Table of Contents
Get our free local reporting delivered straight to your inbox. No noise, no spam — just clear, independent coverage of Marblehead. Sign up for our once-a-week newsletter.
The boat was not in the water. It sat atop Grays Rock, driven completely out of Marblehead Harbor, and when firefighters reached it just before midnight Thursday, some of the six adults who had been aboard were no longer on it.
All six were taken to area hospitals. Two suffered serious injuries, two suffered what are believed to be minor injuries and two were treated and have since been released, the town said Friday.
The call came in just after 11 p.m. Aug. 6. The Marblehead, Salem and Beverly harbormasters were sent to Grays Rock for a report of a boat that had crashed onto the rocks. The Marblehead Fire Department was dispatched to State Street Landing for a report of a boating accident with multiple injured occupants, and Marblehead police responded to the landing to assist.
By the time firefighters reached the landing, the three harbormasters were already working, and two occupants had been pulled from the water and brought to the dock. Beauport Ambulance crews took over their care there.
Firefighters then boarded a Marblehead Harbormaster vessel and ran out to the wreck to assist with the rescue of the remaining occupants. Grays Rock is a coastal ledge and marked navigational hazard that rises about 10 feet above sea level, about 1.3 miles northeast of State Street Landing and just northwest of Children's Island.
At the rock, Marblehead firefighters and the Salem harbormaster went into the water to reach injured people who had been thrown clear of the boat and were stranded outside it. Firefighters, assisted by the Salem harbormaster, secured them, moved them onto the Marblehead Harbormaster boat and began emergency medical treatment on the ride back to State Street Landing, where Beauport Ambulance was waiting.
The Beverly harbormaster secured another person and brought them to the landing. The Salem harbormaster then brought in two more occupants, both with what are believed to be minor injuries, after confirming that everyone involved in the crash had been accounted for. The town's account does not say how many people firefighters reached on the ledge.
Marblehead police officers helped Beauport crews secure patients and carry them up from the dock to the ambulances.
A preliminary investigation determined that six people, all adults, were on board at the time of the crash. That figure is one more than the Fire Department reported in its initial account late Thursday, which put the number of patients at five; the town's Friday statement, issued jointly by the Police and Fire departments and the harbormaster, accounts for six people transported.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation by the Marblehead and Salem police departments, the Massachusetts Environmental Police and the Salem harbormaster. The Environmental Police is the state agency that investigates recreational boating crashes in Massachusetts waters.
No names have been released. Officials have not described the boat, said where it was headed or identified who was operating it, and have not said what conditions were like on the water at the time. The extent of damage to the vessel and whether it has been removed from the ledge were also not released. As of Friday, the Police Department had released nothing beyond the joint written statement.
The Marblehead Police Department, Marblehead Fire Department and Marblehead Harbormaster credited their mutual aid partners with the speed of the rescue. In its initial statement, the Fire Department also credited the U.S. Coast Guard, Beauport Ambulance Service Inc. and the town's fire and police 911 dispatchers.
