- 6 weeks ago
Disasters at Sea (2018) Season 1 Episode 5- Shipwrecked in Alaska -
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Short filmTranscript
00:00A 58-meter fishing trawler is going down in the freezing waters of the Bering Sea.
00:07Everybody up! Now! Now!
00:09Abandon ship!
00:1147 crew members are fighting for their lives.
00:14We're all scared.
00:15I was scared.
00:16I did have a conversation with God.
00:18Okay, I'm just gonna jump in the Bering Sea.
00:21It triggers one of the most daring rescue missions in Coast Guard history.
00:26We knew that there was more people in the water than we could rescue.
00:29It was too far out there.
00:31But in this frigid and unforgiving sea, can they get there before it's too late?
00:36How many people are gonna die?
00:38Not everybody was coming home.
00:40Easter weekend on the Bering Sea.
00:47The 58-meter fishing trawler Alaska Ranger is making her way through freezing wind and high waves.
00:53The ship and her crew of 47 are on an 800-kilometer voyage from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, to some of the richest fishing grounds in the world, the petrol bank.
01:08The long trip out gives little hint of the dangers ahead.
01:23Ships cook Eric Haynes worked on the Alaska Ranger for 14 years.
01:33He knows just how bad it can get.
01:36Thanks, Eric. I don't know what I'd do without you.
01:38It's pretty wild and woolly sometimes.
01:42You don't know when that weather's gonna kick up and when it's gonna come.
01:45But half the time what they tell you it's gonna do, it does just the opposite.
01:49Besides the weather, the work is dangerous.
01:52Bering Sea fishermen have among the highest mortality rates of any job in the country.
01:58Unless you've been up there and you try to explain what it's like to get up and work in 20 or 30-foot seas and do that for two, three, four, five days straight.
02:07I've seen Army rangers come up there and break. They can't handle it.
02:12Hey, how are you?
02:13I can't complain yet.
02:17Have a good sleep.
02:18Yeah, thanks.
02:19Ryan Shuck has been the tallyman on board for the past eight months.
02:23He's the one who keeps count of the fish.
02:26We work 12 on, six off.
02:28So out of 24 hours, you're literally working 18 of them.
02:32It's cold, it's wet, it smells like fish.
02:35Sometimes it smells like rotten, crappy fish.
02:40People hear about the money or they see on TV, like they went out for, you know, 14 or 15 days.
02:45Each person made, you know, $36,000 or whatever.
02:50They sometimes fail to hear what they're gonna have to do to obtain that money.
02:56The journey to the fishing grounds should take two days.
03:00For the crew, it's their last chance to rest before the heavy work begins.
03:04At the end of his watch, Captain Pete Jacobson is relieved by first mate David Silvera.
03:22David Silvera.
03:24David.
03:25Captain.
03:26Anything I should know?
03:27Not much.
03:29Got a 20 knot wind gusting a 27.
03:33Other than that, I'm really tired.
03:35You have a good night.
03:37Have a good watch.
03:43As the first mate keeps watch from the bridge, engineer Rodney Lundy monitors the ship's engines below deck.
03:52Walked around, you know, checking temperatures and gauges.
03:57And, you know, just checking everything.
04:01Everything is quiet.
04:04Until...
04:06It was 2 o'clock when I had the alarm go off for a high bilge in the rudder room.
04:13These rudders always leaked a little bit of water.
04:18So I just thought it was not a problem.
04:20You know, everything was normal.
04:22I go back to the rudder room.
04:25All of a sudden, there's just water just gushing.
04:28I had just enough time to close that watertight door.
04:36First thing I did was call the bridge and talk to David Severa.
04:52Wheelhouse.
04:54Dave.
04:55It's Rod.
04:56We got major flooding in the rudder room.
04:58Need to sound general alarm.
05:01And head toward the closest land.
05:07Pete, what's going on?
05:08Eric Haynes rushes to the bridge.
05:11Is this a drill or is it real?
