Rescue of the Bounty: Disaster and Survival in Superstorm Sandy

by Michael J. Tougias

  Cleveland, with his immersion suit zipped up only to his waist to leave his hands free, had been tying a loop in the end of a long line that—according to his plan—would be used to secure each crew member when, during the anticipated orderly evacuation, they transferred from the ship to a life raft. He finished with the loop, and Groves helped him zip up his immersion suit the rest of the way.

  In the next instant, he felt the sea rise up and grab him from the deck. He saw his crewmates, who had been making their way aft toward the life rafts, tossed about, assaulted by loose or broken parts of the ship.

  Then the third mate was floating in warm water, his gloved hands grabbing something—a wooden grating—his feet kicking, instinctively driving him away from the hostility of the rolling ship. Moments passed uncounted as he struggled against the sea, and then he found Groves. A current seemed to be taking them together forward along the side of the rolling ship, in the direction of the main- and foremasts, which, along with their miles of rope rigging, rose up out of the water, only to come slashing back into the sea, lethal clubs threatening to pummel the swimmers.

  Groves had been struggling to keep her face out of the water when, in the moonlight, something—she didn’t know what—struck her on the head. Time lost its meaning. There was only survival. Then there was Cleveland, clinging to the wooden grating.

  Chris Barksdale, the seasick engineer who couldn’t remember a time in his life when he wasn’t on the water, was now in the water ninety miles offshore and got caught in the rigging once, twice, and then again and again as he fought to swim away. He struggled until he met Cleveland and Groves.

  Adam Prokosh, incapacitated earlier, had made it to the weather deck and then back to the stern, near the life rafts and to port of the helm. When the deck reared to vertical, he let himself slide down to the helm. Then, injured or not, he decided it was time to jump. The boat was moving faster than the disabled seaman. A mast rose, streaming seawater from its rigging, then, like a tree felled by a logger, crashed back into the sea, into the now-littered water where a wooden grating that had washed off Bounty’s deck floated. The grating hit Prokosh in the head. Then a yard on the mast slammed him. He was driven under the surface, but managed, even with painful back injuries, to swim up, and when he broke the surface, he found fellow crew members nearby.

  Jessica Hewitt had been near the helm. She had chosen not to wear a life jacket. She didn’t want to be encumbered. But she and Drew Salapatek had connected their harnesses. Someone had suggested this. She thought that in those winds and seas, she would rather be clipped to him than holding his hand for safety. But then she was in the water and she was connected to no one.

  Salapatek was standing on the stem grating when the boat went over. He had also attached a small dry bag to his climbing harness, and he had a life preserver around his neck and strapped behind his back. He was standing on the stern grating when the boat went over. He and Hewitt were able to step onto the now-horizontal side of the cabin trunk over the Great Cabin. Then the cabin side sank, an elevator going down, taking Salapatek and Hewitt below. They seemed to be snagged, perhaps by their harnesses and tethers. Salapatek was being held under the waves and was concerned about his survival. His first reaction was to rid himself of his harness—losing the connection to Hewitt. Still submerged, he curled his legs up and shoved the harness off with his hands.

  Once he surfaced, Salapatek was alone in the water for time uncounted before he saw a group of immersion suits. He swam toward them, finding Hewitt and Groves and Cleveland. The three were clinging to the wooden grating when he joined them.

  Sometime later, Prokosh and Barksdale joined these four. Then, next to Bounty’s hull, someone in the group spotted an inflated life raft. No one on board had deployed any of the rafts, so this one had to have been set free by its hydrostatic release when the deck went underwater. The raft floated toward them, and the six swam to it. But the wind that drove the raft moved it beyond their reach. Soon, they saw a life-raft canister floating nearby. Cleveland had tied a long rope to the canister earlier, and Barksdale found the rope and let the canister float away a distance before he yanked on it. The yanking triggered a CO2 cartridge inside the canister, opening it and inflating the raft. What emerged was a twenty-five-person raft about thirteen feet in diameter with black rubber tubing and an orange canopy with 25 PERSON stenciled at its peak.

