Resting on a granite base in the center of Gloucester’s long, narrow Stacy Esplanade is the iconic The Gloucester Fishermen’s Memorial. It is an eight-foot tall, bronze statue of a fisherman dressed in oilskins standing braced at the wheel on the sloping deck of his ship. It is positioned so that the fisherman is looking out over Gloucester Harbor in tribute to the nearly 10,000 Gloucester fisherman lost to the sea. The English sculptor Leonard F. Craske (1882-1950) designed the sculpture, and it was cast by the Gorham Company of Providence, Rhode Island, in 1925.
A few yards away, stands the The Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Memorial (Copyright 2001, Morgan Faulds Pike). The twelve-foot tall, bronze sculpture shows a woman standing with two children and is dedicated to the fishermen’s families. Eight years of planning and two years of additional work by sculptor Morgan Faulds Pike led to the memorial’s completion in 2001.