Ship Tragedy : Man Cheats Death--on Land, Sea

She listed to starboard. Her stern sank, and she settled. The sea washed in through the galley, and they saw it sweep away an ice chest. Then she sank some more, and her bow rose straight up. From the life raft, she looked like a buoy against the sky.

Tom Jacobsen heard her port engine rumble and die. He could smell diesel fuel. She sank steadily, a foot every three or four seconds. The sea rushed in through the stern, and it forced air up and out through the foredeck vents. From 40 feet away, the rush sounded like a roar.

Jacobsen and the seven others in the crew tried to row the two rafts and an aluminum skiff away from the sinking ship, lest they be sucked down. But they seemed to draw closer.

Slips Out of Sight

Then the West 1 slipped out of sight, so smoothly, Jacobsen thought, that a talented sailor might have tiptoed off the bowsprit and walked away.

But nobody did. Instead, for two harrowing weeks the crew tossed and drifted across 230 miles of the Pacific north of Hawaii. Capt. Enrique Calderon, 59, died of dehydration and exposure. His crew buried him at sea. They were rescued by a research ship 350 miles northeast of Honolulu. But not before First Mate Thomas Jacobsen, 43, had struck out on his own. One day after the sinking, he had climbed into the aluminum skiff and gone to find help. Instead, he disappeared.

For 17 days, he drifted and sailed in the 16-foot skiff until he washed up on a mysterious, isolated lump of lava called Niihau, or “The Forbidden Island.”

Jogger’s Watch, Bible

He had cheated death on the water. Now he would cheat it again on land. With a sextant, a compass, a jogger’s watch, the New Testament, a deck of cards and a pocket knife, Tom Jacobsen survived.

He went to sea June 9. He returned July 10. Contrary winds might have blown him away forever. “Providence had one hell of a big hand in it,” he acknowledges. But he adds that he did not “get religion” out there. His regrets are the death of his captain--and that he failed to get back to civilization until five days after his daughter Rebecca’s seventh birthday. It was something he had not wanted to miss.

Tom Jacobsen, an experienced seaman, first stepped aboard the West 1 in Seattle. She was a 167-foot commercial fish processing boat headed for the Philippines, where the owner, Fish West of San Francisco, intended to sell her. Jacobsen needed a job. He hired on as chief mate for $195 a day.

He met Capt. Calderon, who said little--but who Jacobsen later learned was having premonitions about the voyage. Calderon told his wife: “You know, this is a small boat, and if it sinks, if I die, they just throw me away.” A few days before the West 1 got under way, Calderon decided not to go. Then, on the day before she sailed, he changed his mind. He went.

Jacobsen also met the rest of the crew: Tom Devins, the Fish West representative; Doug Hamilton, the second mate; Ronald Meyer, the ship’s engineer; and crew members George Thomas, Brad Griffeth and Ann McGuire.

Three or four days out, the cook ran out of eggs. Otherwise, the voyage was uneventful.

‘Get Up, We’re Sinking’

The hand of fate stayed steady until the ship was three days out of Honolulu--575 miles to the northeast. It was June 21, which Tom Jacobsen remembered was his Uncle Sigurd’s 78th birthday. Before the day was out, he would have given anything to join Uncle Sigurd in his customary celebration: cutting wood for the winter. Instead, at 4:40 a.m., a voice cried out: “Get up, we’re sinking. Everybody get up! We’re sinking!”

Jacobsen climbed out of bed, tried to turn on the lights, discovered there was no electricity and dressed in the dark. At 5 feet, 10 inches tall and 155 pounds, it should have been easy for him to stand straight in his cabin. But he discovered that he could not. The boat was listing. On the galley deck, Thomas told him not to enter the engine room because it was taking on water. Thomas said he had felt a vibration. But what had happened nobody seemed to know.

Although Devins and Griffeth were trying to lower life rafts, Jacobsen noticed that the West 1 was still under way; launching rafts from a moving vessel could cause them to fill with water or tangle their lines in the screws. Running the engines at full-ahead seemed ill-advised, too, since they might, for some reason, be what was drawing the water aboard. Jacobsen ran to the bridge. Calderon was sitting in the captain’s chair. He seemed to be in shock. Jacobsen told him the vessel was sinking. “Stop the ship,” he said. “Put the engines in neutral.” The captain did.

