Anchorage Daily News

When Capt. Craig Lloyd of the Coast Guard cutter Munro first heard the mayday call from the sinking ship 100 miles away in the early hours of Sunday morning, he directed his crew to get to the scene fast.

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Undated photo of Eric Peter Jacobsen, captain of the Alaskan Ranger. Jacobsen is one of the victims in the sinking of the catcher-processor vessel 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor on Sunday.

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Forty-seven lives were at stake on the foundering fishing boat. The water was 35 degrees. Seas were 20 feet. Snow squalls wailed around them. The wind chill factor made the air temperature minus 24 degrees.

Lloyd set up his ship's mess hall for mass casualties, expecting the worst.

In the end, the Coast Guard and a nearby ship saved 42 of the 47 people. Four, including the catcher-processor's captain and his top two men, perished. A search for a fifth crewman was called off late Monday night.

"The range of emotions is pretty vast," Lloyd said of his crew from a satellite phone aboard the Munro. "On the one hand, we saved 42 people. On the other hand, we didn't do it perfectly."

As details became available Monday about the sinking of the 203-foot Seattle-based Alaska Ranger as it was on its way to mackerel fishing grounds in the Bering Sea, what emerged was a story of a harrowing rescue effort involving some of the worst conditions on the high seas.

When the first rescuers arrived by helicopter about three hours after the mayday call, they found a grim scene.

They saw three strobe lights and figured those were the life rafts. As they got a little closer, there was a fourth light, a fifth, then a sixth, and the numbers kept growing.

Then they did a quick big-picture scan and saw flashes over a milelong stretch, with no sign of the vessel. Each light was a person, they quickly realized, floating in the water and fighting for life.

The chopper crew picked a spot and began slowly hoisting people out of the water, Lloyd said. They started with those not in life rafts, which was the majority of the fishermen.

The Alaska Warrior, another catcher-processor also owned by Fishing Company of Alaska, which owned the Ranger, showed up about an hour later and mostly picked up the survivors who had made it to the life rafts.

The four men who died -- captain Eric Peter Jacobsen, 65, of Lynnwood, Wash.; mate David Silveira, 50, of San Diego; chief engineer Daniel Cook, in his mid-50s, of San Diego; and Byron Carrillo, believed to be from Seattle -- succumbed to hypothermia, Alaska State Troopers said. They were likely in cold water for hours, said Sgt. Greg Garcia. One body was recovered by the Munro. The other three were taken aboard the Alaska Warrior.

Garcia said initial reports are that the captain and his top staff were the last to get off the sinking boat.

The man lost at sea was fish master Satoshi Konno of Japan. He, as did all those aboard, abandoned ship wearing a survival suit, which greatly increases the likelihood of survival by keeping the wearer afloat and at least somewhat warmer.

On Monday, 10-foot seas, 36-degree water and poor visibility in snowfall hampered efforts to find Konno. At 9:45 p.m. the Coast Guard called off the search.

Konno's job on the ship was to help the skipper find mackerel and manage quality control for the fish, which is largely exported to Japan and Korea, said company spokesman Mike Szymanski.

The Seattle-based ship first began taking on water at around 3 a.m. Sunday after losing rudder control in a mile-deep part of the Bering Sea about 120 miles west of the port of Dutch Harbor, the Coast Guard said.

The cause of the sinking is under investigation. A spokesman for the ship's owner said they did not have sufficient information to determine the cause.

The crew abandoned the ship around 4:45 a.m. after the water coming in hit the generators and cut the power off, and the ship listed 45 degrees to the port side, Lloyd said.

STACKING THEM IN

The first Coast Guard helicopter, an HH-60 Jayhawk, arrived at 6 a.m. The crew aboard the helicopter lowered a rescue swimmer into the water and he began collecting survivors into a basket, which was then hoisted to the hovering chopper.

"They just started stacking them in," Lloyd said. They squeezed 12 fishermen into the tight space before they had to return to the Munro to unload.

The 378-foot cutter was still about 75 miles away. By the time the helicopter delivered its first load of fishermen, nine of the 12 were able to walk but three were not, Lloyd said. One man was unresponsive. Medics performed CPR on him for 45 minutes before he was declared dead, Lloyd said.

Some of the others were given warm IVs, and others were put in warm bags to bring up their dangerously low body temperatures.

"They were just kind of shivering and shaking, with their eyes wide open," Lloyd said of the survivors.

One fisherman didn't make it into the helicopter after he slipped from the basket and dropped 30 to 60 feet back into the ocean. The helicopter, though, could not go back for him. It was out of fuel, the Coast Guard said, and had to return to the cutter immediately.

At one point, one of the two Coast Guard rescue swimmers gave up his seat on the helicopter and stayed on scene in a life raft while the chopper went to refuel.

Crew member Abe Tsuneo was one of the lucky ones who made it onto a life raft. He estimated he floated on the raft for more than three hours before the Alaska Warrior picked him up, he said when reached in Dutch Harbor on Monday night. The 51-year-old from Japan said it was "cold, cold."

The Alaska Warrior arrived around 7 a.m., according to Coast Guard chief petty officer Barry Lane.

Adm. Gene Brooks told KTUU Channel 2 news, "On a search-and-rescue scale, 1 to 10, this is a high 12."

Family members of the men who died were working through their loss Monday.

Edward Cook, brother to Daniel Cook, was on the Alaska Warrior when his brother's body was pulled aboard, a family member said. The brothers were very close. Both were in the Marines during the Vietnam war, and, after, both became fishermen. The brothers ended up on the sister ships, both as engineers, said their niece Judy Brent.

The captain's daughter, Karen Jacobsen, 43, reached in Massachusetts, described her father, Pete Jacobsen, as a third-generation seaman who liked to wake up early and enjoy the sunrise and a good cup of coffee. She said she's going to honor her father by watching the sunrise on Easter mornings.

"He always said that if anything ever happened, he would be the last person off. ... He would go down with the ship if necessary."

About half the survivors remained on the Munro on Monday. Most were still in shock, Lloyd said. They found solace in playing cards and just spending time with one another.

One man was designing a tattoo. It will say he survived the sinking of the Alaska Ranger.

By this morning, all of the survivors were back in Dutch Harbor, the Coast Guard said, and the rescuers were resting.

The Coast Guard also issued a statement: "Our hearts go out to all the families who lost loved ones in this tragic event," Brooks said.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.

ALASKA RANGER'S MAYDAY CALL

A transcript of the distress call from the Alaska Ranger received by the U.S. Coast Guard in Kodiak:

Alaska Ranger: U.S. Coast Guard, this is the Alaska Ranger (garble) 657. Our position is 53 53.4, 53 53.4 north, 169 58.4, 169 58.4 west. We are, uh, flooding, taking on water in our rudder room, we are flooding by the (garble) ah, stern, OK.

USCG: Alaska Ranger, this is Kodiak. Roger, we have your position. I understand you are flooding, taking on water, are concerned. Question: Number of persons onboard?

Alaska Ranger: Number of persons, there's 47 people onboard, OK.

USCG: Roger, understand 47 persons onboard. Give a vessel description, over.

Alaska Ranger: We are, uh, we are a factory trawler. (end)

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