.

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Published by Donna Ardizzoni

Ardizzoni Photography, Business Manager, Grandmother, love living in Gloucester, love to swim, kayak, walk and of course take pictures. Our company does computer networking, Office Management, Medical Billing, transcription, networking software updates and virus protection View all posts by Donna Ardizzoni

One thought on “ Information regarding Blynman Bridge ”

I HOPE NO ONE WAS HURT IN THE ACCIDENT ❗❗❗😬😬😬

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Washington Township Your Local News for Washington Township, New Jersey

Boat Driver Left Scene Of Crash That Injured Four People Near South Jersey Park, Troopers Say

Four people were hospitalized after a boat crashed near an Atlantic County park, officials said.

Four people were injured when a boat crashed near Estell Manor Park in Mays Landing, NJ, on July 29, 2024.

In a Facebook post , the Dorothy Volunteer Fire Company said it responded to a marine rescue near Estell Manor Park in Mays Landing at around 5:42 p.m. on Sunday, July 28. Four victims were taken to hospitals with their injuries.

A state police spokesperson said 37-year-old Daniel Bollinger of Egg Harbor City was driving an 18-foot boat in the South River. The boat went into a marsh area and hit several trees.

Bollinger left the crash scene before troopers arrived and he later turned himself in at the state police station in Buena Vista Township. He was charged with knowingly leaving the scene of an accident resulting in injury and assault by auto and provided a future court date.

Aerial photos showed a boat stuck in a swampy area and away from open water.

Estell Manor Park is about 1,700 acres and is the most popular park in the county's system, according to the county's website . The park has about 27 miles of hiking trails, a 1.8-mile swamp boardwalk, picnic spaces, campsites, and boating opportunities.

The property was once home to Bethlehem Loading Company, an ammunition plant that operated during World War I.

"The end of production was signified by the removal of all usable steel and iron, such as the railroad tracks and buildings, for use during World War II," the county's website said. "The concrete foundations and the rail beds are all that remain as a silent reminder of American patriotic response to a world crisis."

The crash happened about 10 days after a man died while saving two children from drowning at nearby Weymouth Furnace. Pablo Hernandez Cruz, 49, of Mays Landing, was pronounced dead at a hospital on Wednesday, July 17.

County park rangers and firefighters from Estell Manor and Richland helped at the scene of the boat crash. Paramedics from Hamilton and Buena Vista townships also responded.

State police said the investigation was ongoing.

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18-Year-Old Killed by Propeller in Horrific Boating Accident on Jersey Shore

A New Jersey 18-year-old tragically lost her life after colliding with a boat propeller while attempting to board the vessel from a raft. Zeina Mahafzah was hit in the waters near Sunset Park in Harvey Cedars Boro, Ocean County, at approximately 4:30 p.m. on Sunday.

The New Jersey State Police reported that Mahafzah was on a raft being towed by a boat. Tragically, while she was attempting to board the vessel, she was fatally struck by the propeller.

The exact number of people on board and the identity of the boat’s driver remain unclear. However, NBC Philadelphia reported that medics assessed other passengers who witnessed the tragic death of the teenager.

“As the investigation is in its preliminary stages, we ask that you keep the family and community in your thoughts and prayers,” Harvey Cedars Police Department said in a statement .

An Outpouring a Support Floods Social Media After a New Jersey Teen is Tragically Killed by a Propeller

An outpouring of support flooded social media for the New Jersey 18-year-old tragically killed by a propeller.

“This is the saddest tragedy ever. My prayers with the family and friends of this sweet teen,” one person wrote on X . “So sad sending prayers to the family and friends,” a second X user wrote. “OMG, what an awful tragedy, my prayers and condolences to the family and friends,” a third person wrote.

Meanwhile, other X users weighed in on the dangers of boating. “What a terrible tragedy for the family! I taught my children that when anybody is in the water near the boat-cut off the engine!!,” one X user wrote. “Nonnegotiable. And with some engines running so quietly these days, you almost need to skipper to confirm the engine is off before approaching,” a second user agreed.

Mahafzah recently graduated from Wayne Hills High School and is preparing to attend Rutgers University. In a college decision video for the Wayne Hills Class of 2024, she wore a red t-shirt. She shared that she would enter college as an undecided major.

Meanwhile, Wayne Township Superintendent Mark Toback told the press they had reached out to Mahafzah’s family.

“We have been in contact with the family and are respecting their wishes, so we have no comment at this time,” Toback told  NJ.com .

Sunset Park, situated on the bay side of Harvey Cedars, graces the northern section of Long Beach Island.

18-year-old fatally struck by boat propeller in New Jersey, police say

Authorities in New Jersey are investigating a "tragic boating accident" that left a teenage girl dead.

Zeina Mahafzah, an 18-year-old, from Wayne, New Jersey, was attempting to board a boat from a raft being pulled by the boat in the waters off Sunset Park in Harvey Cedars, about an hour from Atlantic City, around 4:30 p.m. Sunday when she was struck by the vessel's propeller and fatally injured, New Jersey State Police said Monday.

