November 22, 2012 — Frottier, a lifelong fisherman known across Provincetown, is presumed dead after his vessel, the Twin Lights, capsized Sunday, 2.5 miles off the coast of Race Point. His body has not been recovered.
Frottier’s friends and fellow fishermen, many of whom have spent much of their lives at MacMillan Pier by his side, said they are devastated by the loss of a man who served as an emblem for so much of what is special about their lifestyle.
“If anybody could have gotten out of that boat,” said Vaughn Cabral, captain of the Cee-Jay fishing boat, “it would have been Jean Frottier.”
Coast Guard officials said they are still investigating the circumstances that led to the capsizing of Frottier’s craft. At the dock where his 42-foot scalloping boat was once moored, friends said they all knew the general timeline: On a clear Sunday morning, just off the northwest tip of Provincetown, Frottier’s scallop dredge got caught in a line of lobster traps. The weight of the stuck dredge tugged at the boat, causing it to capsize.
When a nearby fishing vessel raced to the scene, Frottier’s mate, the only other person on the vessel, was clinging to the boat’s hull. As the boat began to submerge, Frottier was nowhere to be seen.
Chief John Harker, the US Coast Guard officer in charge of the Provincetown station, said that in the dozen hours after the accident, Coast Guard and Massachusetts State Police rescue teams searched for miles around the spot of the capsizing without finding Frottier. Harker said officials are nearly certain the captain was trapped inside.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe