Sea Folk

by Jim Wellman

  “One,” said Childers, “and we’ve reduced power.” Both pilots in the cockpit of the big Alitalia plane exchanged worried glances but said nothing.

  Twenty minutes had passed since the first sign of trouble. Now, in the Bonanza’s cockpit, the men could hear the engine’s valve lifters clacking loudly, a sign that they weren’t getting oil.

  “We’re not going to make it,” Childers said, his mind racing through the procedures for a nighttime ocean ditching.

  The Crash

  Nova Scotia writer Parker Donham wrote a very detailed account of the events that took place that night. Donham was a staff writer for Reader’s Digest and recorded extensive interviews with all the main players in this fascinating tale of danger and rescue. Several of those men have since passed away. With his permission, this is how Parker Donham described what happened next:

  “. . . The engine shuddered violently and almost stopped, then settled down again. Rayner began struggling into his bulky survival suit. A shower of sparks from the engine compartment streamed past the windshield. The cockpit filled with smoke, and Rayner saw a brief flash of flame around the propeller cowling. Then the engine shuddered once more and stopped. The cabin grew quiet except for the rush of air as the plane descended rapidly towards the icy Atlantic.

  “‘Alitalia 9-2-2, November 8-2-7 Mike Charlie. Please advise ATC that we have lost our engine and we’re going to ditch.’

  “The plane was now at 8,000 feet. Childers gave the Alitalia flight his position, then added, ‘We estimate we have eight minutes to ditching.’

  “‘What are we going to do?’ Rayner asked. Childers said he would come in level, try to skip off a wave to lose speed, then drop the tail and let the plane settle into the water. ‘What then?’ Rayner asked. ‘We’re going to relax,’ replied Childers.

  “The Alitalia co-pilot’s voice crackled over the radio: ‘Do you have an emergency locator transmitter?’

  “‘Affirmative,’ said Childers. In fact they had two ELTs, one attached to the plane and a portable unit they could take with them into the life raft.

  “At 3,000 feet, Childers made his last position report; ‘Three minutes to ditching.’

  “The Italian pilots wondered if these might be the last words Jerrold Childers would ever speak. But his voice relayed no fear.

  “‘Roger, November 8-2-7 Mike Charlie,’ Captain Ferrari replied, struggling to keep his emotions in check. ‘Have a good landing.’

  “At 1,000 feet, Rayner began counting down by hundreds. Gripping the aircraft door tightly, he held it open a crack—standard procedure before a ditching—lest impact jam it shut.

  “‘Five hundred . . . 400 . . .’ Time seemed to rush past. At 200 feet they could make out the foam on the swells. Childers spotted a couple of waves and aimed the plane into the wind, trying to reduce speed.

  “‘One hundred!’ Rayner shouted. ‘We’re going in!’

  “Childers levelled the plane, and the two men braced. With a jarring thud, the Bonanza struck the top of a wave and bounced. Childers yanked the control stick towards him, dropping the tail. The plane hit the water a second time, turned and skidded to the right. Water surged over the windshield, and for an instant, Rayner though they might flip. Then the plane settled into the sea with its nose pointing down about twenty degrees.”

  It was 9:00 p.m.—less than half an hour since they had turned around.

  Astonishingly, Jerrold Childers and Steve Rayner survived the crash without injury. But their ordeal was far from over.

  Within moments of landing in twelve-foot seas, they noticed water coming through the door that was deliberately left ajar during the impact of hitting the water. Looking at the incoming water, both men knew they had to get out of the plane, and the quicker the better.

  Trying to get out of a small, four-seater airplane and into a small life raft in the northwest Atlantic Ocean is challenging at the best of times, but in the dead of winter in snow squalls, high winds, below-freezing air temperatures, and twelve-foot seas, the thought was especially daunting to the two pilots.

  This is writer Parker Donham’s description of how the events unfolded for Childers and Rayner as they prepared to get into a life raft.