Ties Rafts to Skiff

There were no flashlights. In the gray light of dawn, Jacobsen helped lower one aluminum skiff that filled with water and sank. He and Devins lifted the second, a red one, onto the rail at the bow of the ship. They took off its engine, an Evinrude 35, and placed it inside the skiff. Then they tied the two rafts, afloat and already holding some of the crew, to the skiff.

When the West 1 went down, the boat, now perched on the rail, would float free--and the two rafts and their huddled cargo would not be pulled down with the ship.

In the chaos, Jacobsen ran to his quarters, collected his sea bag, then dashed to the captain’s quarters. Calderon, already in one of the rafts, had asked him to find his Bible. It was under his pillow. He ran up to the bridge and checked the radios, just in case. All were dead except one, an emergency, battery-operated signal-sender that Devins had told him he had already activated. Jacobsen grabbed his sextant and the captain’s, which Calderon had left behind, and a chart of the Pacific Ocean, including Hawaii. He also grabbed his own shortwave radio and stuffed it into his sea bag.

Before leaving the ship, Jacobsen found its emergency position-indicating radio beacon, known as EPIRB. It was designed to float free of the ship, turn itself upright and automatically transmit an SOS. He took it along with him to the rafts.

Leave Food Behind

But what Jacobsen and everybody else left behind were cans of juices, fruit and other food from the pantry; blankets from the bunks; the ship’s long aluminum bow hook, which would have made an excellent mast or an even better boom on the skiff; sheets that would have made excellent sails; shower curtains that could have been used to collect rainwater; and the fresh water in the ship’s pipes, which could have been drained into buckets or garbage bags and taken along.

Last to Leave Ship

Jacobsen and Devins were the last to abandon ship. They lowered themselves down a hand line directly into the rafts. They tried to operate the EPIRB, but its base had come loose and its battery and wiring hung down into the sea water. It appeared to work for awhile, but the line tying it to one of the rafts worked loose--and it floated away. Jacobsen learned later that a navy ship had gotten an EPIRB signal--but needed two to determine position--and that the second signal, if there was one, was never received.

There was nothing else to do but wait for the West 1 to sink.

“It was,” Jacobsen says, “a very impressive sight.”

Afterward, tensions arose quickly. Most centered on the aluminum skiff. When the wind and seas were up, it kept threatening to hit the inflated rafts. Not only did it have a sharp screw on its engine, but it had a jagged bow, the result of an old mishap. Devins wanted to set the skiff adrift.

Recalls Similar Accounts

Jacobsen said no. He had read accounts of shipwreck where life rafts had begun leaking. “It’s goddamn stupid,” he said, “to turn loose a boat that can’t sink.”

Devins persisted.

Finally, the next day, Jacobsen decided he would get into the skiff and set it adrift. He planned to stay in the vicinity of the rafts but remain far enough away to ease the tension--and double chances for a casual encounter with another ship.

“George,” he said to Thomas, the deckhand who was with him in his raft, “get my stuff together. I’m going to load the skiff.”

Jacobsen put aboard his share of water--18 containers holding about 10 ounces each, slightly less than a can of beer. And he took his share of rations--nine cans of sea biscuits. Inside of each can were nine biscuits. They were somewhat larger than silver dollars and about half an inch thick. They had the stale texture of dried crackers.

He rationed himself to two biscuits each morning and two each night, with an extra one at noon every other day. And he limited himself to one can of water a day. He took along a triangular piece of material that had torn from one of the rafts to catch rainwater.

He took a fishing lure. He meant to take two, but forgot the second. He meant to take a mirror for signaling, but forgot it as well. He would have forgotten a life jacket but for Devins, who gave him one to take along. Devins also gave him a compass and a survival light.

Jacobsen did not think he needed them, but he accepted them and said thank you.

He took three hand-held flares and one parachute flare.

