Petar Bozidar Butko

Petar Bozidar Butko was born on 9 February 1935 in Tribunj, Croatia, to Petar Marko Butko and Tereza Grubelic. He had entered Australia on 13 August 1964 and had been working on the Crayfishing boat Saturn, since 22 October 1968.

The Saturn left the moorings at Freshwater Point at 1:30am on the morning of 16 December 1968. Onboard the vessel were five men:

• Skipper Gennaro (Gerry) Fedele (35) of 15 Bolingbroke Street, Spearwood – Italian, fishing in Australia for 16 years
• John Martins Andrade of 27 Parry Street, Fremantle – Portuguese, being a deckhand in Australia for six years
• (Benito) Paul Cinquina (33) of 9 Greenslade Street, Hamilton Hill – Italian, residing in Australia for 16 years
• Dominico Celenza (36) of 31 Fortescue Street, East Fremantle – Italian, residing in Australia for 18 years
• Petar Butko (33) of 40 Chester Street, South Fremantle – Croatian, residing in Australia for four years.

At 3:30am instructions were given by the Skipper to commence work preparing bait for the cray pots. Fedele went below to sleep and left the helm for Celenza. There was a medium to heavy swell at the time, enough to roll the boat around. Butko was dressed in white overalls, black rubber sea boots and yellow plastic jacket. It is unclear if Butko could swim.

At approximately 3:45am Butko, Andrade and Cinquina were on deck preparing bait when a wave struck the side of the vessel throwing Butko over the starboard side of the boat. The Skipper was awoken, and a spotlight used to immediately locate Butko.

The boat took a few minutes to manoeuvre around placing Butko on the Port side of the boat, still floating, but only making a funny sound with his voice, which was unrecognisable.

A rope was thrown to him twice. The first landed some distance away, the second landed right alongside him, but he did not attempt to catch hold of it. The Skipper then instructed the crew to throw a Life Buoy to Butko, but by the time it was retrieved from the aft of the vessel, he had already disappeared. The crew were instructed not to enter the water as it was dark, and not considered safe to do so.

The skipper and crew reported to Police how surprised they were to see Butko sink so fast. Within five minutes, two other boats had arrived to join the search party. They remained in the search area until 2pm, before proceeding to Dongara.

In total, 25 to 30 boats were involved in the search that day, including the Ross Antonette, skippered by Gennaro’s brother, Johnny Fedele.

Constable Alex John Francis Fagan of Dongara police suggested from his investigation that “Butko may have hurt himself as he fell overboard backwards, or was gripped by fear thus he was unable to assist himself, as there was no suggestion that there was any malpractice.”

Additionally, he noted the fishing vessel, Saturn, had her safety rails very low, and a person could wash overboard easily if becoming unbalanced. He concluded Butko had drowned 17 miles at 240 degrees South/South-West of Freshwater Point.

Butko left behind a defacto wife by the name of Dobrila, an eight year old girl, and a seven year old boy in Croatia. A step-brother, Nikola Butko resided at 5 King Edward Road in Osborne Park at the time of his death.