by Todd Lewan
FIFTY- TWO
The search for David Hanlon went full bore for ninety-four straight hours.
Seven H-60 helicopters from Sitka and Kodiak, three Kodiak C-130 jets and two cutters, the Planetree and the Anacapa, combed an area of ocean twice the size of the state of Rhode Island. The planes took off at first light and returned after dusk. The cutters put their lights on and searched nights, too.
At 10:05 A.M., on Sunday, February 1, 1998, the Planetree spotted a gray fish tote bobbing in the waves at 58°43.14′ north, 139°05.01′ west. Ten minutes later, it pulled up a four-foot-square, white piece of wood nearby, then an orange tarp. Finally, at 2:58 P.M., it plucked out a lone, white life ring with the words LA CONTE painted on it in black lettering.
But there was no sign of Hanlon.
After heavy fog and darkness set in, the Planetree picked up a 406-megahertz hit at 58°44.4′ north, 138°58′ west. It raced to the coordinates and retrieved an orange EPIRB, its ring switch set to ON and still transmitting weakly.
A check of the serial number confirmed that the beacon had come from the La Conte. Six hours later, the cutter recovered a second EPIRB, a 121.5-megahertz model.
During the next two days, with aircraft flying grid after grid northwest of the Triple Forties, helicopter crews sighted a white deck cover, part of a bare wood deck, two white marker floats, another fish tote and a two-by-two piece of plywood.
But no survivor, no body.
On Monday morning, February 2, a C-130 pilot spotted a three-foot-long orange object floating in the waves. But he lost sight of it and a series of subsequent helicopter sorties turned up nothing. The orange object was not seen again.
For the next day and a half, the Planetree crisscrossed the waters northand west of the Fairweather Grounds, using searchlights and infrared scanners. On Monday night the weather deteriorated; winds rose to thirty knots and seas to twenty feet, and visibility diminished considerably.
The search was finally called off at five in the afternoon on Tuesday, February 3, $678,545 after it had begun.
People reckoned it would not be more than a week before a crab boat spotted the missing fisherman or a seiner scooped up his remains in a net. But then a week went by, and another week, and then another. Then a month passed. Then six months.
For David Hanlon’s five sisters and two brothers, life began to drift.
Without a body, it was difficult to let him go.
There was a formal Coast Guard inquiry, of course.
Three days of public hearings were held in Juneau and in Sitka a week after the incident, and the Coast Guard appointed a special investigator, Lieutenant Commander David C. Stalfort, to head the probe. He took 523 pages of testimony from fourteen people, including the ship’s two previous owners, shipwrights, former crewmen familiar with the La Conte and the three survivors and thirteen airmen who took part in the rescue.
In the end, Stalfort concluded that a “catastrophic event occurred that allowed uncontrolled flooding into the hull,” but that the “cause or nature of this event is unknown.” His final report noted that the owner “did not maintain the vessel in a condition that provided adequate strength for conditions likely to be encountered offshore in the Gulf of Alaska in the winter.”
It said casualties “could have been prevented had the master, Mark Morley, heeded the weather warnings,” made sure to provide a life raft, a single sideband radio and personal marker lights for their survival suits and trained the crew to use all of the bilge pumps on board in case of an emergency.
“It is recommended that there be no further investigation of the owner, Scott Echols, for criminal negligence.”
He recommended that the investigation be closed and it was, without delay.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have always liked searching for pieces to a story. There is something revitalizing about discovering a piece of information that no one else has, or, what is more likely, finding a piece that others have discovered but not considered in quite the same way. I suppose this is why I spent four years researching and writing this book. The rush of discovery.
Then again, it might just have been my fascination with the men who appear in this book. They, of course, are the fishermen and Coast Guardsmen who survived the events of January 30, 1998, and who endured one-on-one interviews, phone calls and e-mails many months after that night. It is bad enough going through so horrific a tempest; having someone stir it up afresh through repeated questioning and prodding cannot be pleasant.