He started the Evinrude, foolishly burning some of the two cups of gasoline in the tank. As he watched his captain, who by now had grown ill, and his crew mates wave good-by, he felt relief. It did not occur to him that he might not see them again.

He spent that night, June 22, packing and repacking the boat. He fished, but a dolphin took his lure and broke it--and that ended his fishing. He bailed out the skiff and fell asleep. He slept well.

By 9 a.m. the next day, he had rigged the small paddle aboard the boat into a sea anchor. He thought it would keep him from drifting too far from the rafts, which were well out of sight by now. Most of the day he spent on watch. To no avail.

As day turned to dusk, a remarkable thing dawned upon Tom Jacobsen.

His sleeping bag had gotten wet, and its synthetic material was giving off a putrid stench. He began to open it to dry it out.

‘I’ve Got Two Sails’

“Look at what I’ve got here,” he said aloud, as it unfolded. “I’ve got two sails here.”

With the can opener in a pocket knife he had taken from one of the rafts, he cut a hole into the wooden thwart that served as a seat across the front of the skiff not far behind the bow.

Makeshift Sails

He took a seven-foot oar that was on board, and fitted it into the hole. He strung a line from the bow to his new mast and then back to the stern. With the flat blade in the pocket knife, he cut his sleeping bag into two sails and hung them with the shoelace like ties that once had held the sleeping bag together.

He pulled in the paddle he was using as a sea anchor and held it off the stern like a rudder.

Juggling sails and rudder, he lost the paddle.

“Well, now, ain’t this a sonofabitch,” he said, again aloud. “I’m sailing, and I don’t have a rudder. Maybe this goddamn engine will work.”

Within five minutes, he had fastened the engine to the stern of the skiff. Shut down and tightened snugly so it would not move, the dead engine provided just enough drag to serve as his new rudder.

By 8:30 p.m., he was under way.

Excited by the prospect of reaching Hawaii and summoning aid for his shipmates, Jacobsen ran wing and wing all night. He rigged his lines so that his jib flew on one side of the boat and his main on the other. With the wind from astern, he fairly flew.

By morning, the wind had torn his sails apart. But they had ripped straight along their seams. Now he had four of them.

“Why not put up three sails?” he asked himself. Then: “Why not four?”

He re-rigged the lines and put them up.

Names Sails After Horses

He named the sails after horses he knew. One was Nancy, another Ranger, another Bay. And the fourth he named after a crazy horse his cousin once owned--Colonel.

He talked to them. “Get up there, Colonel.”

He began talking to birds, as well. Terns, especially. And frigate birds, which looked like albatrosses. Sometimes they came very close and hovered, looking him over and apparently wondering what this was, so far out at sea, and so distant from any landfall.

“Hey, good lookin,’ ” Jacobsen said, shyly.

And he talked to the dolphins.

The dolphins looked irridescent in the water, blue and green and black and white, with bright blue-green-yellow tails, as if they were surrounded by a gasoline sheen.

Or a rainbow, he thought to himself.

The dolphins turned upward from the depths, chasing flying fish into the sky. The terns plummeted from above and snatched the fish out of the air.

Four times one of the flying fish fell into the skiff. Jacobsen cut off their fins and wings, pulled their skin back and stripped it off and filleted and ate them.

Each day at midday, he used his sextant and his jogger’s watch to measure the angle of the sun at noon--to determine his Latitude at Noon, LAN, the sailors call it.

Little Room to Stand

It was difficult, because it was necessary to stand, and that was hard to do in such a small boat when it was underway, and most of the standing room was taken up with lines and sails and a mast, only a bit taller than he was. It was easy to make a mistake and, early on, he did. Because of that erroneous LAN reading he ultimately missed the big island of Oahu.

When it was calm, he stripped to his skivvies and dove in behind the skiff. He held onto a stern line so the boat would not sail off without him. He knew there were sharks in this part of the Pacific, but he needed the exercise, and he forced himself to swim anyway.

“That’s silly,” he told himself when he worried.

At other times, the swells were too high to swim. Often they reached 20 feet. It amazed him how high they were and how small his boat was.

