Oceans and Seas

the work of author Michael Krieger

Part 40: Lifeline – All the Men In the Sea, The Untold Story of One of the Greatest Rescues in History

Posted on Feb 23, 2018

Part 40: Lifeline – All the Men In the Sea, The Untold Story of One of the Greatest Rescues in History

Rountree, the diving supervisor, was one of those in the center. A tall, blond athlete, Chuck was in reasonably good shape. Still, he was in his fifties, and during the ordeal, which had worn him down, he had injured his foot. He struggled to keep his head above water, but those he was pushing against were frantic and less than half his age. He started getting shoved beneath other men. Alarmed, Ray, Mitch, and Phil pulled him up between them to a spot along the raft’s inner pe­riphery, where he hung from a lifeline gasping for air.

Rountree sank to the center of the raft

As time passed, the four divers became worried that those in the center would drown. They tried to convey to their Mexican comrades that the raft was upside down and that they all needed to climb out so that they could right it. But none of the divers could speak enough Spanish to make themselves understood. The Mexicans, many terrified and nearly all suspicious, were not going back into the sea for anything. Knives appeared, and the attempt to right the raft was abandoned. So they drifted. On top of wave crests they would catch glimpses of the Captain John, the Carolina, and another boat, but since none of the rescuing crafts came anywhere near them or seemed to see them, they just hung on.

Rescuing men in such circumstances was all but absurd. The rescuers faced the real possibility that their boats might go broadside to the seas and capsize while bringing men onboard. The smaller Captain John didn’t roll as badly as the two supply boats, but her afterdeck was lower, barely 5 feet above the water, and breaking waves were sweeping it with a vengeance. Tons of white water surged over the deck, engulfing everything on it. How could any man stand up to that deluge? The waves came so fast that the men would have only a second or two to save themselves.

As they waited for Robert Trosclair to guide the tug into position for their attempt to bring aboard the first swimmers, Lorenzo Wilson, the tall, angular Nicaraguan first mate, and the four crew members huddled in the shelter of the big winch drum just aft of the deckhouse. Pedro, Vincent, Wilbert, and Victor Vega, the engineer, looked apprehensively as a wave swept the deck on which they would be working.

“I’m just as scared as you,” Lorenzo told them. “We might get washed overboard or this boat might go down, but we aren’t gonna worry about that right now. What we gonna do,” he continued, fingering a coil of 3/8-inch nylon line, “is use this so we don’t get washed over the side.”

 

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