February 3, 2026 — This city of hardy fishermen knows grief all too well. Inscribed on the seawall along the harbor are the names of thousands who set out from the country’s oldest fishing port over the centuries and never returned. On Friday, seven more were lost in the frigid waters of the Atlantic.
Since then, the people of Gloucester have been coming to their Fisherman’s Memorial — a bronze statue of a skipper clutching the wheel of his boat as he faces the open ocean — to leave flowers and mourn these fresh losses. The scene is a somber reminder of how dangerous commercial fishing can be.
“It’s just really hard — really hard for everybody,” said Brek Beard, who stopped by the memorial Monday as the sun was setting. He was a longtime friend of the captain of the Lily Jean, Accursio “Gus” Sanfilippo, a seasoned and respected skipper from Gloucester.
“He was a good man. I remember him when he was just a kid,” said Beard, recalling Sanfilippo not only as an experienced captain but also as a good carpenter and a “hard worker.”
The U.S. Coast Guard has launched a formal investigation into the sinking of the 72-foot fishing vessel, which went down this past Friday, 25 miles off the coast of Cape Ann. All seven crew members were lost and are presumed dead; one body was recovered — Sanfilippo’s.