  “. . . Childers tried to tie a loop in the raft’s lanyard—something to hold on to in case the wind tried to carry the raft away, but he must have pulled the rope a little too gingerly and suddenly the raft began to inflate, threatening to pin the two men inside the sinking plane. ‘Get it out! Get it out!’ Childers shouted.

  “As the two men shoved frantically, pushing the rapidly inflating raft out the door, seas came rushing in, and the plane’s nose began to sink deeper into the ocean.

  “Rayner tried to swim out the door, but something held him back. With Childers pushing from behind, Rayner eventually broke free and pawed his way to the surface with Childers close behind. The two men came up on different sides of the raft. Rayner hauled himself aboard, but Childers struggled for a footing on the boarding ladder. Rayner grabbed the back of his friend’s survival suit and eventually dragged him into the raft. Childers flopped in facedown. He could feel cold water inside his suit and bitterly regretted not having zipped it up before ditching. He knew their lives would depend on preserving body heat.

  “A three-metre section of the plane’s tail was still bobbing above the water’s surface. With each wave, the horizontal stabilizer threatened to smash down on the raft’s side like a huge cleaver. Afraid it would be punctured, Rayner pushed the raft away from the plane. Then they watched as the tail eventually slipped beneath the waves . . .”

  The two pilots had no idea what was in store for them. They didn’t know whether there were ships in the area that could come to their rescue or if there were aircraft searching for them, but perhaps not knowing might have been an entirely positive factor, because had they known their odds of surviving that night, they might have given up hope too soon.

  Life raft similar to the one used by pilots Steve Rayner and

  Jerrold Childers

  Getting a search and rescue aircraft to the scene would take hours. The blustery winter weather had grounded flights that evening at the airforce base in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. However, at 9:33 p.m., a Hercules transport rumbled down the runway, followed by an Aurora maritime patrol aircraft as pilots and other personnel were fully aware that they held the key to saving the lives of the downed pilots. It would take three hours for the slower Hercules to reach the last known position of the Beechcraft. At the same time, the Newfoundland fishing vessel Zandberg could only manage about nine nautical miles per hour punching into the high seas and winds, so it would take Captain Jack McCormack and his crew nearly five hours to reach the scene.

  Meanwhile, the two downed pilots were safe but not very comfortable. The life raft was so small that they barely had room to lie down. As the pilots huddled under a loose-fitting tarpaulin zipped to the sides of the rubber raft, large waves were breaking over the canopy and ice-cold water was leaking in.

  Jerrold Childers did his best to bail water out with the raft’s emergency scoop, but the gloves of his survival

  suit were clumsy, and his fingers had grown numb with the cold and he could barely hold the bailer. Steve Rayner was too sick to even try bailing water. Overcome by the constant heaving of the waves, Rayner became severely seasick and was retching uncontrollably. A southern-California native, he had never been so cold, and it would only grow worse as the hours passed by.

  Sometime after midnight, Childers wondered if he was hallucinating, but he thought he could hear the faint drone of an airplane. However, each time he stuck his head out through the canopy door, he could see nothing.

  * * *

  Despite his severe sickness, Rayner said he too thought he could hear a plane. Childers peered out again. Far off in the night sky, he saw a f
lashing light. “There!” he cried. “I see a light!”

  The men unzipped the tarp and watched the plane’s lights, the first hopeful sign of the night. Staring hopefully into the night sky, their excitement soon faded—the lights disappeared as the search plane veered in another direction.

  Over the next hour they saw the lights several times, but the plane never came near enough for them to risk firing one of their three flares.

  Then, just after 1:30 a.m., Childers and Rayner saw the lights of the Hercules heading straight toward them. Childers tried to set off a flare, but his fingers were too numb to pull the release. Desperate, he clamped the release chain between his teeth and yanked the flare upward with both

  hands. A fiery rocket shot past his face into the sky.

  In the Hercules, someone spotted what looked like a tiny red sparkle on the horizon. In less than ideal weather conditions, the rescue pilots weren’t sure what they saw, if anything, but they kept the plane headed in that direction anyway, just in case. Anxiously scanning the dark ocean, they suddenly saw a second red streak. This time they knew what they were looking at. There was no mistaking the telltale arc of a distress flare, and it was straight

  ahead of their aircraft about three or four miles away. The rescue pilot’s eyes and spirits brightened; someone was alive down there!