I didn’t expect any of them to remember so many details about that January night, and I certainly could not expect them to be so forthright about their pasts, their dreams, their demons, and yet they were. They shared some pretty personal stuff. To them, I can only offer my most sincere thanks.
Of course, there were others who helped me to collect and arrange the pieces of this story-puzzle, people who do not appear in the story but whose contributions were no less significant. They are numerous—sonumerous that, sadly, I cannot list all of their names. Some, however, deserve a special mention.
To start, there was my editor at The Associated Press, Bruce DeSilva, who agreed to send me to Alaska for six weeks in September 1998 even though I hadn’t the faintest idea what I was going to write about. Upon my return to New York, I told him and his assistant, Chris Sullivan, about the La Conte story, and I suggested writing it in the old-style, serialized format. The news cooperative, as far as anyone knew, had never run a serial on the news wire in the AP’s 150-year history. But these two men pushed to get the story on the wire in five installments, no small feat at an agency that prides itself on brevity.
I am also deeply indebted to Larry Mussara, a retired Coast Guard helicopter pilot who first told me about the La Conte case while we fished on his boat over Labor Day weekend in 1998. It was Larry who talked me into writing a newspaper story about the rescue, and it was he who got me started by introducing me to officers at the District 17 headquarters in Juneau.
Others who offered unstinting help were Kent Lind, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Juneau, who kindly allowed me to occupy his abode on more than one occasion; Ray Massey, the Coast Guard’s spokesman at District 17 headquarters; George Bancroft, who explained the mechanics of the storm at the Marine Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Maryland; Ajay Mehta and Lieutenant Commander Paul Steward, who made clear the intricacies of emergency satellite beacons and the mainframe computer at Mission Control Center in Suitland, Maryland; Jim Jensen, director of the Yakutat police, who, along with Eli Hanlon and the Yakutat hospital staff, was invaluable in helping to reconstruct scenes at the end of the book; Dr. Michael T. Propst, John Bond, Alvin Ancheta, Walter MacFarlane, Dale Bivins, David Johnson and, in particular, David Hanson, all of the Alaska state crime lab in Anchorage, who made the opening chapters of the book possible. To all of you, my heartiest thanks.
In Kodiak, I had the pleasure of working with Sergeant Darlene Turner, chief of the station there, and two of her officers, Steve Hall and Tom Dunn. Without them, I would not have been able to re-create the book’s opening scene. Dunn flew with me to Shuyak Island in a tiny, charteredplane through a blinding winter downpour and kept a keen (nervous, you could say) eye out for brownies while I walked around the forest, soaking up ambience.
In Sitka, I was fortunate to meet many gracious people who went beyond the normal bounds of courtesy. To name some: Glen Jones, Joe Miller, Stephen M. Wall, Tim Schwartz, Betty Jo Johns, Burgess Bowder, Carolyn Evans, Bonnie Richardson, Eric Calvin, Ron Bellows, Robert Kite, Alvin Rezek, Ingvald Ask, John Brooks, George Eliason and Paul A. McArthur. Lastly, and most particularly, I offer my most heartfelt gratitude to Lynne Chassin-Kelly, for her good humor and constant support during what was a difficult time in her life.
I also received a warm welcome from the families and friends of the main characters of this book. There were the Doyles, the DeCapuas, the Hanlons, the Morks, the LeFeuvres, the Evanses, the Conners
—and not least of all, Robert Carrs and Tamara Morley, who offered insights into the character of the La Conte’s skipper, Mark Morley. This is a book about people in a storm, not just a storm; without the help of these kind people, it most certainly would not have held together.
I’ve always respected the work of the U.S. Coast Guard, but today I say without reservation that I feel a special affection for the men and women who wear the uniform. Not once in four years of research did a Coastie snub me or treat me without the utmost respect. The Coasties I met were generous, accommodating, friendly and professional. I cannot thank them enough.
