Captain Jack McDonald and Nantucket’s Fishing Fleet

In September 1944, a powerful Atlantic hurricane moved up the East Coast and into New England, catching a number of offshore fishing vessels on the banks.

One of those boats was the fishing vessel Gladys & Mary, which had just begun her maiden voyage when the storm hit offshore.

 

Among the men aboard was John “Captain Jack” McDonald, a fisherman who would later become skipper of the dragger Robert Joseph. During the storm McDonald was badly injured as the vessel battled heavy seas on the fishing grounds.

 

For offshore fishermen working Georges Bank and Nantucket Shoals in the mid-20th century, storms like that were part of the job. But the incident also points to a part of Nantucket’s history that is now largely forgotten — a time when island residents were still connected to the offshore fishing fleet that operated across southern New England.

 

A fisherman from the North Atlantic

McDonald was originally from Newfoundland, a region whose fishermen had long worked the North Atlantic fisheries.

 

Throughout the early and mid-1900s, many fishermen from Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada joined crews aboard vessels operating out of New England ports such as Gloucester and New Bedford. Some eventually settled in coastal communities throughout the region, including Nantucket.

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By the 1960s McDonald had established himself in the offshore fleet and was serving as skipper of the commercial fishing dragger Robert Joseph.

 

The dragger Robert Joseph

Draggers like the Robert Joseph were diesel-powered trawlers that towed large nets along the ocean floor to catch groundfish.

 

Typical trips involved:

• crews of four to eight fishermen

• multi-day voyages to offshore banks

• fishing grounds including Georges Bank and Nantucket Shoals

 

The primary catch included cod, haddock, and flounder, much of it landed in New Bedford, which was the center of the New England groundfish industry.

 

Although Nantucket itself was not a major landing port, fishermen connected to the island worked regularly within the regional fleet.

 

An unexpected Cold War souvenir

One report from the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror describes an unusual discovery by the crew of the Robert Joseph. While fishing offshore, McDonald and his crew recovered two Russian fishing buoys and brought them back to Nantucket.

 

At the time, large Soviet fishing fleets operated extensively in the North Atlantic, including waters around Georges Bank. American fishermen occasionally encountered foreign vessels or drifting gear while working the same fishing grounds.

 

For crews like McDonald’s, the Cold War was something they sometimes encountered at sea.

 

Passing the boat down

Like many fishing operations, the Robert Joseph eventually became a family enterprise.

 

During the 1960s, McDonald transferred ownership of the vessel to his son Mike McDonald and a partner from New Bedford, and Mike assumed the role of skipper. Generational handoffs like this were common in the fishing industry, where knowledge of the fishing grounds and the boats themselves were often passed from father to son.

 

A Nantucket connection today

Captain Jack McDonald’s story still connects to the island today through his descendants. Among them is Nantucket-born comedian Brian Glowacki, who is McDonald’s great-grandson.

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Only a few generations separate Glowacki’s Nantucket from the one his great-grandfather knew — an island where some residents still made their living offshore aboard fishing vessels working the banks.

 

A largely forgotten chapter

Nantucket’s history is usually told through the lens of the whaling era or the island’s modern tourism economy. But between those two periods was another chapter — one in which island residents were still tied to the North Atlantic fishing fleet.

 

Today, stories like that of Captain Jack McDonald and the dragger Robert Joseph survive mostly through scattered newspaper reports, family histories, and archival records.

 

They are reminders of a different Nantucket — one where some of the island’s working families still made their living at sea.

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- Marcello Bruni
Content Lead