  As the Hercules aircraft continued its approach, it seemed to be passing to one side, causing the downed pilots to wonder if the plane’s crew had actually seen them. Childers looked at their last remaining flare and wondered if he should wait until the plane was closer or if he should shoot it now. Steve Rayner was very sick, but he was observing Childers and he had no doubt about what had to be done.

  “Shoot the flare!” he yelled at Childers.

  “It’s our last one,” Childers shouted back.

  “SHOOT THE FLARE!” Rayner yelled again. Childers did, and the crew of the Hercules saw the third flare just to their left. The Hercules dropped smoke markers and a pair of life rafts along with two survival kits, all

  strung together with ropes. But Childers and Rayner were too numbed by the cold and too exhausted to even try

  reaching them.

  Several hours later, at 3:50 a.m., the Zandberg’s 10,000-candlepower searchlight was sweeping back and

  forth across the waves when it caught the raft in its beam. Despite the vessel’s heaving and pitching in the rough seas, First Mate Clyde Cumben from Grand Bank and trawler-man Lloyd Maidment from Catalina climbed into a small, fifteen-foot open boat situated on the top deck of the fishing vessel, ready to attempt a daring rescue. In the wheelhouse, Captain Jack McCormack brought the Zandberg along the windward side of the raft to shelter his two crewmen from

  the weather in the hopes of creating better conditions to carry out the transfer of the pilots from the raft to the rescue boat.

  Lloyd Maidment says his memory of the rescue details is fading a little bit twenty years later, but once he started to chat in a recent interview, many aspects of the rescue came rushing back as clearly as if it were yesterday. He says a lot of things had to happen in perfect unison to pull off a successful rescue. Even if luck had been on their side, it would take every bit of skill that all of them had ever learned to pull off a successful mission. Thankfully, the Zandberg’s captain and crew were as skilled as they come.

  Lloyd’s brother Bill Maidment was working the crane that lowered the small fibreglass work boat down over the side of the ship. Bill’s challenge was to lower the rescue craft to the top of a wave at just the right moment, while his brother Lloyd or Clyde Cumben had to release the cable within a split second before the big steel-hulled ship would rise or fall on a wave and come crashing down on the rescuers, or the little boat could fall to the trough of a swell, causing the cable to snap and possibly flip the lifeboat upside down, dumping the two trawlermen in the ocean. Captain McCormack’s skills were tested when he had to fight the winds and high seas and keep the Zandberg close enough to break the wind from the pilot’s life raft, but not too close for fear of crashing down on top of the raft in the heaving seas. In fact, the current was already pushing the raft dangerously close toward the bow of the 160-foot Zandberg.

  To complicate things further for the rescuers, it soon became obvious that Childers and Rayner were too exhausted and cold to be of any help. It was all up to Maidment and Cumben. Manoeuvring a little fifteen-foot open boat in twelve-foot seas close enough to safely reach out and grab the helpless pilots in a small raft was no easy task. The odds of all the requirements conspiring favourably at the same time were slim. But again, whether it was Captain McCormack’s skilful manipulation of their boat in the winds and seas, the extraordinary skills of the trawlermen, just good timing, good luck, or a combination of all the above, something good was on their side. Maidment and Cumben managed somehow to get their small boat alongside the raft, close enough to get their arms around the pilots and drag them from the raft and safely to the rescue boat. Cumben and Maidment grabbed Rayner first and hauled him into the lifeboat. “I’m alive!” he said. “I can’t believe I’m alive!” But by the time they got Childers aboard, the lifeboat had drifted forward under the trawler’s pitching bow. If the trawler came down on the lifeboat, all four men could be lost. “We’ve got to get out of here!” Cumben yelled. As Captain McCormack manoeuvred the Zandberg as far away as he could, the two trawlermen grabbed the oars and pushed frantically against the larger boat until, finally, they were far enough for Cumben to start rowing them back to the midships side of the Zandberg and underneath the cable that was still dangling alongside.