05:13We're taking off water.
05:14Get everybody into their suits.
05:16Now.
05:17Everybody up.
05:18Now, now, now.
05:19Everybody up.
05:20This is not a drill.
05:21Get up.
05:22Everybody up.
05:23This is not a drill.
05:24Everybody up.
05:25You know, I just started going through rooms because we've had times where the alarm has gone off and not everybody responds.
05:31Now, wake up.
05:32Get up.
05:33Up, up, up.
05:34Come on.
05:35Get up.
05:36What's going on?
05:37Everybody to the bridge.
05:38Right now.
05:40As the crew heads to the bridge, Lundy and a fellow engineer check to see if the flooding has spread to other parts of the ship.
05:48The ramp room, which is the compartment right above the rudder room, had three 480-volt transformers distributed electricity throughout the boat.
05:58I knew as soon as those transformers got full of water, it was going to short out and lose power.
06:03If the transformers go, the power steering goes, and they lose control of the ship.
06:08Then I hear this screech.
06:12You know, like metal tearing.
06:18And then water started rushing up.
06:20No, no, no, no.
06:22We got to get out of here.
06:23Now.
06:24The flooding has spread up to the ramp room with shocking speed.
06:29Lundy has managed to shut the door, but now there's no way to stop the rising water from reaching the transformers.
06:35I had the water contained, but you couldn't pump it out even if you had to pump, because it's behind water-tied doors.
06:48Bridge.
06:49It's Captain.
06:50Pete, it's Rod.
06:51The water's in the ramp room now.
06:52It's flooding fast.
06:53We're going to lose power soon.
06:54Even more terrifying, Lundy knows the flooding can't be stopped.
06:59I said, I can't close that starboard vent cover.
07:02If the water reaches that level, it's going to flood the engine room.
07:05We're going to go starboard hard, and we're going to sink.
07:09Send the Mayday to the Coast Guard.
07:11You get up here now.
07:12Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.
07:13This is Alaska Ranger.
07:14Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.
07:15This is Alaska Ranger.
07:16Kodiak Station.
07:17Go ahead, Ranger.
07:18The distress call is received by the Coast Guard Station in Kodiak, Alaska, over 1,000 kilometers
07:34away.
07:35We're taking on water.
07:36We're about 130 miles west of Dutch Harbor.
07:39What position?
07:4053 degrees.
07:4253 minutes north.
07:45168 degrees.
07:4758 minutes west.
07:50Rescue divers are dispatched immediately in two helicopters.
07:55One from land and one from sea.
07:59But it will take them at least two hours to get there.
08:02If the crew members have to abandon ship, how will they survive in this bitter, unforgiving
08:08sea?
08:09Everybody was in the wheelhouse trying to put on their suit, so it was kind of chaos.
08:16We were all scared.
08:17You know, I was scared.
08:18A survival suit can increase the chances of remaining alive in the icy waters from mere
08:23minutes to over five hours, if it fits.
08:26Yeah.
08:27I just need a smaller suit.
08:28This one's too big.
08:29You can't wear your shoes or boots or whatever in a survival suit or your hoodie, because the
08:35hood will make it not work right.
08:37Eric Haynes, he was kind of our voice from the captain.
08:41Okay.
08:42You're good.
08:43No worries.
08:44He told us the Coast Guard knows we're here.
08:47Is everybody okay?
08:48Does everybody have a suit?
08:49Yeah.
08:50At that point, we thought, we're going to be able to stay afloat.
08:52We're not going to sink.
08:53We just have to wait it out, and the Coast Guard are going to get here.
08:57But the Alaska Ranger is out of time.
09:01The Transformers shorted out.
09:09Boat went black.
09:13Everything just kind of got quiet.
09:18You could hear things popping and thingy.
09:19It sounded like maybe parts were blowing through the deck.
09:24Some battery lights kicked on.
09:27The boat just shifted.
09:31The Alaska Ranger begins listing to the starboard side, and her stern is sinking fast.