Police said the incident was under investigation and no further information on the incident was immediately available.

While authorities did not share further details, NBC10 Philadelphia reported the boat was being driven by her father and multiple others were traumatized in the accident and were later evaluated by EMS.

Thoughts and prayers for family

Harvey Cedars Police Department, in post on X Sunday evening, said the department was investigating a "tragic boat accident off of Harvey Cedars in Long Beach Island" on Jersey Shore with the New Jersey State Police.

"As the investigation is in its preliminary stages, we ask that you keep the family and community in your thoughts and prayers," department had said in its post.

Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] and follow her on X and Instagram @saman_shafiq7.

Watch CBS News

Two people hurt, sailboat sunk after Hingham boat crash

By Tammy Mutasa

August 16, 2024 / 11:19 PM EDT / CBS Boston

HINGHAM - Two people were seriously hurt and rushed to hospitals, after a dramatic boat crash in Hingham Bay, Hingham, first responders said.

Sailboat sunk in crash  

A sailboat sank into the water after, investigators said, a speedboat crashed into it, leaving two people hurt.

The crash rocked lifelong boaters like Bill Norton, who could see the mast of the sailboat ominously sticking up from his house across the bay.

"I was hoping nobody got hurt. You can replace a boat, but the people getting hurt - that's a different story," said Norton. "Sailboat has the right of way over a powerboat, every time."

'Not a common occurrence'

Water Taxi Captain Ray Suarez saw the aftermath as he went back and forth shuttling passengers all day. He's been on the water most of his life and said  the site was unusual.

"We saw the mast just sticking out of the water. There was a lot of state police and salvage boats trying to figure out what to do with it," said Captain Suarez. "Sailboats generally go very slow, and powerboats generally go very fast. So, somebody obviously wasn't paying attention because they hit the boat so hard that they sank it, and that's not a common occurrence."

Hingham and Weymouth first responders, and Massachusetts Environmental Police rushed to the rescue after the boat crash. First responders say a towboat will work to recover the submerged sailboat because it's a danger to other boats navigating the bay.

"Make sure you have life preservers for everyone on board, you go at a safe pace, so you stay safe and you keep the people around you safe as well," said Captain Suarez.

The Massachusetts Environmental Police are investigating the incident.

• Hingham News

Tammy Mutasa joined WBZ-TV as a multi-skilled journalist in January 2023. She previously worked for KOMO News in Seattle for five years.

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Teen killed by propeller in horrific boating accident on jersey shore.

A New Jersey teen was killed in a horrific accident on the Jersey Shore this weekend when she was struck by a propeller while trying to get on a boat, police said.

Zeina Mahafzah, 18, was killed around 4:30 p.m. Sunday while trying to get from a raft into the boat that was pulling it in Sunset Park on Long Beach Island, New Jersey State Police said in a statement.

The teen from Wayne “sustained fatal injuries” from the propeller, cops said, without elaborating.

Sources initially told NBC 10 Philadelphia that the teen was dismembered while her dad drove the boat. However, the outlet did not include those details in updated reporting and police would not confirm who witnessed the horror.

First responders reported that other people on the boat witnessed the teen’s death, the outlet reported.

A police investigation is ongoing.

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‘Tragic’ boating accident under investigation at Jersey Shore

• Updated: Aug. 26, 2024, 7:56 a.m.
• | Published: Aug. 25, 2024, 8:00 p.m.
• Kevin Shea | For NJ.com

Police in Harvey Cedars said Sunday they are investigating a “tragic boating accident” in the waters off the Long Beach Island town.

The 6 p.m. statement on Facebook did not elaborate on the incident, but said the New Jersey State Police are investigating with local police.

Authorities could not immediately be reached for more information.

Stories by Kevin Shea

• 18-year-old passenger dies from injuries suffered in car crash, police say
• N.J. weather: Storms flood several towns, close roads and strand drivers
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18-year-old killed after being struck by boat propeller in Harvey Cedars NJ accident

HARVEY CEDARS - An 18-year-old was killed Sunday afternoon after being struck by a boat's propeller, according to authorities.

Police said that Zeina Mahafzah of Wayne was on a raft being pulled by a boat. While the 18-year-old was attempting to board the vessel, she was struck by the boat’s propeller and sustained fatal injuries, police said.

Harvey Cedars police have said the death was due to a “tragic boating accident.”

The accident occurred at 4:30 p.m. Sunday in the water off Sunset Park in Harvey Cedars Boro, according to State Police, who are heading the investigation.

Fatal accident: ‘Tragic boating accident’ off Long Beach Island claims teen girl

The incident remains under investigation, and no additional information is available at this time, according to state police.

Jenna Calderón covers breaking news and cold cases in Monmouth and Ocean counties. Before coming to the Press, she covered The Queen City for Cincinnati Magazine in Ohio. Contact her at 330-590-3903; [email protected]

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: 18-year-old killed after being hit by boat propeller in Harvey Cedars

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