Bounty Abandoned

[Seagreen]

For quite a while, I heard that the vessel had sunk, but that the tops of her masts remained visible. May we infer that she sank in shallow enough water to be recoverable?

Well, if the tops of her masts are visible, she'll still be affected by the huge storm swell which may well pound her to bits on the bottom even 100 feet down. However, her reported position some 90 miles SE of Cape Hatteras puts her over the continental shelf into much deeper water. Sadly one female crew found dead.

I'm now sadly reminded of the tragic loss of the Marques, and the stupid loss of the Maria Assumpta. We, as generally pleasure sailors, tend to forget just how vulnerable we still are to bad weather, bodged maintenance and crass decision making, in its many combinations. I hope the Bounty is the only casualty of the storm.

 

[Koeketiene]

Sunk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/20124128

They refer to her as HMS Bounty - surely that can't be right?

 

[Uricanejack]

Every media in North America has been talking about Frankenstorm brewing out of Huricane Sandy. WTF were they thinking venturing out into its predicted path. Sad to see such a vessel lost especially with the loss of two lives.

 

[Ex Libris]

There is another replica here in Hong Kong, built in New Zealand for the movie starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins. Rare apparition, but she sails down Victorial Harbour from time to time...and definitively not when a Typhoon is on its way...

 

[Blueboatman]

Well we as yachtsmen never push it to get back to our desks on a Monday morning do we.
I shall let other commercial sailor men pass judgement not I. Shame about the loss , hope well insured. Doubtless there will be lawsuits in the offing

 

[TimBennet]

Sailing Anarchy has posted an interview done earlier this year with The Bounty's skipper.

http://www.sailinganarchy.com/index_page1.php

“We like to chase hurricanes…try to get as close to the eye as possible”

 

[Even Chance]

What an idiot that guy is/was. Sound like he caused a lot of pain for one family because of his incompetence.

 

[Pickem]

Sailing Anarchy has posted an interview done earlier this year with The Bounty's skipper.

http://www.sailinganarchy.com/index_page1.php

“We like to chase hurricanes…try to get as close to the eye as possible”

The skipper also mentions earlier in the interview that they put to sea with between "20 and 25 crew" yet when they abandoned they only had 16 on board. Therefore, why were they going into such conditions seemingly under crewed?

 

[maby]

The skipper also mentions earlier in the interview that they put to sea with between "20 and 25 crew" yet when they abandoned they only had 16 on board. Therefore, why were they going into such conditions seemingly under crewed?

The 16 that remained on board were the mutineers - chucked the officers off in a longboat a few days earlier?

 

[onenyala]

Apart from the throw away line re chasing hurricanes the master came over as a very experienced seamen. If he had been master for nineteen years then he would have come to grief a lot sooner if was as foolhardy as the posts suggest.
He mentioned that in a hurricane he headed for the SE semicircle ie the navigable semicircle this is standard practice.
He was not as stupid as a master with whom I sailed. We left New York in September1954 with hurricane Edna tracking up the coast. We were caught off Nantucket. The ship was a 500 ft cargo vessel. The strong backs in the lifeboats were all broken, the auxiliary wheel and compass on the poop were swept off the poop and the main aerial came down. As we were a selected weather ship we were unable to send weather reports. Apparently for a time the US Coast Guard thought we were in trouble.
I am sure the centre of the hurricane passed over us as I clearly remember a time when the wind dropped completely and the seas became confused before the wind picked up again in the opposite direction.

 

[Greenheart]

I'm now sadly reminded of the tragic loss of the Marques, and the stupid loss of the Maria Assumpta. We, as generally pleasure sailors, tend to forget just how vulnerable we still are to bad weather, bodged maintenance and crass decision making, in its many combinations. I hope the Bounty is the only casualty of the storm.

I don't suppose Mark Litchfield was aboard the Bounty?

 

[Seajet]

Well, experienced or not, hurricane chaser or not, it was stupid to be there.

In the old days of square riggers such a skipper would only get warning when it was already dangerous to close the shore; this chap had the benefits of satellites & super-computers with lots of full time experts predicting what would happen long in advance.

The kindest thing I can think is complacency, and maybe he'd 'got into method' so was thinking like a skipper of old.

