Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey and State Sen. Bruce Tarr sent a letter to the Secretary of the Navy this week asking for help pulling a video recorder and hard drive from the wreck of the Lily Jean, a 72-foot commercial fishing vessel that sank January 30 about 25 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, killing all seven people aboard.
The request came after Healey's office said the National Transportation Safety Board declined to lead the retrieval effort, leaving grieving families without answers about what caused the vessel to go down and without hope of recovering their loved ones' remains from more than 300 feet beneath the Atlantic.
Only the body of Captain Accursio "Gus" Sanfilippo has been recovered. Six crew members, Paul Beal Jr., John Rousanidis, Freeman Short, Sean Therrien, NOAA fisheries observer Jada Samitt, and one other individual not publicly named, remain on the ocean floor. The cause of the sinking is still unknown.
Healey's office confirmed the request to Fox News Digital on Saturday. A spokesperson framed it plainly: the governor wants the Navy to retrieve onboard equipment that could explain the disaster, and she wants an assessment of whether the crew's remains can be brought home.
"Governor Healey is requesting the Navy retrieve a piece of equipment on board that could provide critical information into what caused the ship to sink."
Her office added that she had also asked the Navy to "assess the feasibility of recovering the remains of lost crew members, in keeping with the wishes of each family."
That language, "in keeping with the wishes of each family", matters. These are not abstract policy goals. These are families who buried one empty casket after another, and who still don't know why their sons, brothers, and loved ones never came home.
What makes the request notable is the path Healey took to get here. Her office said she had previously asked both the NTSB and the U.S. Coast Guard to investigate the equipment aboard the wreck. The NTSB, her office stated, "informed us that they do not intend to lead an effort to retrieve it." Boston's WFXT reported that the NTSB said it simply does not do recoveries.
So the governor turned to the Navy. The Office of the Secretary of the Navy confirmed it received the correspondence and said a response was being prepared. No timeline was given.
Coast Guard watchstanders received an emergency position indicating radio beacon, known as an EPIRB, alert registered to the Lily Jean at about 6:50 a.m. on January 30. Crews tried to contact the vessel. They got no response. The Coast Guard then issued an urgent marine information broadcast.
What followed was a massive search. Multiple aircraft, cutters, and small boats covered 1,047 square miles over 24 hours. Searchers found debris, an unoccupied life raft that had been deployed, and the captain's body. No one else was found alive or dead.
By January 31, search and rescue mission coordinators, on-scene commanders, and the Coast Guard determined that all reasonable search efforts had been exhausted. The search was suspended. A placard honoring the crew of the Lily Jean was placed at the Gloucester Fisherman's Memorial in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
The Coast Guard and NTSB both have ongoing investigations into the sinking. But the Coast Guard itself has drawn a careful line around its role, stating that "the purpose of a Coast Guard investigation is to identify measures that can improve the safety of life and property at sea, not to assign civil or criminal blame."
That distinction may be procedurally sound. It is cold comfort to the families left waiting.
Donna Short, the mother of 31-year-old crew member Freeman Short, spoke to WFXT about what the retrieval would mean. Her son had been planning a wedding. She recalled speaking to him a few days before he shipped out.
"He told me, 'Hey mom, you know I'm going to be going,' and I told him I loved him."
For Donna Short, the cause of the sinking matters less right now than getting her son back. She told the station it was a "matter of laying him to rest where his legacy began next to both of his grandfathers, who are veterans."
When asked about priorities, she was direct. "What caused it is not as important as retrieving the crew," she said. That sentiment, bring them home first, then figure out what went wrong, speaks to something deeper than any federal investigation can measure.
It also exposes the gap between what federal agencies are designed to do and what ordinary Americans expect them to do. The NTSB investigates. The Coast Guard searches. Neither, apparently, retrieves. And so a governor has to write a letter to the Navy, hat in hand, asking for help that should have been available from the start.
The pattern here is familiar to anyone who has watched Democratic governors navigate crises in recent years. When the federal apparatus doesn't move, state leaders scramble. Sometimes the scramble works. Sometimes it doesn't.
In this case, Healey's ask is reasonable on its face. The wreck sits more than 300 feet down. The equipment aboard, a video recorder and a hard drive, could hold the key to understanding what sank a 72-foot vessel so quickly that no one aboard had time to call for help. Only the EPIRB's automated signal alerted anyone that something had gone wrong.
The Navy has the deep-water capability that civilian agencies lack. Whether it will commit those resources to a commercial fishing vessel investigation remains an open question. The Secretary of the Navy's office gave a boilerplate acknowledgment and nothing more.
There is a broader question worth asking: why does a governor have to lobby the military to retrieve evidence from a maritime disaster that killed seven Americans? The NTSB has an ongoing investigation but won't lead the retrieval of the very equipment that could answer the central question. The Coast Guard is investigating but has defined its own mandate narrowly. The families are left in limbo.
This is the kind of bureaucratic gap that erodes public trust in institutions. Each agency has a defensible reason for staying in its lane. But the net result is that no one is in charge of bringing the crew home or pulling the black-box equivalent off the ocean floor.
It is worth noting that Democrats have recently acknowledged their own leadership failures in other contexts. Whether Healey's outreach to the Navy reflects genuine initiative or a belated recognition that her own channels failed is a question her constituents will have to weigh.
Gloucester knows loss at sea better than almost any community in America. The city's Fisherman's Memorial stands as permanent testimony to generations of men who left port and never returned. The Lily Jean's crew now joins that long and painful list.
Seven people went out on a winter morning to do one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. Within hours, the boat was gone. The ocean gave back one body and kept the rest.
The families deserve more than a placard. They deserve answers. And they deserve the chance to bury their dead. The fact that it took a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, after the NTSB said no and the Coast Guard defined its role narrowly, tells you everything about how well the federal safety net works for working people who fish for a living.
In a political environment where Democratic leaders are struggling to demonstrate competence on multiple fronts, Healey's Navy request is at least an attempt to act. Credit where it's due. But the fact that she had to go this far reveals a system that treats seven dead fishermen as a jurisdictional puzzle rather than a national obligation.
The wreck of the Lily Jean sits in the dark, 300 feet down, holding evidence and holding the dead. Somewhere in Washington, a response is being prepared.
The families of Gloucester are still waiting. They have been waiting since January. In a country that can project military power to the far side of the globe, the least we can do is bring seven Americans home from 25 miles offshore.
When the government can't manage even that without a formal plea from a governor, the problem isn't capability. It's priorities.
