MARSHFIELD, MASS. (WHDH) - Harbormasters from Marshfield and Scituate shoved a runaway boat to shore, saving the day for more than a hundred boaters and swimmers nearby.
Terry Haskins was enjoying the day on the beach nearby when he saw a harbormaster boat racing to respond to the small boat circling in the waters of the North River. The only person who was in it fell overboard without a life vest.
“When I saw that going, I was like, that’s a scary, scary situation,” Haskins said. “You have kids in the water. You have people in the water. You have people on paddle boards. It’s, uh, you just don’t want to keep that going.”
“It could have been an incident where it was just a simple mistake,” Marshfield Harbormaster Michael Dimeo said. “Maybe he turned, the boat turned. Maybe he slipped. That’s what we don’t know.”
Once Dimeo and a civilian boat rescued the 58-year-old man from the water, attention turned to the unmanned boat, spinning out of control, endangering dozens of people nearby.
“Had that boat changed course and went into a crowd of people, it could have hit a little kid in the water,” Dimeo said. “It could have hit a swimmer. It could have smashed into another boat. It could have been anything.”
A Scituate harbormaster boat joined the crew from Marshfield to throw a line into the small boat’s prop, slowing it down. Then the two crews used their boats to shove the small boat away from anyone who could get hurt.
“They drove that thing right into the bogs, which was interesting,” Haskins said. “And you could see the boat was still moving. Still a very dangerous situation, and then, uh, one of the officers pulled the kill switch, which looks like this, and uh, the motor stopped, and everybody clapped. I beeped my horn, and of course, we gave a big round of applause.”
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