A captain’s “reckless decision to sail into the well-forecasted path of Hurricane Sandy” was the probable cause of the HMS Bounty sinking off the North Carolina coast in 2012, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a report released Monday.
The captain, 63-year-old Robin Walbridge, and one crew member, 42-year-old Claudene Christian, died in the accident. The remaining 14 crew members, three of whom were seriosuly injured, were rescued by the Coast Guard.
On October 25, a day after the closely watched developing storm reached hurricane strength, the 108-foot-long tall wooden ship set sail from New London, Conn., for St. Petersburg into the path of Superstorm Sandy.
The 52-year-old vessel, a replica of the 18th Century British Admiralty ship of the same name, was built for MGM Studios for the 1962 movie Mutiny on the Bounty. It was moored at the Pier as a tourist attraction n St. Petersburg from the late 1960s to the late 1980s and was headed back there.
Before setting off from New London, some crew members expressed concerns to the captain that sailing into a severe storm could put all of them and the ship at risk.
The captain assured the crew that the Bounty could handle the rough seas and that the voyage would be a success. Just a month earlier, in an interview with a Maine TV station, the captain said that the Bounty “chased hurricanes,” and by getting close to the eye of the storm, sailors could use hurricane winds to their advantage.
The 16-page report details how a mostly inexperienced crew – some injured from falls, others seasick and fatigued from the constant thrashing of 30-foot seas – struggled for many hours to keep the ships engines running and bilge pumps operating so the seawater filling the vessel would not overtake it.
But in the early morning hours of October 29, about 110 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., the Bounty heeled sharply to the starboard side after taking on more than 10 feet of water in the final hours of a 3 1/2-day voyage that the NTSB said “should never have been attempted.”
Despite hurricane winds gusting upwards of 100 mph, the Coast Guard was able to rescue all but two of the Bounty’s 16 crew members by hoisting them from the sea into three Jayhawk helicopters. The body of one crew member was found, still in a protective immersion suit, about 10 hours after rescue operations commenced. The captain was presumed lost at sea; his body was never recovered.
“Although this wooden ship was modeled after an 18th century vessel, the captain had access to 21st century hurricane modeling tools that predicted the path and severity of Hurricane Sandy,” NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman said. “The Bounty’s crew was put into an extraordinarily hazardous situation through decisions that by any measure didn’t prioritize safety."
Before setting to sea, the Bounty had been in a Maine shipyard for maintenance and repairs, most of which was accomplished by a crew with little experience in such specialized work. One of their tasks was to caulk and re-seam a wooden hull, which had known areas of rot, with compounds supplied by the captain, including a silicone sealant marketed for household use.
The entity that owned and operated the ship, HMS Bounty Organization LLC did nothing to dissuade the captain from sailing into known severe weather conditions. The NTSB said that such a lack of effective safety oversight by the vessel organization contributed to the sinking.
The Bounty also was featured featured in several other flims over the years, including one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.