One still missing after Salisbury boat wreck
SALISBURY - On Wednesday evening, four men left Hampton Harbor in New Hampshire in a cuddy cabin motorboat, but after the vessel wrecked on the north jetty at the mouth of the Merrimack River, only three were found alive.
A Coast Guard search for the captain, Seth Coellner, 36, of Kensington, N.H., continued at the mouth of the river near Salisbury Beach last night.
Salisbury police Chief David Lesperance said the missing man was an experienced boater and a Coast Guard veteran.
Two men the Coast Guard rescued, Russell Hilliard, 50, of Hampton Falls, N.H., and Jacob Clark, 30, of Hampton, N.H., refused medical treatment. A third, Mark Baillargeon, 51, of Newmarket, N.H., was stranded on the jetty’s sharp rocks for two hours before the Coast Guard airlifted him out. He was treated for a back injury at Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport and released.
Lesperance said police received a 911 call at about 10 p.m., apparently from the captain’s cellphone.
The caller said the boat was being navigated on instruments because of thick fog.
“The boat is completely demolished,’’ said Lesperance. “Debris keeps coming back as the tide comes back in.’’
The wreck is under investigation by Salisbury police, the Coast Guard, and State Police assigned to the Essex district attorney’s office.
Police believe the boat was on a fishing trip and would not say whether alcohol was involved in the wreck.
Yesterday, a Globe reporter was asked to leave the premises at Hilliard’s home, and a woman at Baillargeon’s home declined to comment. No one answered at Clark’s residence.
Leo Vansteenburg, who was manning the entrance to Hampton Harbor yesterday, said he did not know much about the wreck.
Vansteenburg said there would have been no one manning the harbor when the boat left at about 8:30 p.m., but boats with commercial licenses can come and go as they please.
He said the fog was so bad in Hampton Wednesday evening that his supervisor told him not to bother coming to work.
According to the Coast Guard, the 37-foot vessel was recreational and did not have a commercial license; Coellner, however, did.
Globe correspondent John M. Guilfoil contributed to this report. 