Rescue of the Bounty: Disaster and Survival in Superstorm Sandy (21 page)

Walbridge was in his late forties when he found McCann, the woman who would earn his trust, who could accept life on his terms. For most of his first four decades, he had been rebelling against the most significant woman in his life, Anna Palmer Walbridge, his mother. For many years, he thought she was the worst of mothers, a person who was too far removed from her own childhood to comprehend what it was like to be a child or to be her son.

Robin Walbridge remembered that when he was a child his mother had once gotten him up before daybreak to see a circus train arriving in town, watch the elephants raise the big top, and eat frozen peanut butter sandwiches she had made in haste. He resented her for disrupting his sleep when he was ten to watch the Sputnik satellite pass overhead. He carried a grudge because, when he was sixteen, she had made him promise he would finish high school.

He believed his childhood was a miserable one, and when he left home, he did not return to see her. But then, in his late thirties, a woman he was seeing asked him why he hated his mother.

He realized he had no good answer, and so he invited his mother to visit him. It had been so long that he didn’t recognize her at the airport.

There the bitterness evaporated, replaced by a warmth that always had been in the captain’s heart, a warmth subsequently fanned by monthly phone calls. When he stopped hating, he began using his native talent for analysis, coming to realize that his mother had her own issues and, as a mother, she did the best she could raising her children. If he had children of his own, he would want to give them the same good experiences that his mother gave him because she shaped him into an adult who liked himself.

This was the man whom Scornavacchi saw gazing at a photograph of a woman. He did not intrude on the skipper’s private thoughts. He moved on.

Moments later, Prokosh, who had been in the bunk on the port side for only a few minutes, got the word that Walbridge had issued the order: Put on your immersion suits. He crawled across the slant of the deck to a suit and, lying in pain from his injured back, shook it from its bag, unrolled it, and began pulling it over his shoes.

His pain was too intense for him to stand, so Prokosh waited for the water to actually rush into the tween deck—waited lying on the deck boards while, around him, the rest of the crew milled about like a race of obese beings in their ridiculously bulky suits.

The officers pulled on the legs of the suits and zipped the fronts up to their waists, leaving their hands free to help the rest of the crew, who now assembled by the Nav Shack stairs, the only reasonable place to leave the tween deck when encumbered this way.

Each crew member selected from the pile of suits one that fit him or her. Scornavacchi, who would have fit in a small suit, chose a medium to be sure that Claudene and Laura were well suited. The crew members helped each other stretch the neoprene to stuff their hands into the gloved arms. Even now, calm prevailed. There was no urgency to get on deck.
Bounty
was riding evenly, if on a severe tilt, with the water now at least ankle deep on the high side of the tween deck, deeper to leeward.

As was often the case aboard
Bounty
, word spread among crew members, this time suggesting that climbing harnesses and life jackets were to be worn outside the immersion suits. The coast guard, circling above now in the C-130, routinely asks a vessel in distress whether its occupants are wearing life jackets. In this case, jackets would be redundant since everyone aboard was inside the greater protection of a Gumby suit. There was no direct order from Walbridge to don a life jacket, but most crew members heard the spreading word. At the same time, the explanation circulated that harnesses would allow them to clip together once they had abandoned ship. They could bring along personal “ditch” bags, shackled to the harness, so they could save possessions they felt were vital.

Getting into harnesses and life jackets once the crew members were inside the immersion suits was cumbersome and demanded more cooperation. One crew member had a multitool that had a set of pliers. He used this to help tighten harnesses that the wearers were unable to adjust on their own.

Doug Faunt, in his cabin forward of Walbridge’s, put on an extra layer of warm clothing before he got into his suit.

Claudene Christian, in the next cabin, stepped into a size small.

Jessica Hewitt reminded people around her to strap the legs tight with the Velcro straps around the ankles so that walking would be easier.

Scornavacchi felt lost in his massive medium-size suit.

