Updated Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 11:11 a.m. EDT
HALIFAX – The body of a missing crew member of a sunken tall ship, built in Nova Scotia, was found in the Atlantic Ocean Monday afternoon, but the search continues for the the captain of HMS Bounty.
Lt. Commander Jamie Frederick confirmed 42-year-old Claudene Christian was found, but was “unresponsive when recovered and unresponsive when returned to the airport.”
Frederick said her body was hoisted into a Coast Guard helicopter, before being taken to Albemarle Hospital in Elizabeth City, NC.
The owner of the vessel posted this message on the HMS Bounty Facebook page, just before 8:00 p.m. EDT Monday, in response to the news of Christian’s death.
“Thank you to everyone for your support and prayers at this devastating time. We want to thank the USCG for their bravery and risking their lives to save ours. At this time, 14 crew members have been safely returned to land. There were 16 brave crew members aboard the Bounty. With sadness in our hearts we are reporting that we have lost one crew member and still missing another. The USCG is continuing their effort to search for our last crew member. Please continue to send your love and support to us, it is much needed.”
The crew of HMS Bounty abandoned ship early Monday morning after spending hours adrift and taking on water off the coast of North Carolina.
The U.S. Coast Guard released this photo taken by Petty Officer 2nd Class Tim Kuklewski
Fourteen crew members made it into life rafts and were eventually rescued by U.S. Coast Guard helicopters.
But Christian and Capt. Robin Walbridge remained unaccounted for much of the day. Coast Guard search crews spotted Christian around 4:30 p.m. EDT, about eight miles from where the ship went down.
USCG confirmed 63-year-old Walbridge and Christian were among three people that fell overboard Monday morning. The third person managed to make it into a life boat with the other survivors.
Walbridge has been captain of the ship for more than 20 years.
HMS Bounty, a replica of the famed merchant ship, was built in Lunenburg, N.S. in 1960 and appeared in the Marlon Brando movie The Mutiny on the Bounty.
Christian’s descendent, Fletcher Christian, was the man behind the infamous mutiny in 1789.
Frederick added “our hearts and prayers go to the families of both the female crew member and obviously to the captain still missing.”
The Coast Guard resumed its search for Walbridge Tuesday morning, with the help of an HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft, based in Clearwater, Fla. A 115-metre, high-endurance Coast Guard cutter set out from Charleston, SC is en route to the search area, which covers about 2,500 square kilometres. Seas are reported to be at 4.5 metres and wind speeds are at about 68 km/h.
According to USCG, the water temperature in the area is at 25 C, while the air temperature is at about 19 C.
Coast Guard officials say Walbridge and Christian were wearing life jackets and survival suits that could keep them afloat and protected from cold waters for up to 15 hours.
Watch a Global News interview with Capt. Robin Walbridge and Claudene Christian at the bottom of this page.
The Coast Guard also released the names of those rescued. Among them were: Daniel Cleveland, 25; John Svendsen, 41; Matthew Sanders, 37; Adam Prokosh, 27; Douglas Faunt, 66; John Jones, 29; Drew Salapatek, 29; Joshua Scornavacchi, 25; Anna Sprague, 20; Mark Warner, 33; Christopher Barksdale, 56; Laura Groves, 28; Jessica Hewitt, 25; Jessica Black, 34.
All crew members are from the U.S.
Video of the helicopter rescue of the 12 crew members courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard
Rescuers dealt with 5.5 metre seas and winds of about 64 km/h as they hoisted the survivors up into separate helicopters.
Coast Guard rescue swimmer Randy Haba helped pluck several crew members off a 7.5-metre rubber life raft. He was also lowered to a crew member floating in the water alone. He wrapped a strap around his body, and raised him to the chopper.
“It’s one of the biggest seas I’ve ever been in. It was huge out there,” Haba told The Associated Press.
Category 1 Hurricane Sandy is one of the biggest storms to ever hit the U.S. East Coast.
The rescue crew members were taken back to land and treated at a hospital in Elizabeth City, NC.
Simonin said the Bounty’s water pumps stopped working properly and the ship lost power to its generator, making “it impossible to keep up with the de-watering.”
The ship’s owner, Robert Hansen, was aware of the seepage, but alerted USCG after losing contact with the vessel Sunday evening.
The Coast Guard’s Fifth District command centre later picked up a distress signal from the ship and dispatched an HC-13 Hercules aircraft, which made contact with the crew.
Coast Guard Vice Adm. Robert Parker, Operational Commander for the Atlantic Area, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the ship had taken on about three metres of water when the crew abandoned it.
The ship sank in the hours after the crew boarded the life boats.
The 55-metre long three-mast tall ship, which has been used as a training vessel in recent years, was en route to St. Petersburg, Fla.
Simonin told Global News on Monday Walbridge was “on the right course to stay out of the way.” The ship was about 257 kilometres west of Sandy’s eye when it got into trouble.
But Gerald Zwicker, one of the men who helped build the replica at the Smith and Rhuland Shipyard, wonders why the Bounty was in the path of the storm at all.
“They talked about that storm from the first part of last week… you know how big it is,” he told Global News.
“You would have thought they got out of that area,” he said.
His last memento of the ship is a wooden ballpoint pen, made from scraps of The Bounty’s hull.
“All that work. All that history in that boat is just gone, just like that,” Zwicker said.
The ship has been a regular visitor to Halifax, as a part of the Tall Ships Festival. It’s most recent visit was in July of this year, when both Walbridge and Christian shared their stories of the now-lost HMS Bounty.
*With files from The Associated Press and Global’s Brett Ruskin
Comments