Tall ship HMS Bounty sinks off N.C. coast; two still missing

By Ian Shapira, Monday, October 29, 11:58 AM

The Coast Guard is searching for two people off the coast of North Carolina who had been passengers aboard the tall ship HMS Bounty, which lost power in Hurricane Sandy and sank after 14 other passengers were rescued.

The Coast Guard said that a C-130 Hercules aircraft and a MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter are still scouring the waters for the two missing people, who did not make it aboard lifeboats about 90 miles off Hatteras, N.C., on the Outer Banks. As of late Monday morning, the Coast Guard had not completed its interviews with the 14 survivors, and had not identified the missing people.

The Coast Guard added that the two missing people were attempting to flee the ship and board the lifeboats when a huge wave hurled them into the water. A third person, a man, was also thrown into the sea, but other survivors in the lifeboats were able to pull him in.

The HMS Bounty, a three-masted sailing ship that has appeared in two Hollywood movies, was reportedly sailing from Connecticut to St. Petersburg, Fla., when it began taking on too much water and lost propulsion Sunday night.

The ship sent an emergency distress signal to the Coast Guard at about 9 p.m. Sunday. About two hours later, the HMS Bounty Organization, which owns the ship, called the Coast Guard, confirming that it had lost radio contact with the vessel, according to the Coast Guard.

By 2 a.m. Monday, the Coast Guard had dispatched a C-130 aircraft to the scene to communicate directly with the ship’s passengers. At 6:30 a.m Monday, the first Jayhawk helicopter arrived, and found that the passengers had abandoned the ship and boarded 25-foot lifeboats. The Coast Guard said the passengers wore cold-water survival suits and life jackets and that the lifeboats had canopies.

In general, Coast Guard rescue helicopters lower baskets into the water and deploy rescue swimmers, who then help passengers climb into the baskets.

“With 40 mile-per-hour winds, 18-foot seas, waves and swells, and a mile of visibility, those are absolutely challenging circumstances to conduct this kind of hoist operation,” said Lt. Mike Patterson, a Coast Guard spokesman. “That’s a testimony to what our folks do.”

Another Coast Guard spokesman, Nyx Cangemi, said there were several reasons the helicopters took several hours to arrive at the scene. One of the helicopters had been moved from its Coast Guard base near the North Carolina coast in anticipation of the hurricane and to prevent it suffering damage, Cangemi said. Also, the crews had to wait for some time for the winds to die down to reach the HMS Bounty’s location.

The HMS Bounty Organization could not be reached for comment. Its Web site says the ship was built for the 1962 film “Mutiny on the Bounty,” which starred Marlon Brando. The ship was also used in the 2006 film “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”

 Easy E wrote:

One of the missing was reportedly the Captain of the ship.