Freak Accident Kills Seaman Cleaning Ship

Merchant seaman August “Gus” Benz could often be found playing cribbage in a Wilmington union hall while waiting to hear where his next job would take him.

Jobs were tough to come by, and Benz had a wife at home in Huntington Beach to support. So the 66-year-old was glad to cut his game short Friday when he got a job scraping paint off a cargo ship docked in Los Angeles Harbor, said Bill Berger, who arranged Benz’s two-day job aboard the President Kennedy.

Berger had no idea it would be the last time he saw his friend of 30 years alive.

“He was real excited,” said a grieving Berger on Sunday. “He loved being a seaman. It didn’t matter what the job was as long as he was working and making money.”

But Saturday, a grisly, freak accident turned Benz’s seemingly mundane job deadly and left family and friends stunned.

“It just shook me up all to hell,” said Berger, a union official who gets jobs for merchant seamen. “I told him to take it easy on that ship and he said, ‘Don’t worry, I can handle it.’ ”

Benz had been chipping paint from the ship’s fixtures several stories above the deck Saturday morning when he braced his leg against a steel track used by an on-board crane, authorities said.

He apparently didn’t realize that the crane was moving toward him before it rolled over his left leg, nearly severing it below the hip, said fire spokesman Brian Humphrey.

Co-workers sprang into action, freeing him from under the machinery within minutes and placing him on a basket strapped to the crane, which lowered him to the Terminal Island dock. A waiting ambulance sped the heavily bleeding seaman to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Long Beach.

“It was quick thinking on the part of his co-workers, who noticed what happened and managed to free him,” Humphrey said.

Despite the speed of the rescue, Benz had lost so much blood that he stopped breathing and had no pulse during the frantic dash to St. Mary’s. Paramedics revived him and delivered him to a waiting team of trauma surgeons about 11:30 a.m., Humphrey said.

Benz underwent nearly five hours of surgery Saturday, but at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday he went into cardiac arrest and died, said hospital spokesman Steve Sibilsky.

At his home in Huntington Beach on Sunday, Benz’s wife, Frances, was being consoled by neighbors. Frances Benz said she was too distraught to talk about Gus, a dedicated seaman who made lifelong friends among the world’s cargo ships.

A spokesman for American President Lines, owners of the President Kennedy, said the company is launching an internal investigation into Benz’s death “to get some answers.”

Investigators with the Port of Los Angeles Police said Benz’s death appears to be “a freak accident” and no further investigation would take place.

The 75-year-old Berger, who met Benz on a tanker in 1969, said Benz would spend so much time at the union hall playing cribbage that his wife would call saying it was time to come home.

“Whenever Frances called, Gus would say ‘Tell her I’m on my way,’ ” Berger said. “Then he’d play another hand.”

Berger said Benz had to resort to standby work, one or two days a week, in his last years as a merchant seaman.

“He was a real healthy guy,” Berger said. “It had nothing to do with his age. . . . He kept on working because he wanted to take care of his wife.”

Benz even left the business once about 10 years ago, Berger said, for a short stint as a cook in a Los Angeles restaurant.

But he quickly returned to his lifelong love.

“Jobs are hard to come by for guys who spent their lives on cargo ships,” Berger said. “Sometimes you have to resort to chipping paint or loading cargo just to remain in the game.”

But, Berger added sadly, “I’ve never heard, in my 30 years in this business, something like this happening.”