Shipwrecked Crew’s Luck Turns in Time

Skipper David Giese of Costa Mesa looked at the bleary-eyed crew in the life raft and couldn’t bear to say aloud what he was thinking: They were going to die.

He and his five-member crew aboard the Morado, a 150-foot commercial fishing vessel, left Los Angeles Harbor in early March in calm seas for what was to be a 17-day trip to Ecuador.

Day One passed uneventfully, as did the succeeding days--until Day 11, March 11, when they were 64 miles off the Mexican coast and it all began to go wrong.

Back home Monday after being plucked from the sea by a passing British cargo ship, Giese recounted from the comfort of a hotel room how he and his men survived a harrowing, made-for-prime-time adventure by limiting themselves to four ounces of water a day, a biscuit and much prayer.

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The trouble began after they had spent two solid days in stormy seas. Thirty-foot swells and 70-knot winds buffeted the boat. The Morado first lost its steering and then its engine, Giese said. The crew tried to save the ship but the ocean would prove too potent, he said. Giese, 41, put out a distress call about 6 p.m.

Ten minutes later, the ocean began to swallow the stern. Wave after wave battered the port and starboard sides of the ship, shredding it. The crew had no choice, Giese said, but to abandon the Morado.

“We all got in the life raft and I said, ‘Vaya con Dios’ [Go with God],” Giese said, as the crew responded in kind, “Vaya con Dios. . . . It was the first of our prayers.”

“At one point,” he said, “when we got pounded by a wave, everyone got tossed to one side of the life raft. The crew looked at me, and I looked at them. And I did not want to tell them what I was thinking . . . that we were going to die.”

During the next four days, the men endured by rationing survival biscuits and tiny quantities of water, at times drinking their own urine. Two ships passed them even after they fired flares.

On the fourth day aboard the raft, at night, the men spotted a light and sent off more flares. This time, it worked. A British captain turned his cargo ship around, sidled up and brought them aboard.

“I felt just so elated,” Giese said. “I mean really, really elated. It was the most incredible feeling. I had no shoes and it was such a neat feeling to touch the side of the hard hull as I started to climb up the big ship’s ladder. It was great, like every step that I made you were going up and up and up and you can see this tiny little raft that you were leaving.”

Giese and his crew were taken to Panama City, where they were treated for exposure. Several were hospitalized, including one crew member who severely cut his stomach while getting into the raft. Giese suffered bruises and injured two vertebrae when he was thrown against a chart table by rough seas slamming the Morado.

The only fatalities: two dogs--an 8-week-old basset hound, and Brandy, a 2-year-old bulldog--that were swept off the Morado.

In a telephone interview, the British captain, who asked that neither he nor his ship be named, said Giese and the crew were “in pretty bad shape” when he and his crew happened upon them.

“They were pretty frightened and glad to be on board,” the captain said. “They had seawater rashes and they had trouble straightening their legs because they had been so cramped inside that raft. They were lucky. Although they had quite a bit of water and rations left, they could have quite easily have run out of those in the next few days.”

Capt. Alston Newball, general manager of Agencia Naviera Servimundo, a steamship agent in Panama City, said his firm was asked by the Morado’s owners to help the rescued seamen get medical attention, hotel accommodations and airline tickets to return to their native countries.

Of the crew, a Spanish sailor appeared the most traumatized, Newball said.

“The American [Giese] was in good spirits,” Newball said. “To survive the bad weather required a lot of courage. The captain did the right thing by rationing the food and water.”

Rescued with Giese were crew members Alberto Mendez Cadenas, the chief engineer from San Pedro; assistant engineer Enrique Carballo Lucero of Ensenada, Mexico; helmsman Guadalupe Joel Velazco of Ensenada; chief cook Jorge Antonio Mero Macias of Ecuador and chief officer Jose Ganuza Andueza of Spain.

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In his 16 years of sailing, Giese said, he had never abandoned a ship or had to be rescued. He said several members of the crew urged him to give the order to abandon ship early on March 11. But he said he believed their chances for survival were best the longer they could stay aboard the Morado.

When the ship’s steering mechanism failed, Giese said he was forced to steer the vessel by hand.

When both pumps that help control the rudder also failed, the ship kept making right-hand turns, making it impossible to out-maneuver the giant swells.

“The deck hatches on the bow and stern of the ship ripped off,” he said. “Eventually, the engine room flooded out and the engine died.

“With no thrust, we just sat there taking wave after wave. The stern had already sunk to the level of the water. . . . It was time to leave.”

Among the ship’s Ecuador-bound payload were washers, dryers and big-screen televisions.

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On the life raft adrift at sea, they watched as a school of dolphins swam near them all night one night.

On another evening, Giese said he felt something move beneath where he was sitting. It was a small sea turtle that he thought might bite through the rubber of the raft. One member of the crew reached over, grabbed one of the turtle’s flippers, and pulled the creature on board.

“They wanted to eat it,” Giese said, “but I remembered reading in a survival book that although the blood is good, it’s salty, and if we killed it, I didn’t want the mess in this small life raft.”

Their hunger notwithstanding, Giese said, they let the turtle live.

Just two days later, they spotted the lights of the big British cargo ship and realized they were going to make it after all.

They kept their wits about them, Giese said, by joking and talking about food. At times, they argued about silly things such as what they would do if they were rescued.

“You ask yourself, are you religious? Are you just going to see how long you can take this? Well, I have to say I prayed. We all prayed. It was a humbling experience.”

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Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Davan Maharaj.