  The gloves of the immersion suits were stiff, making it difficult to hold on to the rope, called a painter. Cleveland grabbed the line, wrapping it around his fist, and the rest of the swimmers joined in to form a chain, hauling on the line, drawing themselves closer to the raft.

  Catching the life raft was exhausting. The swimmers wanted to take a break before climbing in, but they found no easy way to hold on. A line for that purpose circled the raft, but the clumsy immersion-suit gloves made grabbing it impossible until Groves got an idea and bit the line, pulling it with her teeth away from the inflated tubing far enough to slide her gloved hand up under the line. Then she hooked her forearm over the line and hung there, trying to relax, recover.

  Climbing into a life raft might be easy in a swimming pool during training, as several of the crew members had done. Hewitt saw that in thirty-foot seas, there would be a challenge. But she noticed that everyone around her appeared to be calm, and she realized that she was not afraid. She felt safe in her immersion suit, floating beside the life raft far from shore at the edge of a passing hurricane.

  Prokosh, injured and in pain, clipped the tether from his harness to the line encircling the raft, then lay on his back, trying to conserve what little strength he had left. The waves pushed him to the end of the ten-foot tether and he had no choice but to float while the rest of the group surrounded the raft with their elbows lopped through the raft’s line.

  Groves was the first to attempt to enter the raft, and she discovered a new issue. Her immersion suit had filled with water. Too much wet ballast was in the legs of her suit, too heavy a weight for her to climb aboard. Efforts by others to enter the raft failed until Salapatek got his knee onto Cleveland’s thigh. It was just enough of a lift to get Salapatek’s belly on top of the raft tube. He, too, had water in his survival-suit legs, but with Cleveland and the others shoving from below, he squirmed on his belly and got his torso into the raft.

  Salapatek helped haul Cleveland aboard, and soon all were in the raft except Prokosh, who was tethered to the outside and content to stay there for fear of further aggravating his injured back and ribs. But he soon noticed the lifeline encircling the raft was pulling away from the raft. Each wave that hammered him tore the line away, and instead of ten feet from the raft he was now twelve feet away. One big wave might tear the entire line free of the raft and I’m going to be washed away. Now he had no choice and called out to the others to pull him in. When they had him next to the raft, several pairs of hands grabbed his harness. Adam gritted his teeth as searing pain shot down his back and through his chest as he was hauled inside.

  Now the six of them rode up the faces of monstrous waves and slid down their backs, but they were inside the raft with the orange canopy above them, a fabric door to be zippered shut, with lots of room to move around. Emergency supplies were inside the raft, as well as a lot of seawater. Manacled by the immersion-suit gloves, the crew couldn’t open the supplies, so Cleveland stripped down the top of his suit and, with his hands free, opened the supplies. The crew now began looking for a bailer but found none. They spread out to distribute their weight evenly, then opened water bottles within other supplies. When his bottle was empty, Cleveland started bailing with it. Although the seawater was warm, the third mate noticed that he was getting cold, so he pulled the top of his suit back on.

  Occasionally, breaking waves would splash through the raft’s opening. Although they tried, the crew members couldn’t find a way to zip the opening shut. So the view of the sea outside as dawn arrived was a constant, and looking out the opening, they could from time to time
see the previously inflated raft. They watched it drift farther and farther away.

  Groves joined Cleveland, bailing with a water bottle. She had brought along one of the ship’s EPIRBs and had it tied to her. Now and then, she held it out the unzipped raft opening. There was not much else to be done, though. The sailors knew the coast guard was flying a C-130 above. They knew that rescue helicopters should arrive.

  So they relaxed, the mood even-tempered, no one noticeably emotional. They shared their experiences back in the water, their struggles against the sea and the rigging and the dark. They even joked about these events. They talked about what they were going to do when they got home.

  In the silence between words came the sounds of the storm and, in passing moments, of the circling airplane. The sounds of danger and of hope.

  • • •

  It may have happened when the sea flooded down the top flight of steps into the Nav Shack. John Svendsen had returned there when his captain authorized the crew to abandon ship. He had grabbed the microphone of the VHF radio, pushed the button to talk, and called up to the crew of the C-130.