09:37It felt like it was going to roll over.
09:39Abandon ship!
09:41Abandon ship!
09:43Let's go!
09:44And then there was some panic.
09:46The people were inside, started running outside.
09:49The whole back deck was under the water.
09:51Watch the raft!
09:53The crew struggles to abandon ship in the high wind and waves.
09:57Nothing goes according to plan.
09:59So we lost the raft, but it just kept going on out.
10:02I grabbed the painter line, tried to pull it back, and then it just broke away.
10:06We're just gone.
10:08Let's get going, guys.
10:09I said, you're going in one way or another.
10:12In these freezing temperatures, they can only hope to survive till the Coast Guard arrives.
10:17It's hard to get up with enough courage to be like, okay, I'm just going to jump in the Bering Sea.
10:25I hit the water, and eight, nine gallons of water just came rushing in that suit.
10:31Took my breath away.
10:32Shuck's suit is too big, and it's filling with water.
10:36The situation is desperate.
10:38I could see the raft.
10:39It was coming right towards me.
10:41It was coming fast.
10:42It hit me, bam, right in the face.
10:44And then it sucked me underneath.
10:46Finally spit me out.
10:52Then I seen the backside of the raft going away from me.
10:57The raft is gone.
11:00So I was kind of thinking, I'm screwed.
11:04As Shuck struggles in the water, Lundy's troubles start before he's even jumped in.
11:09I seen a bunch of lights bobbing up and down, which were guys floating out in their suits.
11:16I grabbed my lanyard on my light, pull it.
11:19My light doesn't work.
11:22I knew then that if I didn't get in the life raft, they weren't going to find me.
11:26I just took my glasses off and threw them in the Bering Sea,
11:31because I wasn't expecting to ever use them again.
11:33Alaska Ranger rears up into our final death throes.
11:39The boat was like this.
11:41I didn't jump over.
11:42I fell.
11:52Alaska Ranger is gone.
11:55Somehow, Eric Haynes and a handful of others have made it to rafts.
12:04I thought to myself, how many people are going to die?
12:07Not everybody was coming home.
12:11Rod Lundy, Ryan Shuck, and the rest of the ship's 47 crew
12:16are scattered across the frigid, storm-tossed seas.
12:19How many can hold out until help arrives?
12:34Easter Sunday, 2008.
12:37The fishing vessel Alaska Ranger has disappeared into the cold, windswept waters of the Bering Sea.
12:42Less than half of her 47 crew have made it into life rafts.
12:52The rest are scattered in the freezing ocean.
12:55Ryan Shuck's too big survival suit is supposed to be keeping him alive,
12:59but it's filling with water.
13:02Deadly hypothermia is setting in.
13:04It's like a cold like I've never been.
13:06My hands were so cold I couldn't feel them.
13:08My feet were so cold I couldn't feel them.
13:10Probably from like the knees down, I was just numb.
13:14Well, I kind of kept keeping up hope and keeping up hope, you know,
13:17they'll be here anytime, they'll be here anytime.
13:20The closest of two Coast Guard helicopters is still more than 30 minutes away.
13:25Rescue swimmer Abram Heller knows the longer someone is in the water,
13:29the less likely they'll be found alive.
13:32120 miles from land, the water temperature was just a smidge above freezing.
13:36We assume that somebody has about two hours in a survival suit in those conditions.
13:41With 47 people in the water, the Coast Guard faces one of the biggest airborne rescues in its history.
13:48I think everybody's mentality is we're going to do the best we can and we're probably not going to get everybody,
13:51but it was too far out there, so time was a huge issue.
13:57From his life raft, Haynes can see his crewmates in the water.
14:02But what can he do to help?
14:03I was just looking out at, you know, the people that were out there so that we could get anybody that was close by.
14:10In a life raft, you can survive for days.
14:13In the water, you're only going to survive for a few hours.
14:16In the water, the situation is desperate.
