Lolita, TXA terrible boating accident claimed the life of a Victoria man after the vessel he was riding was impaled by a confederate steamboat in the Navidad River.
Sixty-two-year-old David Martin, a Vietnam veteran and avid fisherman, was navigating a difficult stretch of the Navidad river roughly three miles south of Lolita, when the hull of his boat was skewered by the wreckage of a sunken steamship known as the Mary Summers.
Dive teams found Martin's body after a passing boater noticed the still-running engine of the wrecked vessel. He was not wearing a life vest.
"We believe he may have hit his head on an object in the crash and maybe died on impact or was unconscious when he went in the water," Rex Mayes, a district supervisor with Texas Parks and Wildlife who was at the scene, tells the Victoria Advocate.
This is not the first wreck caused by the sunken steamship.
Texas Parks and Wildlife has tried to mark the Mary Summers crash site before, yet has seen its efforts dashed by vandals and strong currents.
The Mary Summers is recognized by the National Register of Historic Places as an area of archaeological significance.
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