HALIFAX – The U.S. Coast Guard will investigate the sinking of HMS Bounty, during Hurricane Sandy, earlier this week.
The 54-metre, three-mast replica sank Monday morning, about 145 kilometres southeast of Hatteras, NC.
The Coast Guard rescued 14 of its crew from life rafts, but Capt. Robin Walbridge and deckhand Claudene Christian were washed further out to sea.
Coast Guard search and rescue crews recovered 42-year-old Christian’s body later that day, about 13 kilometres from where the ship when down late Monday afternoon. Coast Guard officials said she was unresponsive when recovered and unresponsive upon arrival at the airport. She was declared dead at Albermale Hospital in Elizabeth City, N.C.
Officials called off the search for Walbridge Thursday evening, after 90 hours, but he is still considered missing.
The Coast Guard announced Friday morning Rear Adm. Steven Ratti has ordered a formal investigation to determine the cause of the sinking of HMS Bounty.
The investigation, under Cmdr. Kevin M.Carroll, will look for the cause of the accident, evidence of equipment failure, as well as evidence of misconduct or negligence.
The vessel got into trouble Sunday evening after its water pump and generator failed in 5.5-metre seas.
The ship couldn’t cope with what was considered normal seepage, but without the pump the crew was unable “to keep up with the de-watering,” Bounty spokesperson Tracey Simonin said Monday.
Questions have been raised about why the ship, which was en route from Connecticut to Florida, was out to sea while Sandy was swirling off the U.S East Coast.
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News organizations have quoted Walbridge, in a video uploaded to YouTube Oct. 29, saying “we chase down hurricanes.”
The interview was recorded in August and aired three days later on community television in Belfast, ME.
Walbridge told interviewer Ned Lightner, “You try to get up as close to the eye of it as you can and you stay down in the southeast quadrant and when it stops you stop. You don’t want to get in front of it, you want to stay behind it. But you also get a good ride out of a hurricane.”
Simonin told Global News in a phone interview Friday morning she was unaware of the comment and didn’t think it was the captain’s intent to imply he goes after storms.
She said “he always took the utmost precaution with the ship and the crew.”
She added encountering six-metre waves “is not an uncommon thing when you travel as far and wide as we do.”
Walbridge said in his interview with Lightner the highest waves he had ever encountered with the Bounty were 21 metres high.
Simonin said HMS Bounty has crossed the Atlantic three times under the current ownership of Robert Hanson and Walbridge was the captain of the ship for about 20 years.
She said all of the crew knew what they were doing and could handle inclement weather.
“It was thought through and it was not callously done,” she said. Siminon told Global News on Monday Walbridge was trying to “skirt” the storm.
“We were all very close to him. He was a true inspiration to anyone he came in contact with,” she said.
The ship was built in Lunenburg, N.S. for the 1962 film “Mutiny on the Bounty” and was featured in several other films.
Christian was a descendent of Fletcher Christian, was one of the mutineers aboard the original Bounty in 1789.
HMS Bounty was a regular visitor to Nova Scotia, for the Tall Ships Festival. It’s most recent visit was in July of this year.
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