LILY BAY STATE PARK – The state commissioner of conservation escaped injury Saturday morning in an accident on Moosehead Lake involving his small single-engine aircraft.

In an unrelated aircraft accident Sunday elsewhere on Moosehead Lake, two Rhode Island men suffered bumps and bruises after the controls of the small float plane they were in malfunctioned, causing the plane to go down near Sand Bar Island.

Conservation Commissioner Patrick McGowan, pilot of his Cessna seaplane, was at the controls and had no passengers with him when the accident occurred at Lily Bay State Park, north of Greenville on the southwestern shore of Moosehead Lake.

McGowan, who had camped in the park Friday night, could not be reached Saturday for comment.

According to Andy Haskell, park manager, McGowan was taxiing on Moosehead Lake shortly after 8 a.m. when one of his airplane’s pontoons struck a rock at the lake’s edge.

The rock sliced a gash into the float’s front three air cells, allowing water to fill the chambers, which in turn caused the aircraft to tilt to one side. Coming to rest in a shallow part of the lake, the plane stopped tipping when its wing touched the lake bottom, Haskell said.

The engine did not suffer water damage, he said, and no fuel spilled into the water.

Folsom’s Air Service used a barge equipped with a crane to hoist the plane from the water and take it to the company’s repair facilities on Moosehead Lake, Haskell said. Personnel from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife supplied a pump.

McGowan began flying when he was 16 years old, according to published reports. He had at least one other close call during his 1992 bid for the 2nd District congressional seat when his Cessna experienced engine trouble, forcing McGowan to make an emergency landing.

The other Moosehead accident Sunday sent two men to Charles A. Dean Memorial Hospital for treatment of bumps and bruises they suffered when the 1961 Cessna 180 in which they were riding went down.

Pilot Michael Conaboy, 56, and his passenger, Frederick B. Schick, 52, both of North Kingston, R.I., were in the water 10 to 15 minutes before they were rescued, according to Warden Sgt. Roger Guay of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Guay said Conaboy told him he was practicing “touch-and-go” maneuvers on the lake when his Cessna’s controls malfunctioned, causing the plane to pitch to the right and its right wing to hit the water, which brought the plane down. The plane landed in water 40 to 60 feet deep, Guay said.

People at Casey’s Camps near Spencer Bay in the eastern part of the lake witnessed the accident. Campground owner Casey Lacasce and another man set off in a boat to rescue the fliers.

The two were trying to climb onto the plane’s pontoons when rescuers reached them, Guay said.

Guay said the Federal Aviation Administration has been notified. The FAA plans to inspect the wreckage after it has been removed from the lake. He said the aircraft was “completely disassembled” and underwater.

The Department of Environmental Protection was notified of fuel that had spilled into the lake from the plane, but the staff there determined the fuel would be impossible to contain and much of it would evaporate.