  Then the ship rolled so far that the companionway was underwater, and the flood slammed down the steps, pummeling the chief mate. He fought his way against the flood, escaped to the weather deck, saw Walbridge walking aft along a once-vertical, now-horizontal surface, and finally chose his own, separate path, climbing out along a horizontal mast before he jumped in the water.

  In this, Svendsen had suffered numerous injuries—his face was battered, he had trauma on his head and neck, broken bones in his right hand, and chest and abdominal trauma.

  In the water, Svendsen was alone. He found an unopened life-raft canister, which he abandoned. Later, he found a strobe light and kept it with him. The strobe flashed in the dark. Daylight arrived and it continued to flash. Buoyed by his immersion suit, his distinctive long hair hidden inside the featureless hood, he floated, a piece of debris on a sea littered with similar trash—empty immersion suits among the timbers and gratings and rigging and, not that far away, the still-floating wreck of Bounty.

  Unlike the other flotsam, this red dot with the blinking light had a pulse, although that was steadily slowing as hypothermia set in.

  • • •

  Peering out the rain-streaked aircraft windshield, Wes McIntosh turned his gaze from the coast guard rafts to Bounty’s rafts and noticed something that gave him a glimmer of hope. Two rafts from Bounty were not tumbling, and he thought maybe that was because people were inside.

  Fuel was running low, and although Wes knew another C-130 would soon launch, he wasn’t sure he could stay on scene until it arrived. Over the headset he instructed the drop master to release a self-locating marker buoy, which would electronically mark Bounty’s position for the other aircrews. Once that was done, there was nothing else to drop, and Wes ordered the drop master to close the ramp.

  Flight mechanic Hector Rios said on the internal communications, “Mr. McIntosh, why don’t we close the ramp using the flight-deck controls. Vargo and Laster are puking their brains out.”

  “Roger, that.” Wes then told Vargo and Laster to move clear of the ramp area because Rios would use his controls to seal the plane, a process rarely used.

  Mike Myers was on the radio with Sector, and he turned to Wes and said, “The other C-130 has already launched, and a Jayhawk will launch in a couple minutes.”

  For the first time since they’d arrived at the distress scene, Wes felt relief wash over him. It would be daylight soon, and if the Bounty sailors were still alive, these additional resources would find them and begin a rescue.

  During the next half hour the C-130 alternated between flying at seven thousand feet for less turbulence and better communication with Sector and dropping down to five hundred feet to search for survivors. While the crew could still see several blinking strobe lights, which they now realized were attached to survival suits, it was nearly impossible to tell if anyone was in the suits.

  It was still dark when the second C-130, flown by Commander Peyton Russell, neared the search scene. Russell was flying with copilot Aaron Cmiel, flight mechanic Corey Lupton, Mission System Operators (MSOs) David Dull and Lee Christensen, drop master Jonathan Sageser, and basic aircrewman Austin Black.

  While en route, Russell was briefed on the radio by Wes and Mike. They described how Bounty’s radio operator had abruptly shouted, “We’re abandoning ship!” how the vessel capsized, and that they didn’t know for sure where the survivors were.

  “There are strobe lights blinking in the water on survival suits,” said Wes over the radio, “but it’s difficult to tell if there are people in them. We have dropped two rafts, and there are also two rafts from the vessel. Our rafts have blinking beacons and the Bounty’s rafts have steady lights.”

  A few minutes later the second C-130 arrived, and Commander Russell took over as on-scene coordinator and immediately began searching the water for signs of life. Drop master Sageser, using his NVG, surveyed the debris field and couldn’t shake the feeling that he was looking down inside a giant washing machine. He had done more than his share of search and rescues, but Sageser had never seen waves so confused, coming from all directions, creating what looked like endless miles of whitecapped mountains. It’s going to be tough to spot anyone in the water. That helo can’t get here soon enough. They can hover and get a better look at each of the strobes.