14:20Like Shuck, Lundy's badly fitting suit is filling with water.
14:24Worse, his strobe light is broken, so no one can see him.
14:28It was just complete blackness.
14:31I didn't know if I was going up or down or sideways, you know, very disoriented.
14:36And then I seen the life raft, and it was coming straight at me, and my suit was full of water.
14:43I couldn't pull myself up into this thing.
14:45But God was looking out for me that night, but these two guys reached down and pulled me inside that life raft.
15:03And I'm telling you, I had never been more happy in my life.
15:08For about an hour, we kept yelling, and we didn't realize at that point probably nobody else was going to come.
15:13They were too far off.
15:17After nearly two hours in the water, Ryan Shuck is starting to lose his battle against exhaustion and hypothermia.
15:26I was just floating around there alone, and after a while, it kind of just got, it got too hard.
15:30It got physically really painful.
15:33I was just going to unzip that suit, let it fill with water.
15:35I did have a conversation with God, and just let my parents and, you know, I had a daughter.
15:44Just let all these people know that, like, I was, I'm okay going out like this.
15:48You know, I'm cool with it.
15:49I gave myself kind of a timeline in my head, like, you know, next 10, 15 minutes, you know, what, the best of my calculations.
15:59I'm just going to do it.
16:00And then all of a sudden, I could hear it real faintly, the helicopter sound.
16:12It flew right to me, shined its light on me.
16:14I was just doing this, and it picked the nose up, and it took off.
16:23I was thinking, man, what the hell?
16:26Just when Shuck thinks he's going to be rescued, the helicopter moves on.
16:31The Coast Guard needs to establish how many survivors are in the water before they can begin the rescue.
16:37The first helicopter, when they arrived, the survivors were spaced a few hundred yards apart.
16:41About half of them were in two life rafts, and the other half were free-floating in survival suits in the waves.
16:47The first thing we heard, just this loud, just drone, just kind of coming over.
16:52You just knew what it was.
16:55And we waved to them, we're okay.
16:58Go get the, you know, get the other guys, you know.
17:01We knew those guys needed the help right away.
17:04The plan is to rescue those floating farthest from the center first, and work their way in.
17:08Ryan Shuck is among the first they hoist to safety.
17:13And then it came back to me, and then it shined its light at me again.
17:18And then I seen the rescue swimmer coming down on a line, and he hit the water.
17:23He kind of spun me around, put my back to him, and pulled me.
17:28And me and him were going to go up together in the harness.
17:30I was the first one out.
17:33Soon after Ryan Shuck is rescued, Abram Heller arrives in the second helicopter.
17:40I remember kind of looking around and realizing the enormity of the situation.
17:45We knew that we were biting off more than we could chew.
17:47There was more people in the water than we could rescue.
17:49The first helicopter can only handle 12 survivors.
17:54Abram Heller's chopper can carry even fewer.
17:58It means they'll have to do several trips to drop off survivors on the Coast Guard Cutter Monroe.
18:05I swam up, communicate with the guy, signal, ready for pickup fear.
18:11They'd lower the basket as close to us as they could, and I'd put the survivor in, and up he would go.
18:17And move to the next survivor and do it again.
18:19Heller and the Coast Guard rescue team work nonstop for more than five hours to pull more men from the water.
18:25A small life raft floating in the Bering Sea led Coast Guard rescuers to survivors of a sinking fishing vessel.
18:38The Alaska Ranger started taking on water when the crew radioed in a mayday.
18:43Despite a long search that stretches into the following day, one crew member is still missing.
18:50The Alaska Ranger's sister ship, the Alaska Warrior, joins the Coast Guard Cutter Monroe in search and rescue efforts.
18:59And helps with the grim task of collecting bodies.
19:05It's rewarding for sure.
19:07It's not all days like the Alaska Ranger that's, I mean, ten times bigger than anything else I'll do the rest of my career for sure.