But it still was not time to climb up to the dangers of the weather deck. That moment came after three o’clock in the morning, when the crew was shin deep in sloshing water.

•  •  •  

Wes and Mike continued guiding the C-130 through the turbulence, hoping that each time they tried to reach
Bounty
the ship would still be afloat.

“
Bounty
, this is the coast guard C-130, do you copy?”

“This is
Bounty
, we hear you loud and clear.”

“We can finally see you, and we are going to relay your predicament back to headquarters. In the meantime we’re going to see about getting pumps to you and locate ships that can head to your position.”

Wes played through the procedure of dropping pumps to a vessel taking on water. Normally that is done from an altitude of two hundred feet, a height from which the pump has a realistic chance of making it to the vessel. The pump is in a watertight canister with a long trailing line. If all goes as planned, the pump lands in the water and the line lands on the vessel’s deck, where a sailor can grab it and haul the pump to the ship.

Wes factored in the sixty-five-knot winds and the enormous waves and quickly concluded that with
Bounty
a pump would have small chance of being recovered by the crew and would probably add a whole new element of danger for everyone involved. If Wes took the plane down to two hundred feet, he risked getting his entire crew killed, and he immediately dismissed that notion. He might get lucky by releasing the pump from five hundred feet, but if a
Bounty
crew member scrambled out on the steeply angled deck to retrieve the line, very possibly the sailor would be swept overboard. “I worried the pump would make things worse,” recalled Wes. “The seventy-pound pump might plummet directly onto the deck like a missile, crashing through the planking and opening yet another spot for water to enter the vessel.” Adding to his concern was that the heavy rain made visibility of the ship impossible until they were directly over it.

Wes made another pass over the ship, and when it briefly came into view, he noticed that the starboard-side rail was now completely submerged. He made up his mind about the pump. Because
Bounty
was taking on a foot of water an hour, Wes knew it needed a much larger pump than he had on the plane and probably several, operating simultaneously, to make a dent in the incoming water. Dropping one small pump would barely have an impact, and it wasn’t worth risking the life of a
Bounty
crew member’s racing out onto the pitching deck to grab a line. Wes relayed his decision back to Sector North Carolina, and they agreed.

“
Bounty
, this is CG C-130, how copy?”

“Loud and clear.”

“In these winds it would be next to impossible to get a pump to you, and even if we got the trailing line on your deck, retrieving this one small pump would put the life of your crew members in jeopardy.”

“Roger, we understand.”

“What are your plans?”

“We are in survival suits. We have multiple EPIRBs and have two large life rafts. We hope to make it until daylight, when we can more safely get in the rafts. Each raft will have an EPIRB and a handheld VHF radio, but we can’t guarantee they will work if they get wet. Are there any ships on the way?”

Wes had to tell them the truth. “Negative.”

After an awkward silence, Mike Myers spoke with Svendsen, reviewing the plans for abandoning ship safely.

When the conversation was over, Sector North Carolina asked Wes for his ORM (Operational Risk Management, a numerical score to determine the risk factor to the aircraft and crew if they stayed on scene). Before Wes responded, he used his internal communication system to ask the entire crew how they were feeling. Dead silence. Wes suspected the crew were having difficulty with the turbulence, but their temporary silence confirmed it. Then one crew member said, “Sir, I know a few of us are feeling pretty sick.”

“Roger,” said Wes. “We’re going to climb back up in altitude where the gusts are not as powerful. We will still have excellent comms with the sailing vessel.”

Wes notified Sector that his risk analysis was that the crew and aircraft were taking a beating, but that they could continue the mission. His numerical score, based on factors such as airsickness, fatigue, visibility, turbulence, and the flight time, put him “in the red,” which was cause for concern. Sector then confirmed that because the vessel’s command thought they could make it to morning, it would be best to have the helicopter launch just before dawn. It was simply too dangerous to send a helo into Sandy at night. “Roger,” said Wes. “But remember, we are going to need at least two helicopters, with sixteen people in life rafts.”

