Photo by Bill Lee
The Blue Skies, a 1954 wooden fishing boat belonging to Monte Rome, owner and chairman of the Gloucester-based Intershell International Corporation, goes down Friday in a controlled sinking off the coast of Rockport. The photo was taken by marine surveyor Bill Lee, captain of the Ocean Reporter and leader of the scuttling operation. After obtaining the required government permit and Coast Guard inspections, Lee and his crew towed the stripped-down boat, which in recent years had been used as a scalloping vessel, to a specific place 18 miles out. There, under fittingly blue skies, the plug was pulled and the old boat sank more than 300 feet to its resting place on the bottom of the ocean.

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