  Newspaper clipping and photo taken in the wheelhouse of the Zandberg in St. John’s, NL. L-R: Steve Rayner, Lloyd Maidment, Jerrold Childers, Clyde Cumben, and Captain Jack McCormack

  As successful and satisfying as the rescue had gone so far, there was still another major hurdle to overcome. Hooking the cable to the fibreglass boat to go up required the same precision skills that it had taken to get down. As Bill Maidment intensely watched every movement of the men below, his brother Lloyd waited for just the right moment and quickly attached the crane’s hook to the lifeboat and yelled, “Take us up!”

  On board the Zandberg, crewmen half carried, half walked Childers and Rayner to a warm cabin, stripped their clothes off, and wrapped them in dry blankets. The two pilots had been in the raft for seven hours and were in an advanced state of hypothermia. Two hours would pass before they would stop shivering.

  * * *

  Neither Childers nor Rayner suffered any serious physical harm. After a brief examination in hospital in St. John’s the next day, both pilots were released and spent the afternoon describing their ordeal to reporters in St. John’s.

  Captain Jack McCormack, First Mate Clyde Cumben, and trawlerman Lloyd Maidment were recognized for their bravery. The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem (priority of Canada) bestowed them with medals citing, “conspicuous gallantry, skilled seamanship and gallant acts of chivalry.” A fitting acknowledgment for three men whose bravery, courage, and tremendous marine skills are, without question, responsible for rescuing pilots Jerrold Childers and Steve Rayner from what was perilously close to being their final voyage.

  Note: Our sincere thanks to writer Parker Donham for allowing us to use significant portions of his account of this story written in 1992.

  About the Author

  Jim Wellman grew up in Port Anson, a small fishing and logging community on Newfoundland’s north-east coast. The son of a schooner captain, Jim never strayed far from his marine roots despite choosing a career in journalism. For fifteen years, Jim was host of the popular radio program the Fisheries Broadcast on CBC Radio in Newfoundland. After taking an early retirement from the radio business in 1997, Jim turned off the microphone and picked up a pen. He has written five books with marine connections.

  Jim has been contracted by severa
l agencies and corporations such as Marine Atlantic, the Canadian Sealers Association, and Heritage Canada to draw from his marine knowledge, particularly in the fishing industry. In November, 2002, Jim became managing editor of the Navigator, Atlantic Canada’s premier fisheries and marine magazine.

  INDEX

  Adventure II 32

  Africa 19

  Algoscotia 85, 86

  Alitalia 747 187-189

  “All Over Again” (song) 19

  Anderson, Alfred 28, 31, 33

  Argentia, NL 169, 170

  Arsenault, Alcide 55-60

  Arsenault, Kenneth 56, 59

  Anderson, Kirk 90

  Ascension Collegiate 8

  Avalon Peninsula 71

  Bar Harbor, Maine 159

  Barr’d Islands, NL 42, 45

  Barrett’s Pride 169, 171, 172

  Barrett, Fred 168-172

  Barrett, Rhoda 168, 172

  Barrett, Wayne 171

  Barry’s Fisheries 90

  Barry, Fred 90

  Barry Group 92

  Bartlett’s Harbour, NL 62, 147

  Bay Bulls, NL 1-3, 5

  Bay de Verde, NL 80, 81, 130

  Bay of Fundy 157, 180

  Bay of Islands, NL 88, 89, 162

  Beechcraft Bonanza (aircraft) 186-188, 190, 193

  Best, Don 107

  Best, Glen 107-110

  Black Cliff, NL 141

  Bonavista Bay, NL 117

  Brannen, Edward 157

  Brannen, Nathan 157, 161

  Brannen, Victor, Jr. 156, 157, 161, 173

  Brier Island, NS 157, 158

  Brimstone Head, NL 111

  British Columbia 90, 92, 156

  Brooke’s Point, NL 43

  Brophy, Ed 48-54