A fateful meeting of the maritime past and present began amid the dread of Hurricane Sandy, when distressing word came from the murk of the roiling Atlantic: the captain and crew of the HMS Bounty, a vessel of timber rigged to evoke eighteenth-century adventure, were abandoning ship.
Before long, a Coast Guard helicopter equipped with twenty-first-century search and rescue technology was hovering in the predawn dimness over a choppy disaster site, some ninety miles from shore. A life raft here. A life raft there. A man in a survival suit, floating like a red starfish. And the 115-foot main mast, jutting from the mostly submerged Bounty.
As the helicopter descended to begin its mission, its four-person crew could see the thirty-foot waves of the coffee-black sea coming from all directions. “Like a washing machine,” recalled Randy Haba, 33, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer who grew up in a farming community outside landlocked Denver, and whose job was to leap into that rinse-cycle turbulence.
The Coast Guard later announced a formal investigation into this terrible adventure at sea, one filled with a dime novel’s blend of heroism and tragedy. Fourteen of the fifteen crew members were rescued. The body of the fifteenth— a woman who claimed relation to the original Bounty’s leading mutineer, Fletcher Christian— was recovered. Later, the Coast Guard reluctantly suspended its search for the longtime captain, Robin Walbridge, 63, who was said to consider the Bounty an extension of himself.
The Atlantic Ocean may have swallowed the ship and its captain, but floating on the surface remain many questions, especially: why go to sea amid the constant reports of this storm’s particular wrath?
Grant Bredeson, 32, a former Bounty deckhand, is helping to collect donations for those affected through a PayPal account. He said that, while he could not speak for his good friend Captain Walbridge, “I do know that Robin always thought a ship is better at sea in a storm like this,” considering the damage such a large vessel could incur and inflict while docked.
Then again, putting out to sea requires people, and the Bounty’s crew was a mix of veterans and novices. Dan Moreland, the captain of another tall ship, the Picton Castle, told The Chronicle Herald of Nova Scotia that the approaching storm had persuaded him not to set sail. “It’s a huge system, and that made the decision very simple,” he said. Captain Moreland also said that, while he knew Captain Walbridge to be an experienced seaman, he was shocked by his decision to sail. “Yes, I have to say yes, I can’t say anything else,” he said. “When I first heard the Bounty was out there, I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’”
The Bounty was a tall ship celebrity, built fifty years ago to promote the movie Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando. Since then, it has had an up-and-down career as a tourist attraction, restoration project and occasional movie prop. It was also a working ship, used to educate people about seafaring and the 1789 mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh.
For the last seventeen years, its captain had been Walbridge, described as a patient, soft-spoken mariner, the opposite of the domineering Bligh stereotype. “A really good man, kind, thoughtful, big-hearted, honest,” said Bert Rogers, the executive director of Tall Ships America, a nonprofit organization based in Newport, Rhode Island.
After a summer of festivals and sailing, the majestic Bounty was temporarily dry-docked for maintenance in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Often seen with other crew members, caulking seams and painting the hull, was Claudene Christian, 42, her long blond hair topped by a green Bounty cap.
Repairs done, the Bounty set sail two weeks ago for a brief stay in New London, Connecticut. Then, on 25 October, it set out for St. Petersburg, Florida, for a weekend tourism stop, after which it was to spend the winter in Galveston, Texas.
Supporters on Facebook wished it fair winds, though some questioned the wisdom of trying to skirt the approaching storm. This prompted someone from the HMS Bounty Organization to post a message early Saturday afternoon, which read in part:
“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!”
On Sunday morning, Captain Walbridge said in an email to supporters that “we are just going to keep trying to go fast and squeeze by the storm and land as fast as we can.” But by 11 o’clock that night, one of its generators had failed and, as the organization’s Facebook page reported, the Bounty was “taking on more water than they would like.” Three hours later, these words appeared: “Your prayers are needed.”
Prompted by a worried call from the Bounty’s owner, who had lost communication with the ship, the Coast Guard in Elizabeth City, North Carolina dispatched a search and rescue airplane to monitor the scene, about ninety miles southeast of Cape Hatteras and 160 miles west of the hurricane’s eye.
Sometime around 4 a.m., Captain Walbridge issued the order to abandon ship. According to Bredeson, the crew had often trained for this moment: grab the floating survival suits (often called “Gumby suits” and equipped with strobe lights) stored in a hatch, roll out and slip into the suit, help anyone needing assistance, and head to your assigned life raft, either the one on port side or the one on starboard.
By now another Coast Guard airplane had arrived to replace the first one on the scene and was soon followed by an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, piloted by Lieutenant Commander Steve Cerveny and Lieutenant Jane Peña, and carrying Haba, the rescue swimmer, and Mike Lufkin, a hoist operator. In the dark sea below, they saw broken bits of brightness: the locator lights on the rafts and survival suits.
As the helicopter descended, Lufkin prepared to lower Haba into the watery vastness. They had trained for this many times, Lufkin said, but never in conditions quite so bad. The winds were strong, and the waves appeared to be right on top of them.
They focused first on the stray survivor Lufkin called “the free-floating gentleman”. Haba, still harnessed to the hoist, swam toward the man but was jerked back twice by the helicopter, all while he tried to go underneath each approaching swell. The third time was the charm. The survivor was “at that giving-up stage”, wide-eyed and lost, Haba recalled. The rescuer grabbed him, told him to relax and secured him to the hoist. “I got you,” he told the man.
Now it was on to other survivors, but not before the helicopter crew saw a brightness beckoning from the 11 o’clock position. An emergency light, attached to a mast of the foundering Bounty.
Soon Haba was swimming to one of the life rafts and identifying himself to the huddled survivors as, simply, the Coast Guard. Soon Lufkin was hoisting other Bounty crew members— two, three, four, five— into the Jayhawk. With fuel levels dropping, the Jayhawk then flew back to land, while another Coast Guard rescue crew picked up nine more people.
What Lieutenant Peña will remember is the sound she heard every time another survivor clambered, exhausted, into the helicopter. “They were cheering every time we picked up somebody new,” she said. The cheering did not last. Several hours later, another Coast Guard rescue team found Christian, alone and unresponsive. She would soon be declared dead. She had lived in Alaska, California, and Oklahoma, attended the University of Southern California and founded a cheerleader doll company. After joining the Bounty crew in the spring, she wrote on Facebook that Fletcher Christian would have been proud.
The search continued for Captain Walbridge. By airplane, helicopter, and cutter, the Coast Guard spent more than ninety hours scouring twelve thousand square nautical miles for a single sea-loving man. But having failed, the Guard could only offer its thoughts and prayers, before moving on to another search, for answers.
Rico says that he wondered at the time what the hell they were doing out there (a ship is better at sea in a storm like this, indeed), but this is why people should have to post a bond when they do stupid things like this; Rico can't imagine what that search cost the American taxpayers, but Willard might want to think about abolishing the Coast Guard to save the money...
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