19:13In the end, rescuers save the lives of 42 crew members from the Alaska Ranger, and find the bodies of four more who didn't make it.
19:25The fifth crew member is missing. His body is never found.
19:29The hardest part of the whole scenario, the whole accident, was dealing with the casualties.
19:38You know, especially because they knew some of those guys really well.
19:41You know, the five people that died.
19:43Good guys that did some pretty cool stuff out there.
19:47People helped each other out there. A lot of people helped each other.
19:49The Coast Guard must now find out what happened to the Alaska Ranger, and why five fishermen are dead.
20:04With more than 1,500 fishing vessels operating on the Bering Sea,
20:09it will be up to them to try to make one of the deadliest jobs in America safer.
20:14Captain Michael Rand is appointed to chair the highest level of investigation the Coast Guard convenes,
20:23a Marine Board of Investigation.
20:25The goal of the Marine Board, like any investigation, is to find the root cause of the casualty,
20:31but to also look at all the circumstances involved.
20:35What caused the vessel to be in a position that it would have had this casualty?
20:39Rand wants technically savvy officers with investigative experience.
20:44He chooses Benjamin Hawkins.
20:47Tragically, we lost five, but we could have lost all 47, based on where it was.
20:54Rand also chooses John Nadeau.
20:57You're empowered as that Marine Board to go and just do everything you need to do to get to the root causes
21:01and try and figure out how to prevent that from happening again.
21:03And the ship was sitting in water that was much too deep for us to ever go,
21:08and too remote of an area that we were never going to be able to send down a remotely operated vehicle to look at it.
21:14The challenge?
21:16Investigators have to solve the sinking of the ship,
21:19and the loss of five lives, without a shred of physical evidence.
21:22The fishing vessel Alaska Ranger is at the bottom of the Bering Sea.
21:40Unable to examine the ship itself, Coast Guard investigators tried to determine what caused the sinking and the deaths of five crew.
21:48The only evidence we had was a testimony of the witnesses and survivors.
21:53To start to collect their testimony and to hear what they had to say.
21:56The longer time goes by, the more the story changes in their mind, whether they know it or not.
22:01Each had their own story, their own piece of the puzzle.
22:04What were they thinking? Why were they doing this? Why'd they do that?
22:07Some of the key people, unfortunately, were lost in the casualty.
22:11You know, the master chief mate.
22:13Rodney Lundy's testimony could be critical.
22:16He's been with the ship more than ten years, and he's the one who found the flooding.
22:22One of the first objectives was to determine what caused the flooding.
22:27Well, after the alarm went off, I made my way back to the rudder room.
22:31Lundy has a terrifying story to tell.
22:35He describes the mysterious flooding in the rudder room, and how it spread so fast.
22:41It's like a wall of water. It's like nothing I'd seen. We had to have lost a rudder.
22:51He thought the rudder had fallen off.
22:55Lundy remembers the rudder needed repairs just hours before the disaster struck.
23:00I explained to him that the rudder was leaking, which it had been all day long.
23:04So I had to grease it with like seven gallons of grease. And that's not normal.
23:14Hours later, the flooding looked like it was coming from the exact location of that leaky rudder post.
23:19Wheelhouse. Dave, it's Rod.
23:24I explained to him, we dropped the starboard rudder.
23:27Sound the general alarm.
23:31Losing a rudder fits. It would explain the flooding in the stern of the ship.
23:36And also, what happened next.
23:39Steering not responding.
23:42Moments after the flooding began, the captain lost control of the ship.
23:46Is it because the starboard rudder fell off?
23:49It had to be a rudder.
23:51Given the size of the rudders, if you did lose a rudder, that would cause some pretty significant flooding back there quickly.
23:57So that seemed like a plausible scenario.
24:00Losing rudders, it's not something you hear of every day.
24:03So it was something that we needed to look at.
24:07You start saying, well, how do you lose a rudder?
24:09To answer that question, Rand turns to Coast Guard investigator and engineer, Ken Olson.
