Sunken Tug Is Found but No Sign of Crew

The Great Lakes took Joyce Rutta’s uncle when he was just 11. Then they got her grandfather. It’s all but certain they’ve claimed her brother, too.

A Navy minesweeper on Sunday found the wreckage of the Linda E commercial tug, which disappeared in Lake Michigan off Port Washington in December 1998. Warren Olson, Rutta’s brother, is one of three fishermen on the boat who have not been seen since.

“I don’t swim,” said Rutta, who comes from a family of fishermen. “I don’t go out on boats. I don’t fish.”

The weekend discovery capped what the Coast Guard calls the largest air-water search ever on Lake Michigan. A 30-second videotape, taken by a mini-submarine and released Monday, shows the 42-foot vessel in 260 feet of water.

Parts of the boat seen in the tape appeared intact. But Coast Guard Cmdr. Dave Lersch said the tape did not show the bodies of Olson, 44, the Linda E’s skipper, 61-year-old Leif Weborg, or his son-in-law, 32-year-old Scott Matta.

A Coast Guard Marine Safety Office investigation is continuing, but Rutta said the Navy handed her nephew, Warren III, an American flag, a military funeral tradition, moments after she and other family members viewed the tape at the Coast Guard station here Monday.

“Something had to go terribly wrong for this to happen,” Rutta said.

The last anyone heard of the vessel was a cell phone call Weborg placed to Smith Brothers Food Service in Port Washington the morning of Dec. 11, 1998. He said the boat was bound for port with 1,000 pounds of chub. The weather was clear.

Lersch said the crew never sent a distress signal, never launched a giant life preserver, never put on immersion suits that would have helped them survive the 43-degree water.

The Marine Safety Office has no plans to raise the ship.

The Coast Guard plans to deploy a $250,000-remote submarine to search for damage to the Linda E. The cutter Acacia was scheduled to arrive in Port Washington today from its home port in Charlevoix, Mich.

A Coast Guard report last December suggested the Linda E. may have been run over by a barge while the crew worked below cleaning fish.

In 1935, Rutta’s grandfather, Arthur Olson, and her uncle, Darrald Olson, then 11, were fishing on Lake Michigan when Darrald fell overboard. Her grandfather dove in after him, but it was too late.

Ten years later, her grandfather vanished while his fishing boat was docked in the Lake Superior port of Duluth, Minn. His body was found in the Duluth harbor. Foul play was ruled out.