 

[Haggsinnorway]

Bounty

It was nice to read all wonderful words about the skipper of Bounty however it still doesn't change the fact that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, based on the weather forecast she should have headed for a safe port ASAP. She may well have been capable of surviving a storm but these were exceptional circumstances and should have been dealt with as such, a bad call has resulted in the loss of life - tragic. Similar circumstances to the owner of the sailing school in southern England that took students out in a gale, he lost his certification and has paid the price for a bad call, should the skipper of the Bounty be treated the same? The law of the sea teaches us that we are not only responsible for our crews but also legally accountable as skippers for any misfortune that may occur. It's a hard lesson but nothing new, it's also our choice to make when we head out to sea (or not)

 

[sailorman]

It was nice to read all wonderful words about the skipper of Bounty however it still doesn't change the fact that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, based on the weather forecast she should have headed for a safe port ASAP. She may well have been capable of surviving a storm but these were exceptional circumstances and should have been dealt with as such, a bad call has resulted in the loss of life - tragic. Similar circumstances to the owner of the sailing school in southern England that took students out in a gale, he lost his certification and has paid the price for a bad call, should the skipper of the Bounty be treated the same? The law of the sea teaches us that we are not only responsible for our crews but also legally accountable as skippers for any misfortune that may occur. It's a hard lesson but nothing new, it's also our choice to make when we head out to sea (or not)

he is now an Ex Skipper

 

[st599]

Sadly one female crew found dead.
.

A relative of Fletcher Christian.

 

[Wansworth]

Adlard Coles in his book Heavy Weather Sailing has a chapter on a yacht that on the approch of a Hurricane set off as it was deamed safer than being in harbour,According to the account the yacht made a triangular course and returned to harbour ,undamaged whilst yachts that remained suffered damage.With the experience the captain had I guess he took a calculated risk to put to sea,unfortunatly it went wrong but I dont think we can condem from this distance...

 

[Haggsinnorway]

Mogy assuming you are correct, then we should not condemn the owner and his skipper for taking pupils out in a gale. I note that some of the charges against them have been dropped by the judge today, it remains to be seen what happens to the rest of the charges. As for the Bounty I agree it's not our job to judge from a distance, just reacting to the loss if life in extreme circumstances.

 

[Wansworth]

Mogy assuming you are correct, then we should not condemn the owner and his skipper for taking pupils out in a gale. I note that some of the charges against them have been dropped by the judge today, it remains to be seen what happens to the rest of the charges. As for the Bounty I agree it's not our job to judge from a distance, just reacting to the loss if life in extreme circumstances.

There was a film called "White Squall" all about a school ship that was blown over .The film is based on a true event sometime in the 1960.These square riggers have a lot of top hammper and windage.It was a sad film ,but has something to say about living and risk.worth watching.

 

[interloper]

From the Virginian-Pilot (Newspaper for Norfolk and Virginia Beach)

Go to the following link to see photos:

http://hamptonroads.com/2012/11/bountys-illfated-trip-face-hurricane-scrutinized

Bounty's ill-fated trip in face of hurricane scrutinized

By Aaron Applegate
The Virginian-Pilot
November 3, 2012

Capt. Robin Walbridge stood on the deck of the 180-foot wooden sailing ship Bounty on the sunny afternoon of Oct. 25. The wind was so mild that the ship had motored back to harbor after a short sail. The Bounty was tied to a city pier in New London, Conn.

Walbridge told a small group that the Bounty would be leaving for St. Petersburg, Fla., that night instead of the next morning. He wanted to get a jump on a massive weather system coming from the south that forecasters were calling “historic” and that one already had dubbed “Frankenstorm.”

The National Weather Service’s marine forecast for the area described the coming confluence of systems: “HIGH PRESSURE MOVES OFFSHORE ON FRIDAY AS A COLD FRONT APPROACHES FROM THE WEST. A COASTAL STORM ASSOCIATED WITH TROPICAL CYCLONE SANDY MAY IMPACT THE AREA LATE IN THE WEEKEND AND INTO EARLY NEXT WEEK.”

Walbridge formed a circle with his thumbs and index fingers, and told listeners to look at his right thumb. It represented the southeastern section of the hurricane.

“He said he wanted to get to the southeast quadrant and ride the storm out,” said New London Dockmaster Barbara Neff. No one raised objections.

“He was a great captain,” said Neff, who’s known Walbridge for 15 years. “He knew that boat. I just don’t know that anyone would have questioned him.”

The Bounty left New London about 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 25, crossed Long Island Sound and headed into the Atlantic Ocean. Its crew of 16 ranged in age from 20 to 66.

The report from the National Hurricane Center for that hour said: “SANDY NEAR CAT ISLAND IN THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS … WIND FIELD EXPANDING.”

While people may have been reluctant to question Walbridge’s plan, that’s not true today. A debate is raging about his decision to go to sea with a monster storm looming. At least three tall-sailing-ship captains have said they would not have tried that passage with Sandy barreling northward.

The Bounty, built for the 1962 movie “Mutiny on the Bounty,” went down early Monday about 90 miles off Cape Hatteras, in a treacherous and unpredictable area known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” where the cold Labrador Current mixes with the warm water of the Gulf Stream. The Coast Guard rescued 14 of the 16 people aboard from 18-foot seas.

Crew member Claudene Christian was found unresponsive 10 hours later, floating in the ocean in a survival suit, but she died later.

Walbridge, 63, still has not been found. The Coast Guard called off the search Thursday night and has ordered an investigation into what happened.