Mike eased the aircraft back up to seven thousand feet and continued the racetrack pattern over the
Bounty
. Every now and then either Mike or Wes would ask
Bounty
for an update. Conditions were more stable at the higher altitude, and Wes hoped his crew, who were being knocked around in the belly of the plane, would get a better handle on their motion sickness. He knew they weren’t going home anytime soon.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, the commander decided it was time to descend to five hundred feet for a visual on
Bounty
. He hoped to see the ship listing at the same angle as before, but instead the vessel was farther on its side, with more green water sweeping over the deck. The ship’s three massive masts were not all that far from the tops of the waves.

Wes became increasingly anxious about
Bounty
’s chances of making it to morning. Adding to his concern, Svendsen asked if any helicopters had launched. Wes responded that the helicopters would arrive in the morning if possible, that the hurricane winds were extremely dangerous for a helo to fly into at night and try a rescue.

It was now about 4:00 a.m. and the commander felt that conditions were deteriorating on
Bounty
faster than the sailors had anticipated. Wes decided it would be prudent to call Air Station Elizabeth City and tell Todd Farrell at the Operations Center exactly what was going on and paint a complete picture of the conditions so the helicopter pilots would have as much information as possible.

To Wes’s surprise a helicopter copilot named Jane Peña picked up the phone rather than Todd. Wes explained, “Things are getting worse on board the vessel; before too long there will probably be people in the water.”

He had Jane’s full attention—she was part of the ready crew that would launch if need be. Wes described the powerful wind gusts and the three-story waves crashing in confused seas. As they ended the conversation, Wes added, “We are going to need another C-130 out here. We’re running low on fuel. They should launch as soon as possible in case the worst happens.”

Jane hung up the phone and looked at both Todd Farrell and Lieutenant Commander Steve Cerveny, who were standing next to her, listening to her side of the conversation. “Wes thinks the sailors might have to abandon ship before dawn. And he needs another C-130 out there ASAP.”

While Todd got busy coordinating the next plane to launch, Steve said to Jane, “Well, I hope
Bounty
can make it to morning, but let’s get our aircraft and crew ready to go at a moment’s notice, just in case.” Jane gave a tense nod. This would be her first major helicopter rescue, and the flying conditions would be unlike anything she’d ever remotely experienced. She could feel the excitement and anticipation building in her and hoped they would launch soon.

•  •  •  

On board the C-130, Mike Myers talked with Sector. He was asked to relay a message to
Bounty
and picked up the radio:

“Another C-130 is coming. Would two P-100 pumps be enough to dewater the ship and keep it afloat?”

Svendsen responded with a sense of humor, “Two P-100s would be nice, but two P-250s would even be better.”

Myers sensed that behind the gallows humor Svendsen was deadly serious that only the largest of pumps could even have a chance at saving
Bounty
. Myers’s heart went out to the mariners, and he stayed on the radio, talking and trying to keep the sailors’ spirits up. Although Mike had only just been qualified to fly C-130s for six weeks, he did have thirteen years of experience flying helicopters, and this offered him a unique perspective of the different emotional involvement that being in a C-130 had compared to a helo. The helicopter crews usually have a much shorter interaction with those in distress: the helo would arrive on scene, locate the target, and execute the rescue as quickly as possible. But now, on board the C-130, Mike would be on scene for hours and had already formed an emotional connection with the crew. “It was painful,” Mike later recounted, “to experience their highs and lows.”

Doug Faunt was in the Nav Shack when he heard Walbridge give the order.
We only have one way to get on deck,
the captain noted,
so as many as possible should be on deck.

Faunt didn’t need more prompting. He began climbing the starboard flight of steps in the companionway.

Hewitt was right there with him. She had been uncomfortable—feeling trapped—in her immersion suit belowdecks. Adam Prokosh, despite his pain, was with her, climbing.

John Svendsen was in the Nav Shack, and as his crewmates passed, he called out their names: “Prokosh on deck!”