6 Lost, Killed as Hurricane Crushes Ship

Merchant ships plucked 21 sailors from heavy seas Wednesday after their cargo ship began to break up under the battering of Hurricane Bertha, but six other crew members died in the accident 350 miles off Cape Cod.

“We have accounted for everybody: 20 in good condition, one alive but injured, six deceased,” said Lt. Cmdr. Paul Milligan, a Coast Guard spokesman.

Three bodies were still missing, but witnesses had seen the men dead and in the water, so the Coast Guard counted the three among the six dead, Milligan said.

The crew of 27 abandoned the 593-foot Maltese-registered freighter Corazon about 11 hours after reporting that the ship was breaking up. Thirty-foot waves whipped by wind gusting to 90 m.p.h. had snapped its keel, authorities said.

Soviet, Hong Kong and Norwegian merchant ships steamed to the stricken vessel to rescue crew members crowded in a lifeboat and a life raft. U.S. military aircraft coordinated from above.

Four hours after they left their ship, crew members on a lifeboat were taken aboard a Soviet merchant ship, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Anthony L. Whitehead.

But efforts to save a life raft’s occupants went less smoothly. The Russian trawler Vympel attempted to rescue what was reported to be 12 sailors aboard the raft, Whitehead said. But the raft was pulled into the trawler’s propeller and rudder area, and six or seven sailors were pitched into the ocean.

“She had fairly calm passage coming across the Atlantic and Bertha just swung right into her,” said Charles Aitcheson, president of Asca Marine Inc., the ship’s New York agent.

Hurricane Bertha churned on toward Canada’s Maritime Provinces carrying 75 m.p.h. wind, but it was expected to weaken. A swimmer in Florida drowned Tuesday in rough water attributed to the hurricane.

The Corazon was carrying more than 25,000 tons of cement bound from Greece to New York, and the load likely contributed to its damage, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

Authorities did not know whether the ship was leaking fuel or how much fuel was aboard.