Walbridge’s friends and former crew members described him as a skilled captain who had a good plan that didn’t work because of mechanical problems. The ship lost power, which meant it had no propulsion and could not pump out water, according to the vessel’s website.

The surviving crew members have not publicly detailed what happened.

“There are a lot of armchair sailors saying, ‘What the hell was he doing out there?’ ” said Richard Bailey, a captain who worked with Walbridge and has known him for more than 20 years.

“He had a strategy,” Bailey said. “Aside from being dead, it makes great sense. I think a professional examination will say it was a good strategy, but it didn’t take into account a complete and utter loss of power.”

As they watched the ship’s route online, some onshore began to question the decision to go to sea even before the Bounty got into trouble.

The administrator of the Bounty’s Facebook page on Saturday, Oct. 27, defended it.

“Rest assured that the Bounty is safe and in very capable hands. Bounty’s current voyage is a calculated decision … NOT AT ALL … irresponsible or with a lack of foresight as some have suggested. The fact of the matter is … A SHIP IS SAFER AT SEA THAN IN PORT!”

The next day came what appears to be the only direct message from Walbridge, posted by the administrator on the Facebook page.

“I think we are going to be into this for several days, the weater looks like even after the eye goes by it will linger for a couple of days.

“We are just going to try to go fast and squeese by the storm and land as fast as we can.”

Bailey said he considers Walbridge a “mechanical genius” and was surprised to hear of the ship’s power failure. He said he watched Walbridge perform a complex engine repair in 48 hours, which included working through a language barrier while obtaining specialized parts in a foreign port.

He said Walbridge got his start on the Bounty in the mid-1990s, when the ship’s owner hired him to watch over it for two weeks while it was docked in Wilmington, Del.

One night, some guys came out of a bar and cast off most of the Bounty’s dock lines. Somehow, Walbridge, who was aboard, managed single-handedly to overcome a swift current, turn the ship around and get it tied up again. He became the Bounty’s captain in 1995.

The first sentence of his biography on the Bounty’s website says: “According to Captain Robin Walbridge, Bounty has no boundaries. As her captain, he is well known for his ability and desire to take Bounty to places that no ship has gone before.”

In an interview this summer in Maine on a public access TV show, Walbridge said he chases hurricanes and downplayed the danger of bad weather.

Interviewer: “Have you ever run into some pretty nasty weather while at sea?”

Walbridge: “Um, actually I’m going to answer that with a ‘no.’ ”

Interviewer: “Really?”

Walbridge: “Yeah, um, we say there’s no such thing as bad weather. There’s just different kinds of weather.”

Interviewer: “OK, I won’t say bad weather. Have you run into stormy seas?”

Walbridge: “Um, have we run into stormy seas? Uh, we chase hurricanes.”

Interviewer: (laughs) “All right, what’s it like when you’re chasing hurricanes?”

Walbridge: “You try to get up as close to the eye of it as you can and you stay down in the southeast quadrant, and when it stops, you stop.”

Walbridge went on to say that the Bounty’s engine is “probably way underpowered for this size of boat. … We sail as much as we can. We just use the engines to get in and out of tight harbors.”

Steven Schonwald, a Bounty crew member for 10 years, said he’d never heard Walbridge talk about chasing hurricanes. He described the captain as a calm leader who took every opportunity he could to teach seamanship.

“Robin came across as a very warm and welcoming presence,” Schonwald said. “He wasn’t distant. He wasn’t the type of guy who shouted orders at everybody. He was always teaching you something. He was the kind of guy you felt very comfortable with as a leader.”

He said he’d been through several storms with Walbridge.

“I’ve seen him in action,” he said. “Robin had good sense of where to be and what to do. He was not a frivolous man. He did not play with anybody’s lives.

“If I’d been in New London and he said, ‘We’re going to do this. We’re going to sea.’ I would have been with him.”

Aaron Applegate

 

[machurley22]

Interviewer: “Have you ever run into some pretty nasty weather while at sea?”

Walbridge: “Um, actually I’m going to answer that with a ‘no.’ ”

Interviewer: “Really?”

Walbridge: “Yeah, um, we say there’s no such thing as bad weather. There’s just different kinds of weather.”

Interviewer: “OK, I won’t say bad weather. Have you run into stormy seas?”

Walbridge: “Um, have we run into stormy seas? Uh, we chase hurricanes.”

Interviewer: (laughs) “All right, what’s it like when you’re chasing hurricanes?”

Walbridge: “You try to get up as close to the eye of it as you can and you stay down in the southeast quadrant, and when it stops, you stop.”

...

Steven Schonwald, a Bounty crew member for 10 years, said he’d never heard Walbridge talk about chasing hurricanes.

For me this was just Walbridge gently taking the p out of the interviewer who, despite claiming to be a boat owner, came over as a complete dork unable to ask a single sensible question in a 28 minute interview. The crew's comment would seem to support this.