I owe much to my agent, Owen Laster, for his patience, advocacy and vision, and to Paul McCarthy and his wife, Chicquita, whose belief in the book and suggestions about its structure were vital. I also consider myself lucky to have been able to work with my editor at HarperCollins, Dan Conaway, and his assistant, Jill Schwartzman. Dan’s intuitiveness, his understanding of narrative, his line-by-line criticism and the reasons behind that criticism were invaluable.
Finally, to three of my dearest friends, Dolores Barclay, Michael Van Weegen and my mother, Anne: without your unflagging confidence, understanding and encouragement, I might not ever have completed this story-puzzle. With much love, I thank you all.
About the Author
TODD LEWAN joined the Associated Press as a correspondent in 1988. In 1996 he became an editor at the AP’s international desk, and later a national features writer. In 1998, he received several feature-writing prizes for this story.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a work of nonfiction—unlike a novel, none of the characters, situations and places described in this book is imaginary. Dialogue was reconstructed as carefully and completely as possible, using official reports, court papers, personal letters, diaries and audiotapes, and by crosschecking the recollections of people who took part in the conversations. For clarity, consistency and tempo, a number of less significant places, people, observations and impressions have been left out. However, the author has attempted to write an absolutely true book; nothing beyond what was verifiable and documentable has been added.
Praise for
The Last Run
“Grade: A. A spectacular maritime page-turner … obsessively reported, meticulously crafted, morally complex, and action-crammed, The Last Run is one perfect storm of a book.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“A gripping account [that] reads like a novel… Readers who got into Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm would do well to check out Todd Lewan’s Arctic storm epic The Last Run.”
—USA Today
“The Perfect Storm transferred to Alaska, but with a much more heroic conclusion.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Blockbuster.”
—New York magazine
“For sheer reading thrills, you won’t find anything to match The Last Run, not this fishing season, and probably for many more…. More than anything else, Lewan makes the reader feel in his bones the terror of a stormy sea and a useless vessel.”
—New Orleans Times-Picayune
“[A] gripping sea rescue tale.”
—Anchorage Daily News
“The Last Run is a powerful story reported and told with extraordinary skill…. Lewan’s mastery of a broad palette of narrative technique is unrivaled. [The Last Run] will keep you turning the pages at a furious rate.”
—Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Riveting…. A wintry tale that makes a perfect summer page-turner…. A saga of life and death, friendship and loss.”
—Associated Press
“The stuff of legends…. A tale of genuine heroism … that you won’t easily put down.”
—Decatur Daily
“Exhilarating … masterful … the action [is] real and terrifying…. Lewan steals your breath as he describes the fandango inside a helicopter slammed by gale-force winds… Immediate and terrifying, so edge-of-the-seat readers will have creases in their glutei maximi.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Nail-biting … new and immediate … [gives] readers a sense of why the five fishermen were willing to risk so much for potentially so little.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This riveting book has it all: ordinary guys facing the extraordinary, tales of the Alaska frontier, a suspenseful fight for survival, a dramatic rescue against seemingly impossible odds, and touchingly human and humorous moments. Do yourself a favor and let Todd Lewan take you on The Last Run.” —James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys
“What a gripping book. By the time you finish this amazing true story of men struggling in the Alaska seas, and the helicopter rescue crews blown around like dandelion seeds, you’re likely to be suffering from double pneumonia. So bundle up well before you begin The Last Run, because once you start it, you won’t be able to put it down.” —Len Deighton
“Todd Lewan’s The Last Run picks up where The Perfect Storm left off—the big brawling storm and epic Coast Guard rescue in the Gulf of Alaska is an utterly heart-pounding story, yet Lewan probes deeper, bringing to life in all their troubled glory the heroic, ill-fated crew of the La Conte. His reporting is so rich, so brave, and so damn fine it makes me wonder how the rest of us will ever do anything half as good.”
