Daring Sea Rescue Saves Eight From Floyd’s Wrath

For the eight men aboard the Gulf Majesty, the situation was as bad as it could be. Then it got worse.

Trying to avoid Hurricane Floyd, the crew of the oceangoing tugboat headed east from Florida, pulling a barge destined for Puerto Rico.

“We were trying to outrun it, but it was faster than we were,” said Kim Brooks, 45, of Daytona Beach.

With seas as high as a four-story building and wind gusting to 60 mph, the 150-foot tug began taking on water, its engine room flooding.

They notified the Coast Guard, cut loose their 750-foot barge and abandoned ship at 7:40 a.m. on Sept. 15. Five of them clambered onto a bright orange life raft, but before the other three could join them, the rope holding the raft to the Gulf Majesty snapped.

The three men on the tug had no choice but to jump into the ocean. The tug sank 15 minutes later.

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About 140 miles away, waves broke across the flight deck of the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy as it and other Navy ships dashed out to sea to avoid Floyd and its 155 mph wind.

The Coast Guard alerted the Kennedy of the tugboat’s sinking about 300 miles east of Jacksonville. The Guard had a fix on the tug’s emergency locate beacon but had no ships in the area.

The 1,052-foot-long carrier turned back into the storm. Two of the Kennedy’s SH-60 Seahawk helicopters were sent into the air.

“It was pretty hairy when we left the ship. There were 35- and 45-knot winds and 20- to 35-foot swells,” said Lt. Ruben Ramos, a chopper co-pilot.

Guided by the emergency beacon, it took the choppers more than an hour to fly to where the tug sank.

“We kind of expected to find eight guys in a life raft,” said Lt. Cmdr. Joseph D’Angelo, a pilot. “When we got there and it was three guys in the water, we were shocked.”

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The three men in the water--Tim Chambers, 39, of Lakeland; Gerald Keeth, 41, of St. Marys, Ga.; and David Lytie, 43, of Houma, La. --were wearing orange life jackets but had to gulp for air as waves crashed over them.

They held onto a broken broomstick to stay together, and Keeth had a death grip on the emergency locater beacon, about the size of a large flashlight.

Waves buffeted them like rag dolls in a washing machine.

“There was a number of times I doubted they would find us,” Keeth said.

After four hours in the water, they heard a helicopter and set off smoke flares.

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D’Angelo had told the swimmers on both search crews to jump into the ocean only as a last resort, but as he hovered over the three men there was no choice.

“After four hours in the water, we didn’t know how strong they were,” he said.

Despite the conditions, one of the rescue swimmers, Petty Officer 3rd Class Shad Hernandez, jumped into the churning sea and fought his way through the waves.

He fastened rescue belts around the three men. Two were hoisted up, and then he rode up with the third man.

“It went real quick. I was in the water only 11 minutes,” he said.

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The helicopters had to return to the Kennedy for fuel before resuming the search for the five men on the raft.

The crew of the second Seahawk spotted the barge, made sure none of the crew members were on board, then finally found the orange raft.

“When we looked up and saw the guys from the helicopter, the way I looked at it was angels of God when they were coming down,” said Kim Brooks.

By that time, Brooks; John Dalton, 30, Mark Davis, 46, and Sid Hebert, 41, all of Slidell, La.; and Dirk Savoie, 41, of Houma, La., had been on the raft for eight hours.

Brooks was writhing in pain, having hurt his back as they rode up and down monstrous waves that sometimes folded the life raft in half.

“I thought it was the end. It just kept getting rougher and rougher,” said Brooks.

“It was worse than a roller coaster,” Dalton said.

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Two more swimmers, Petty Officer 3rd Class Shawn Whitfield and Petty Officer 3rd Class Timothy P. Lemmerman, went into the water.

“I did get kind of nervous right when I hooked up and they kicked me out of the helicopter,” Whitfield said. “I felt a little queasy, but I looked back down and I saw the survivors and everything cleared again.”

“They were extremely happy. The look on their faces was just ecstatic,” Whitfield said.

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An hour later, all eight men were reunited aboard the Kennedy, banged up but otherwise uninjured.

“We had no doubt about going and no doubt about doing it,” said D’Angelo, whose crew was welcomed back as heroes. “We train for it.”