  • • •

  Wes got cleared to return to Raleigh because of his fuel situation. He first made one last pass over the life rafts and then over Bounty, where he saw a strange and haunting sight. To this point the vessel had been lying on its side, its masts battering the ocean’s surface into a froth as waves made them rise and fall. Now the masts were straight up, pointing toward the C-130, as if the ship were coming back to life. Wes shook his head, wondering if the plane’s wild vacillations were making his eyes play tricks on him. Then he realized what had happened. As the interior of the ship filled with additional water, it spread out more evenly, and the ship righted itself, even though the deck was now several feet underwater.

  The MSOs used a night-vision camera that allowed them to zoom in for a better look, and they had the clearest view. One empty survival suit with a blinking strobe was caught in a mast. All three of Bounty’s masts had their top few feet shorn away, but the rigging and shroud lines were still attached to the masts and the yardarms. The lines ran down from the masts and disappeared into the ocean, where they were swallowed up by the foaming white sea, giving the impression that the ship was poking up through clouds. Not an inch of the deck could be seen, yet because the masts and the lines were still intact, Bounty had the look of a ghost ship that could rise up and sail yet again.

  Wes steered the plane toward the coast. Are the sailors alive? he wondered. If they were in the life rafts, why didn’t they fire a flare? He tried to push a disturbing thought out of his mind: Did we just witness the deaths of sixteen people?

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ONE SMALL STROBE ALL ALONE

  Lieutenant Commander Steve Cerveny had had a long night. The Jayhawk helicopter pilot had begun his day at Air Station Elizabeth City at 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning as the ready aircraft commander if he was called upon to fly. It was a quiet day up until Sector had notified him of Bounty’s problems in the evening. He and Duty Officer Todd Farrell immediately learned all they could about the vessel and its predicament. At 9:30 a.m. Steve figured he better get some sleep just in case he was called upon to fly, and he left Todd at the operations desk to monitor the situation.

  Around midnight Steve called Todd Farrell to get a quick update on Bounty. He was told the sailors still thought they could keep the situation under control until morning, but that Wes McIntosh was heading out on the C-130.

  Steve tried to get a little more shut-eye, but now his mind was racing, anticipating the sound of the SAR alarm at any moment. The slim, forty-three-year-old pilot, wi
th a touch of gray in his hair, had over twenty years of flying time and had been around long enough to sense that Bounty might be in bigger trouble than its captain realized. After all, the ship was in the path of a hurricane that Steve had heard meteorologists begin referring to as Frankenstorm. With Steve’s type A personality, he could not simply go back to sleep and block out the possibility that he might be flying into a hurricane at any second.

  Steve’s career as a helicopter pilot began in the navy when he started flight school in 1992. After almost ten years flying for the navy he transitioned to the coast guard, where he began flying the HH-60 Jayhawk, a ten-ton, sixty-five-foot-long helicopter, used for long-range rescues. Air stations such as Elizabeth City, Kodiak, Mobile, and Cape Cod all have Jayhawks, while other stations have the smaller and shorter-range Dolphin helicopter.

  Steve was one of the pilots who flew multiple rescues over several days when Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Then, in 2010, Steve had needed to be rescued, after an awful crash on board a Jayhawk. He was the aircraft’s copilot and was traveling over a remote, mountainous region of Utah after providing security in a joint US-Canadian operation for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia. Snow was falling during the flight, and some was sticking to the aircraft, forcing the pilots to activate the anti-icing mechanism. As they increased altitude over higher terrain, another coast guard helicopter flying in tandem with Steve’s disappeared into a cloud bank. Somewhere in front of both aircraft was a ridgeline that the pilots knew they had to fly over.

  The commander was flying the helicopter from the left seat, and Steve was in the right. As the commander tried to gain additional altitude to crest the ten-thousand-foot ridgeline, the Jayhawk was not responding. Steve called for more airspeed, realizing the anti-icing mechanism was robbing them of power. But the aircraft was sluggish and the commander had no choice except to turn away from the mountaintops. Banking hard to the right, both men were horrified to see the tops of trees emerge from the clouds just a few feet in front of them. The rotors clipped the trees, and in a split second the giant steel bird lurched to a stop and plummeted sideways, crashing through splintering pines and into the snow.