Stonington ― Walter Roderick, a 77-year-old lobsterman, laid a broken anchor-shaped wreath Sunday in Stonington Harbor to honor four relatives, and other local fishermen like them, who’ve died at sea.

“His family has been involved with this fishing fleet longer than I’ve been alive,” said daughter Stacy Roderick.

Roderick is captain of the lobster boat Stacy & Geal II. But on Sunday he had walked down the gangway onto a different boat, the Heritage, to assume his role as grand marshal at the Blessing of the Fleet.

The yearly event includes a Mass, parade, ceremony, and food and music. It serves to honor the fishermen from the Town Dock who lost their lives and also offer blessings to fishermen for their safety. Sunday’s event, the 70th, attracted hundreds of people.

The Heritage is a trawling vessel captained by Tom Williams Jr., a third-generation fisherman, whose grandfather Dennis Cidale, according to the Southern New England Fishermen’s and Lobsterman’s Association, had founded the Blessing of the Fleet in 1954.

On Sunday, Williams and the Heritage had led 22 other commercial fishing boats from the Town Dock out into Stonington Harbor for the wreath-laying ceremony. It was trailed about 50 feet by the Sally Maria II, and the next boat about 50 feet behind that. They circled when the Rev. Dennis Perkins, a pastor at nearby St. Mary Church, blessed the wreath and then handed it over to Roderick to cast into the water.

Earlier, after the parade, Roderick had also helped put wreaths next to a granite memorial “In Memory of Those Who Perished at Sea,” that has engraved on it 41 names of local fishermen.

Perkins, who said the blessing likewise honors “all those who were lost at sea,” had gone around to bless each of the commercial vessels on the dock, he said, because the blessing is not just to remember those who have died, but to “pray for and ask God to bless everybody who continues to go out to sea ― to fish.”

“It’s a big part of the community,” Perkins said of the blessing. “They’ve known people who’ve gone out to sea, they know people who continue to fish and they’ve lost loved ones or family members or friends so, to remember and to pray is a big part of the community life here.”

Perkins, at a 10:30 a.m. Mass, had read the 41 names.

The newest is Charles Lathrop, a Westerly fisherman who died in April.

Lathrop grew up in Stonington. He been working on the Invictus, a commercial scallop boat out of Westerly, when he fell overboard after dark, while the boat was about 60 miles southeast of Atlantic City, N.J. It was eight hours before the crew found him and pulled him from the water, unresponsive. He was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead, at 50 years old.

As Roderick had placed the wreath in the water, Charles Lathrop’s uncle, Joe Donohue, watched from the starboard deck of the trawling vessel.

“It’s a dangerous job, and we all like seafood,” Donohue said.

Williams said his boat’s name, and his brother Aaron’s similarly named Tradition, are perfect examples of what the blessing of the fleet is about.

“It’s what this village was built around,” he said of the local fishing community.

Editor’s Note: This version corrects the side of the deck that Donohue was standing on.

d.drainville@theday.com