—Todd Balf, author of The Darkest Jungle
“The Last Run is both a harrowing real-life tale of rescue on the high seas and a moving love letter to the sort of restless traveler so often drawn to Alaska, and to the sea—a story whose roller-coaster drama is surpassed only by its compassion for the hard lives of the men at its center.”
—Peter Nichols, author of Evolution’s Captain
“Todd Lewan raises the standard for nonfiction survival stories. The Last Run not only re-creates with hair-raising poignancy the ordeal that the men on the La Conte endured but also gives them unparalleled depth and dignity.”
—Jason Kersten, author of Journal of the Dead
EPILOGUE
It was a quarter past six and the investigators’ office of the Alaska state crime lab was quiet except for the sound of a man in a corner cubicle pecking at the keyboard of a desktop computer. Everyone else had gone home. It was August 31, 1998, which happened to be David Hanson’s seventh wedding anniversary, and he was anxious to get home, too, to take his wife, Valery, out to dinner. But he had a report to finish. Nobody had actually told him to put a rush on it. It was just a missing persons file. But to him it was important, somehow, that he do it right away.
So he kept typing.
Three hours earlier, Walter MacFarlane had brought startling news: the fingerprint lab had matched a print from a fisherman named David Hanlon to another they had reproduced from a skin fragment found inside a bear-mauled survival suit on Shuyak Island. The word match had hit him like a stiff, electric jolt; after nineteen days trying to identify the remains, he, David Hanson, the rookie investigator, was going to stroll into his sergeant’s office and declare that he’d cracked his very first case.
He hadn’t strolled—he’d bounded, as a matter of fact, over to his boss’s door and rapped on it. Sergeant Mike Marrs, hunched over a stack of papers, looked up. It was a grumpy look.
“It’s him,” Hanson said.
“Who?”
“Hanlon.”
He held out the fingerprint card. Marrs, still eyeing him moodily, took it. He moved his dark eyes up and down the card, over the fingerprints rolled in black ink. Hanlon’s right index finger was circled in red. That was the finger that had been positively matched to the skin found in the neoprene mitten on Shuyak.
Marrs removed his thick glasses and flicked them on his desk. He looked Hanson straight in the eyes. The sergeant’s annoyed expression had melted away.
“Good work, young man,” Marrs said almost gently. Then he gave Hanson a small, approving smile.
“Thanks.�
�
“Now,” Marrs had said, “it’s time to go show the captain. You want to do the honors?”
Once they had notified all of the higher-ups, Hanson had telephoned the troopers’ station in Angoon and asked that an officer go in person to Hoonah to tell the Hanlons. That wasn’t something you did on the phone, he had said to himself. I’m sure there must be a relative that can break the news gently to that family. Well, at least they could grieve and start putting David’s death behind them. All of the Hanlons could rest.
So now all that was left was to finish typing up his final report on the case. At one point, he noticed a mistake in his narrative:
the deceased, David Hanson, was
He hit the backspace key, deleted the word Hanson, retyped the name so that it correctly read Hanlon and went on.
He had completed another page when again he noticed, in another reference to the dead man, that he had typed:
David Hanson
He stared at his mistake.
Why do I keep doing that? I need to hit the L key, not the S key. Okay, erase that and type H-A-N-L-O-N. There you go. That’s better.
While Hanson was proofreading his report he noticed yet another sentence where his own name had been entered instead of the name Hanlon. And then it hit him.
David Hanlon. The mystery man I’ve been trying so hard to identify has a name that’s just one letter different from my own. We’re not all that far apart, are we, Mr. Hanlon?
He shuddered and hit the delete key.
POSTSCRIPT
On April 2, 1998, four of the aviators from the third helicopter rescue team—Ted LeFeuvre, Steve Torpey, Fred Kalt and Lee Honnold— received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the highest aviation honor given in the United States during peacetime. Mike Fish, the team’s rescue swimmer, was awarded the Coast Guard’s Air Medal.