Two fishermen returning to Edgartown harbor early Saturday night in dark, rainy weather in a 22-foot Jones Brothers center console boat went off course, plowed across a dock in front of the Chappaquiddick Beach club and ran up on the beach. The impact sent both men flying onto the sand.
Edgartown Police chief Tony Bettencourt said that miraculously, the men suffered only minor injuries. Police charged the operator of the boat, Harley L. Stowell, 51, of Manchester with operating under the influence of alcohol and negligent operation of a motor vessel. He was arraigned Monday morning in Edgartown District court.
The outcome of the accident might have been far different but for an unusually high tide that placed the dock nearly under water. As a result, the fishing boat skimmed up over the dock and its planks.
Two police officers working a paid detail in the police/fire boat in connection with a private fireworks display off Edgartown Lighthouse for a wedding responded to the scene of the collision after the crash.
Chief Bettencourt said that just before 8 pm, Saturday, members of the fireworks crew on the barge heard a loud roar. “They thought it was an airplane that went overhead,” Chief Bettencourt told The Times. Weather conditions were dismal and visibility was very low.
Immediately after hearing the sound, one of the men on the barge called the officers on the police boat radio, according to the police report, and told the officer that a boat traveling at a speed he estimated to be nearly 40 miles per hour nearly hit the barge “and I think it just flipped over somewhere.”
The police boat is equipped with a thermal imaging camera that can peer through the night darkness. “They had the camera on at the time,” Chief Bettencourt said, “and they scanned the beach and they saw the boat with two people up on the beach near the beach club and headed over.”
They found the boat up on the beach and the two men standing on the beach “with sand all over their bodies and faces.” Edgartown harbormaster Charlie Blair, who was on scene in connection with the fireworks display and had also received the call about the speeding boat, also responded, as did medical personnel. The men were taken to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital where they were treated for minor injuries.
Chief Bettencourt said the boat operator told the officers he was returning from “the north shore of the Vineyard,” according to the police report. “He knew it was late and he thinks his GPS must have malfunctioned because they were properly following the route.”