In July 2024, the Elite Navigator fishing boat and its crew seemed to vanish one night after several days at sea fishing for turbot. The craft was reported missing after transmitting its final signal at around 8:30 p.m. the night before, according to the Canadian Coast Guard. The vessel had caught fire, forcing the crew to abandon the ship and wait for rescue on the life raft.
In New-Wes-Valley, which is an amalgamation of three small fishing communities along Newfoundland’s northeast coast, people braced for the worst. But on July 19, Friday night, out on the ocean, searchers saw a light from a flare. It brought them to a life raft, where the seven fishermen—who people now call the Lucky Seven—were waiting.
The men had spent about fifty hours adrift in the raft about 220 kilometres away from land, said Eugene Carter, the crew’s captain. The fire broke out on Wednesday night in a locker on the main deck when they were just a couple of hours into a twenty-five-hour journey home, he said.
“We tried to extinguish the fire once, and then it just shot right back at us,” Carter said in an interview. “It’s like wood burning. We heard the cracking. So we knew that it was pretty serious and that it was out of our control.”
He put out three distress calls, he said, but they weren’t answered. “The fire probably melted the devices.”
The crew passed the time in the life-raft telling jokes and passing their flashlight around as if it were a microphone to interview one another.
As Friday wore on, a few of the fishermen seemed to be losing hope they’d ever be found. But Carter said he had a feeling. He had two flares left, and he knew he had to wait out the fog before he used either one. That night, when the sky finally cleared, he set off a smoke flare.
Nothing happened for a few hours, he said, but then a helicopter appeared and flew over the raft. Carter said he scrambled to light his hand-held flare in time to wave it at the helicopter.
“They didn’t see it, and that was my last flare,” he said. “But a Coast Guard ship was actually looking out and saw it. And that’s what got us rescued, my last flare.”
For the first time, award-winning author Gary Collins, who lives near New-Wes-Valley, tells the dramatic story of the Lucky Seven’s rescue, which made national headlines.

Gary Collins was born in a small, two-storey house by the sea in the town of Hare Bay, Bonavista North. He finished school at Brown Memorial High in the same town. He spent forty years in the logging and sawmilling business with his father, Theophilus, and son Clint. Gary was once Newfoundland’s youngest fisheries guardian. He managed log drives down spring rivers for years, spent seven seasons driving tractor-trailers over ice roads and the Beaufort Sea of Canada’s Western Arctic, and has been involved in the crab, lobster, and cod commercial fisheries.His writing career began when he was asked to write eulogies for deceased friends and family. He spent a full summer employed as a prospector before he wrote Soulis Joe’s Lost Mine; he liked the work so much, he went back to school to earn his prospecting certificate. A critically acclaimed author, he has written a total of eight books, including Cabot Island, The Last Farewell, Soulis Joe’s Lost Mine, Where Eagles Lie Fallen, Mattie Mitchell: Newfoundland’s Greatest Frontiersman, A Day on the Ridge, and the children’s illustrated book What Colour is the Ocean?, which he co-wrote with his granddaughter, Maggie Rose Parsons. The latter won an Atlantic Book Award: The Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Excellence in Illustration.Gary Collins is Newfoundland and Labrador’s favourite storyteller, and today he is known all over the province as the “Story Man.” His favourite pastimes are reading and writing, and playing guitar at his log cabin. He lives in Hare Bay, Newfoundland, with his wife, the former Rose Gill. They have three children and three grandchildren.

Gary Collins' profile page