In early February 1978, the Joseph & Lucia III had been fishing for about a week. Despite storm warnings, Capt. Gaetano “Tom” Brancaleone decided to continue fishing. His crew of seven included his brother and engineer, Antonio “The Chief” Brancaleone; first mate Frank D’Amico; cook Gil Roderick; fish hold man Gaspar Palazola; and deckhands Joe Charlie Brancaleone and Santo Aloi.
“My uncle decided to keep fishing because he had tremendous faith in his crew and the Joseph & Lucia,” said Antonio Brancaleone’s son Tom (the co-author of this piece, and not the captain). “And, it was a financial decision as well. Fewer boats bringing in fish meant higher profits.”
At the tail end of the blizzard, after days of worry — “we could just look out the window to see the wind whipping up snow drifts 7 or 8 feet high,” recalled Tom — the family finally received a call on the radio. The Joseph & Lucia III had made it!
But Tom now needed to get to the Boston Fish Pier to help lump (unload) the boat. Two feet of snow needed to be shoveled from the driveway just to get the car out, and driving to Boston over nearly impassable roads took more than 3.5 hours.
When Tom finally made it to the Pier, it was closed, the building had lost power, and a lone watchman was on duty. “Your father is out in this?” he exclaimed.
“It was still snowing when the boat came into view,” said Tom, “and I could not believe my eyes! The entire boat was white. She was covered in ice. I mean, everything, even the green hull, was white.”
The crew was exhausted. The return trip had been horrendous, having to stop every couple of hours on a churning ocean to break inches of ice off the equipment, lights, and the pilot house windows. Offshore, the gusts had reached over 120 mph — strong enough to break the wind gauge, which spun aimlessly.
“The crew looked like death; scraggly beards, sunken eyeballs … they couldn’t even open their mouths,” said Tom.
Tom and the crew slept aboard that night, and the guys got some rest and cleaned up. The next day, Feb. 8, they unloaded the catch and brought it to the auction. With power restored at the fish exchange, the buyers and lumpers in the smoky room waited eagerly. Only one boat in port! Everyone scrambled for the only fish to come into Boston that day.
In those days, the names of the boats and the amounts of fish were written on a large chalkboard. Tom remembers the auction unfolding:
“First to be bid on was haddock. The man with the chalk wrote 80,000 lbs. The gentlemen in the room gasped in amazement. Next scrod haddock: 40,000 lbs., and on it went. 35,000 lbs. more mixed fish! A bonanza! I will never forget the looks on people’s faces and the pride I felt that day. What a trip and what a feat of endurance by that crew!”
After the blizzard, the Brancaleone family boats enjoyed a long tenure as the “all-time modern-day Gloucester highliners.” But, Tom said, the crew of the Joseph & Lucia III “rarely talked about it. They neither bragged nor complained; it was their work.”