Drama on the high seas
U. S. Coast Guard rescues Halifax family from their replica pirate ship
About four hours into the rescue of his disabled replica pirate ship off the coast of Gloucester, Mass., on Monday, Ryan Tilley, the 24- yearold captain, radioed some bleak news to the U. S. Coast Guard crew towing the battered schooner back to shore.
The masts, whose sails had become an entangled mess in cutting winds and gnarly waves, could snap at any time and hurtle down onto the deck, potentially sinking the 26- metre vessel.
They agreed to cut the tow line — and abandon ship.
“He was actually very calm,” Petty Officer First Class John Borzilleri, who was steering the rescue boat, recalled on Tuesday. “I expected more panic.”
For the Tilley family of Halifax, this wasn’t their first adventure — or misadventure — on the high seas.
Joseph Tilley, Ryan’s father, is a navy veteran. It was his dream to own a tall ship after retirement. So, when he saw a hull languishing in a Texas shipyard in 2005, he snatched it up and transformed it into a vessel straight out of the 1700s, the era of Blackbeard and Captain Kidd.
The family named the schooner after the beloved dog, Ransom, who belonged to Joseph’s wife, Liana.
To finance the ship, the Tilleys began offering day trips and weekly charters to the Caribbean.
But on more than one occasion, the voyages ran into trouble. Last December, the Caribbean- bound family escaped injury when the ship’s main mast crashed down in the middle of the night in bad weather. The Canadian Coast Guard towed the battered vessel back to port.
Not long after the ship departed Nova Scotia on Friday evening, bound again for the Caribbean, three of the nine crew members became seasick, Ryan Tilley said.
The port engine stalled and the starboard engine wasn’t giving much thrust, slowing the ship to a crawl.
The crew tried to hoist the sails, but ended up ripping the foresail and the headsail. And a horizontal boom holding up the mainsail went vertical, causing the sail to get entangled in the rigging and lines.
“We were completely without propulsion,” Tilley said.
Just after midnight on Monday, the U. S. Coast Guard in Boston received a distress call from the ship, which was drifting about 90 kilometres off the coast. About 3: 45 a. m., a rescue team was sent to help. At times, the waves swelled to three metres and winds clocked in at 55 km/ h, Borzilleri said.
The stranded vessel was “rocking and rolling, bobbing like a cork.”
The rescue crew attached a 122- metre tow line and began the slow trek back to shore. But four hours in, Tilley radioed the rescue boat to report the integrity of the whole ship was now in jeopardy.
It was agreed that Liana’s Ransom’s crew should abandon ship.
By this time, another Coast Guard rescue boat, piloted by Petty Officer First Class Rick Bowen, arrived. The rescue boats took turns steering up to the side of the vessel and taking off a passenger each time. Timing was critical.
“It was pretty tricky,” Bowen recalled. “We had to wait for a window or lull in the seas, and then move in there. We’d yell, ‘ jump!’ and they’d jump onto the boat.”
After 90 minutes, everyone was safely off the vessel.
It was pretty tricky. We had to wait for a window or lull in the seas, and then move in there.