Clipper Survivors Tell of Horror at Sea

The eight survivors of the sunken Pride of Baltimore returned home Wednesday with a tale of painful days and hellish nights aboard a life raft after the loss of four fellow crew members in a storm-tossed sea.

Some of the eight limped, but all smiled as they were greeted at the airport by hundreds of well-wishers, including Gov. Harry Hughes and Mayor William Donald Schaefer.

Barefoot Cook

The ship’s cook, James Chesney, 25, of Newmarket, N.H., who suffered a broken rib, walked barefoot because he could not fit his swollen feet into shoes.

The two-masted ship, built in the city’s harbor nearly 10 years ago in the style of the great Chesapeake Bay clipper schooners of the mid-19th Century, went down May 14 in a squall about 240 miles north of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

“One could barely see 50 feet,” First Mate John Flanagan, 27, of Niantic, Conn., said at an airport news conference.

The eight scrambled to collect two flashlights, three flares, a life raft, food, water and a first-aid kit as the ship was sucked under in what “might have been two minutes,” Flanagan said. There was no time to send a distress signal, he said.

Endured Stinging Rains

They endured 30- to 90-knot winds and stinging rains, then clung to the raft, built to hold six people, for 4 1/2 days before a Norwegian tanker spotted their flashlight and pulled them to safety early Monday morning.

The survivors had seen five other vessels but had been unable to get their attention, Flanagan said.

The nights aboard the raft “were so horrible, the days seemed bearable,” Flanagan said, describing painful sores from sitting in the water-filled raft.

At night, because the survivors could barely see one another, it was especially difficult to move.

“You could not sit in comfort,” he said. “When one wants to stretch his knee out, the other seven have to pull theirs in.”

Fighting Back Tears

As Flanagan recounted the tragedy, deckhand Leslie McNish, 30, of Somis, Calif., bit her lip and fought back tears.

Each person subsisted on a quarter of a biscuit a day and a little water.

Some of the crew might have held out five more days, but not all would have stayed alive, Flanagan said. “We would have started losing people in another day and a half to two days.”

The survivors flew from Puerto Rico in corporate jets provided by Pride of Baltimore Inc., the nonprofit sponsors of the clipper’s sailing ventures.

The other survivors were identified as Second Mate Joe McGeady, 26, of Severna Park; bosun Dan Krachuck, 22, of Springfield, Pa.; deckhand Susie Huesman, 24, of Baltimore; deckhand Robert Foster, 23, of Alexandria, Va., and deckhand Scott Jeffrey of North Linthicum.

Search Continues

Coast Guard planes and cutters continued to comb 11,000 square miles of ocean for signs of the ship’s captain, Armin E. Elsaesser, 42, of South Dartmouth, Mass., and engineer Vinney Lazaro of West Redding, Conn. Two other missing crew members, ship’s carpenter Barry Duckworth of Georgetown, Del., and deckhand Nina Schack, 23, of Baltimore, are presumed dead.

Meanwhile, Baltimore residents, touched by the loss of the ship that promoted this historic port city, have responded with messages of sympathy and offers to help rebuild the sailing ship, city officials said.

However, the city is holding back during the mourning period.

“It’s much too soon to focus on that. Now is the time to focus on the coming home of the survivors,” Pat Bernstein, a spokeswoman for Mayor Schaefer, said.

Rebuilding Considered

Christopher C. Hartman, secretary of Pride of Baltimore Inc., said the possibility of rebuilding was under consideration.

“We are just beginning to think about it. . . . I think that over the next few weeks we’ll be listening to the public--to the people here and in Maryland--to see if it’s possible,” he said.

The chance of bringing the Pride of Baltimore up from the depths was remote, experts from the Woods Hole (Mass.) Deep Submergence Laboratory said.