Charles F. Bucko And The "Can Do"

The gravestone of Charles F. Bucko gives only a few hints of the remarkable life he lived in his 29 years. Located in a corner of , it includes an inscription reading “Blizzard of 1978” along with the image of the Gloucester Fisherman’s Memorial and that monument’s motto: “They that go down to the sea in ships.”

There is also a marker noting that Bucko was a military veteran. When I visited the site on Friday, the local VFW post had recently placed a fresh American flag there as part of their annual Memorial Day tribute. Someone had offered a token of respect, placing a small stone atop the grave.

I recently found out about Bucko through Michael Tougias’ book Ten Hours Until Dawn. Tougias tells the story of an incident that happened off the coast of Gloucester and Salem, Massachusetts, during the 1978 storm. This was a horrific congruence of hurricane force winds and snowfall, and in the midst of the tempest the tanker Global Hope reported that it was in distress in Salem Sound. A 44-foot Coast Guard vessel went to respond, but the young crew was soon fighting for their own survival against the towering waves.

It was at this point that the Gloucester pilot boat Can Do, skippered by Frank Quirk, went into the storm in an attempt to render assistance. Quirk was well-known in the community, had helped the Coast Guard on several occasions, and had been honored before for assistance in rescues. He had been monitoring the situation by radio, and four other men who were visiting him on the boat became an impromptu crew: Norman Curley, Kenny Fuller, Donald Wilkinson, and Bucko.

Bucko was a 1966 graduate of , the son of a postal worker in the city. He joined the Marines and served in the Vietnam War, coming home with two Purple Hearts. Bucko also spent four years with the Coast Guard and received a commendation for taking part in the rescue of crewmen from the Chester Poling, a ship that split in half in rough seas off Gloucester. Quirk was also honored for aiding in this mission.

When Bucko left the Coast Guard, he began working as a carpenter at a small shipyard in Gloucester. He was engaged to be married at the time of the blizzard.

Perhaps the most tragic part of the Can Do story, according to Tougias’ account, is that the Global Hope was in no serious danger. The tanker was hard aground, and Coast Guard officials were later incensed to learn that the panicked captain reported flooding in the engine room and a need for assistance when the vessel was perfectly capable of riding out the storm. The Coast Guard patrol boat that the Can Do was seeking to help spent a harrowing period at sea before it managed to safely dock in Beverly.

The pilot boat was not so fortunate. The crew managed to keep contact with the Coast Guard and an amateur radio operator for several hours. They reported that the waves had knocked out the windshield and injured Quirk, that the crew was fighting off hypothermia in the frigid conditions, and that they were making an attempt to ride out the storm or find their way into a port.

Then the Can Do went silent. Pieces of the boat and four bodies were discovered on the shore soon after the blizzard abated. A week and a half later, searchers found the wreck of the boat and Bucko’s body inside.

When I first read Tougias’ account of the events, I had to wonder whether the decision to head out to sea was imprudent. The patrol boat, only slightly smaller than the Can Do, was already reporting terrible conditions. The crew perhaps felt erroneously that the seas would only be as bad as the storm in which all but one of the Chester Poling crew was saved.

Yet Quirk and Bucko were experienced sailors, and Bucko and any of the other four men could have opted to disembark before the Can Do left the safety of the harbor. They were not seeking fame or glory. Their only thought, it seemed, was that they could hear people in distress and they would not sit idly by.

Bucko’s father may have said it best.

“Hindsight is easy,” he told a reporter, “but there’s a kind of person—and there’s very few of them around—that when everybody else is backing away, they’re going forward.”

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