ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — Four pagers went off simultaneously early Monday, and the on-duty helicopter crew pulled themselves from their warm bunks at Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City. It was 3 a.m.
About 180 miles away, the 180-foot replica of the three-masted tall ship HMS Bounty, built for a 1962 Marlon Brando movie, was dying. Its 16-member crew, heading south from Connecticut to Florida, had gambled that they could beat Hurricane Sandy by driving far east, but the storm was too big, too powerful.
The ship left New London on Thursday, when Sandy was still over Cuba and its path uncertain. But by Friday, it became clear they could not avoid the storm.
On Saturday, as the sea began to get rough, someone posted on Bounty’s Facebook page: “Riding the Storm Out…Day 2. I’m sure that Bounty’s crew would be overwhelmed by all the prayers and best wishes that have been given. Rest assured that the Bounty is safe and in very capable hands. Bounty’s current voyage is a calculated decision … NOT AT ALL … irresponsible or with a lack of foresight as some have suggested. The fact of the matter is … A SHIP IS SAFER AT SEA THAN IN PORT!”
By afternoon Sunday, Bounty’s engines had stopped and the ship was taking on water in 50-knot winds. The ship’s crew sent distress signals, so when a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules transport plane was dispatched Sunday, they were able to talk to the air crew by radio, as the plane circled overhead.
At first, plans were made to drop pumps aboard by helicopter to help keep the ship afloat. Then Bounty’s crew radioed that the water was coming in too fast, about two feet an hour. They were going to abandon the ship, which was being thrown around by heavy seas that seemed to be traveling in every direction.
At 4 a.m., they launched two orange life rafts with canopy roofs and flashing strobe lights on top, and at least 14 of them climbed in, nine in one raft, five in another. It was still unclear Monday night what happed to the other two—the ship’s experienced captain, Robin Walbridge, 63, and Claudene Christian, 42, who joined the crew in May while the ship was in Wilmington and whose Facebook page says she is a descendent of Fletcher Christian, the mutineer on the original Bounty played by Brando.
Late Monday afternoon, the Coast Guard recovered Christian’s body and took her to Albemarle Hospital in Elizabeth City, where she was pronounced dead. Walbridge, 63, remained missing.
A few minutes after the crew climbed into the rafts, the on-duty crew at Elizabeth City lifted off in its MH-60 Jayhawk—the Coast Guard version of the Army’s Blackhawk—outfitted with a hydraulic winch to lift survivors out of the water. It reached the ship, about 90 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, about 6:15 a.m. Lt. Cmdr. Steve Cerveney flew to the place the plane had been and saw a lone sailor in an orange neoprene survival suit rising and falling amidst the giant waves, occasionally vanishing in the wind-blown spray, his rescue strobe flashing.
Nearby, Cerveney and co-pilot Jane Pena could see another strobe standing clear of the water. It was in one of the ship’s masts, all that was left above water of the Bounty.
Cerveney’s crew had only enough fuel for them to pull up the man in the water and four of the seven survivors on one of the rafts before it had to head home. Half an hour behind it, though, was a second chopper, piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Steve Bonn and co-pilot Jenny Fields.
They headed for the other raft, which had six people aboard. Into the water went rescue swimmer Daniel Todd.
Up front, Bonn concentrated on flying, essentially flying at 50 knots just to hover, while battling gusts. Fields called out the next approaching wave so the other three crew members could time their jobs.
“O.K., we’ve got 15 seconds to next wave. Ten. Five, four, three .”
Todd swam up to the raft knowing that he had to keep the frightened survivors calm so that the lifts could go quickly enough that the chopper’s fuel didn’t get low, too.
“Hey, I’m Dan and I hear you guys need a ride,” he said.
Then he gave the survivors instructions about what to expect, the wind, the stinging spray, and how to position themselves in the basket.
Once they had all six survivors from the raft aboard, the fatigued Todd figured he would have at least a few minutes to recuperate, but the other raft was just a few yards away, and almost instantly he was back in the water.
Two of the Bounty’s crew were still unaccounted for, but the helicopter had just two minutes of fuel left. Bonn wheeled it into one sweeping circle of perhaps half a mile as the crew looked down into the white foam and blue-black water. Nothing.
Normally, they would have had more time, Fields said, but the hellish conditions made the chopper gobble fuel. It took little more than an hour to reach the Bounty, but more than two hours to beat back against the headwind from Sandy.
By the time a third crew had pulled Christian’s body from the water, the Bounty was on its side. By dark, the Coast Guard had stopped the air search for the day, but had one cutter on site and another on the way to keep looking for Walbridge through the night. A decision about resuming the air search was expected early Tuesday.
The relatively warm water—in the low 70s in the Gulf Stream—gave cause for hope, Coast Guard officials said.
For much of Monday, the Coast Guard base was swarming with local and national media. There was talk of flying Todd, the rescue swimmer, to New York for a talk-show appearance.
The 14 survivors were still at the Coast Guard station Monday night, but sent word to journalists that they didn’t want to talk. Somewhere, 180 miles away, their skipper was still lost.
One of the journalists asked Bonn whether it had been wise for the ship to put to sea. The pilot said that wasn’t his crew’s concern.
“I have no idea what their voyage plan was, or what they were doing out there,” he said. “If we get the call, we go get them.”
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2012 The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.)
Visit The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) at www.newsobserver.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services
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PHOTO (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099):WEA-SANDY 74 RA
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