Only once was he frightened. The skiff crested a wave and seemed to stand on end. It stayed that way for what felt like 30 long seconds--then righted itself.

Jacobsen already had made it a point to sleep in a floatation suit. Now he made it an additional point to tie his waist to a life preserver and to secure the life preserver to the vessel. Lest he seem paranoid, he left his supply of biscuits free in the bottom of the skiff.

Once, he thought he saw the stern light of a ship. He fired a flare. Then it was gone.

He heard airplanes above the cloud cover. Once he saw one. He waved and waved. The plane kept right on flying. It was buff-colored and had twin engines. One day melted into another. He hallucinated once.

Thoughts of Rita Jenrette

He imagined the issue of Playboy with Rita Jenrette on the cover. It was an exquisite hallucination, and when he came out of it he was staring at the sky--and he spotted the Corona Borealis, a crown-shaped constellation not far from the big dipper, which he had not searched out since he was a boy.

Rita Jenrette, he thought, looked better.

But he began a constant practice of wearing a scarf around his head to ward off the sun.

He thought a lot about his daughter.

“Well, Jesus, what the hell, here I spend my life out here going to sea,” he told himself, “when the really important things are not out here going to sea.

“I’m going to get back, and one goddamn way or another I’m going to invest in a pub, and I’m going to name the place ‘The Oar House’ or ‘The Oar House Restaurant and Dolphin Bar.’ And then I can be around her more.”

The name for his pub reminded him of some bawdy songs, so he sang them.

He found a copy of the New Testament.

He’s had it in the bag for a couple of years. He felt chagrined that he, a Christian, had never read the New Testament. Truthfully, he would have preferred a John LeCarre novel, but he told himself that he would start the New Testament on page one and read it all the way through.

Reads From Bible

He almost did. He read Matthew, Mark, Luke--and as he finished John and was about to begin the Acts of the Apostles, he saw the lights of Oahu. He celebrated by drinking an extra can of water.

But the wind was from full astern. Unable to tack, he sailed his boat, which by now he had come to call the Won West, right past Oahu.

Maybe Kauai, to the west.

But on July 7, he passed between one and two miles south of Kauai.

He used up the last of the fuel in the Evinrude trying to make shore. And he used up the parachute flare and the last of his hand-held flares trying to attract the attention of a sailboat a mile away. No response. “They’re having cocktails in the cabin,” he told himself. He did not laugh.

One more chance. Niihau. “The Forbidden Island.”

He had heard it was uninhabited--and he remembered reading that Capt. James Cook, the British explorer, had been unable to find water on it, even in the winter.

He took down his mast and used it as a sea anchor; the swells broke the line and swept his mast away.

Now he was adrift. It was night.

At daybreak, he saw that the Won West would win--he was headed straight for Niihau.

He wrapped his gear as tightly as he could to keep it dry, because it looked like a rough landing. He could hear the roar of the surf. At about 150 feet out, he jumped into the surf, a life preserver strapped around him.

Misses Lava Rocks

Tom Jacobsen landed between two huge lava rocks about 100 feet apart, each of them eight feet high. There would have been no way to survive if he had hit them.

Slowly, he collected his gear.

He slept on a surfboard that had washed up on the rocks, then set out in the morning for a navy communication facility on a mountaintop.

As he walked, he felt the heat close in. He was dehydrated. And for the second time he was frightened. He’s had things his way on the sea, but here on land, he thought, he might die.

He began to stumble.

Tom Jacobsen began thinking about his will. Wouldn’t it be a hell of a thing, he asked himself, wryly, to end up dying ashore?

He spied a bull asleep on his feet under a tree. He would do virtually the same. Jacobsen crawled up into the branches of a thorny tree he could not recognize and fell asleep. He did this several times. Slept. Walked. Slept. Walked.

By the morning of July 10, he had reached the mountaintop. He drank muddy water from a tank used by construction workers at the communication facility. And he was met by Dan Momohara, the project manager, in a jeep. Construction workers gave him a ham and cheese sandwich and a Coke.

Momohara noticed that Jacobsen’s hands were shaking.

It took him a long time to eat.