Nancy Bloom’s photo of towboats and divers working on Angela & Mary III after it capsized off Race Point. [25 May 2022, The Provincetown Independent]
Updated on 5 September 2026 | At 10:10 a.m. on Tuesday, 17 May 2022, F/V Angela & Mary III (657490) sent out the most chilling message that can come from the fishery: “Mayday! Mayday! This is Angela Mary! Two miles north of Race Point! Mayday! Mayday!”
The 24-ton, 40-foot-long lobster boat was taking on water, fast, with four souls aboard: Capt. Glenn Rorro, 56; and Chris Gibson, Giacomo Luke, and Braden Wilson, all in their 20s and 30s. It was an especially harrowing scene. Captain Rorro tumbled into the hold, needing Gibson’s help to get out. The life raft hadn’t been properly secured and was floating away from the boat until Luke swam after it for 75 yards in 49-degree water, without a survival suit. “If Giacomo hadn’t done that,” Captain Rorro told The Provincetown Independent, “we would have died.”
The mayday call reached the Harbormaster, the Coast Guard at Station Provincetown, and — at Flyer’s Boat Rental — Noah Santos and Malcolm Hunter, who hurried to MacMillan Wharf. Each boarded a TowBoatU.S. vessel and headed to the scene at 35 to 40 knots. Angela & Mary was nowhere to be found. Overhead, though, a Coast Guard plane spotted the orange life raft and guided Santos and Hunter to the right location. Hunter took the four crewmen aboard his boat. Santos stayed behind to size up the capsized Angela & Mary before towing it back to town. The vessel, built in 1983 at Webber’s Cove Boatyards in Blue Hill, Me., proved to be salvageable.
At MacMillan Wharf, the crewmen were examined by paramedics for signs of injury or hypothermia, and allowed to go. “We were all really relieved to find live souls in good health,” Hunter told The Independent. “When you get a call like that on the radio, you fear the worst. When your boat is going down fast, survival time is going to be very limited. They were very fortunate that they had a life raft they were able to get into.”
Captain Rorro expressed gratitude for more than the safety equipment alone. “If it wasn’t for the three young guys,” he said about the crew members, “I wouldn’t have made it home.”1
1 “Fishing Vessel Capsized off Race Point; Four Crew Members Rescued,” The Provincetown Independent, May 2022; “A Boat Capsized Carrying 4 Men off Race Point,” by Mary Ann Bragg, Provincetown Banner, 26 May 2022, Page A1; “Four People Rescued After Boat Sinks off Race Point,” CapeCod.com, 17 May 2022; BoatInfoWorld.com.