24:15I had worked with Ken off and on through the years.
24:19I knew that he was a very thorough and detail-oriented investigator.
24:24All right, let me show you.
24:26Now.
24:28Olson immediately doubts it was a dropped rudder that caused the disaster.
24:31The rudders are designed not to fall out.
24:35It had about a 12-foot rudder post coming up out of the rudder through the hull.
24:39This is the rudder configuration.
24:41And then on top of the rudder is a tapered area.
24:44It forms a very, very tight interference fit, is what they call.
24:48The rudder is held in place by a carefully designed assembly consisting of more than a dozen different parts.
24:55Even if it was loose and leaking seawater, Olson can't believe it would fall out.
25:03It's secured pretty heavily and the likelihood of it coming apart by itself would seem to be very unlikely.
25:11It's impossible simply because too many things had to be compromised for the rudder to drop.
25:19So we weren't convinced that the rudder had fallen off.
25:25There was something else back there flooding.
25:28According to Lundy, he shut the watertight door.
25:30So how did the flooding spread?
25:36Flooding should be contained.
25:39Maybe you lose equipment, but you shouldn't sink.
25:41So you start wondering, well, why did it keep flooding?
25:44Why did the flooding progress?
25:46We need to know a lot more about this ship.
25:48The investigators can't get to the Alaska Ranger for clues, but they can get to the next best thing.
25:56Her sister ship, the Alaska Warrior.
25:59The two are almost identical.
26:02The Alaska Warrior was also owned by the same company.
26:06And so arguably was maintained in a similar condition to what we might have found the Alaska Ranger.
26:12They examine the Alaska Warrior and what they find...
26:17Look at that.
26:18...is troubling.
26:20You get a sense for how they operate, how the vessel's maintained.
26:23Watertight doors, which only work if they're secured and closed, would be tied open.
26:28So if your doors are open like that, well, obviously you're not going to be containing the flooding.
26:33Another door left open?
26:34I mean, you just looked around the door frame and you see like a two inch pipe through the bulkhead that had nothing blanking it off.
26:43I mean, it was an open pipe penetration that exposed the rudder room to the rest of the engineering spaces.
26:50And then we actually had holes in the bulkhead where she had just rusted through.
26:56Shoddy maintenance, holes and watertight doors tied open.
26:59They don't explain how the flooding started, but they certainly show how it might have spread to the rest of the ship.
27:06As we're looking at the Warrior, it just pretty much validated what we already suspected, that the Alaska Ranger had poor watertight integrity.
27:14Investigators now have a solid theory about how the flooding spread, but they still have no idea how it started.
27:21They interview Ryan Shuck. He worked on the Alaska Ranger as a tallyman counting the fish.
27:30Is he aware of any part of the ship that may have been damaged or leaking?
27:35The hull, maybe. I know it took some damage on our trip in that ice.
27:43Shuck describes an incident earlier that year.
27:46We might have gotten damaged then.
27:48We were fishing out in the solid ice where it was frozen like a lake.
27:54Fishing in icy waters is common practice on the Bering Sea.
27:58It's dangerous, and captains need to exercise caution.
28:02But according to Shuck, that's not what happened.
28:06We were going full speed.
28:07I mean, I don't know how fast that boat would go, you know, 12 knots or something, but that's way too fast through that ice.
28:12You could hear it. It just went...
28:15We knew that she was not built to operate in ice, and depending on what types of ice she was operating in, there was a possibility that, you know, she damaged the hull.
28:26Investigators wonder, why would a seasoned captain risk damaging his ship?
28:30What Shuck says next takes them completely by surprise.
28:36The fish master, while he was on the helm...
28:38The fishing master?
28:39Yeah, Kono. He took us through.
28:42What they've just heard is about to move the investigation in a whole new direction.
28:47If someone else on the bridge was calling the shots, not only is it dangerous, it's also against the law.
28:55Kono, the fish master, I actually had a lot of dealings with him being the tally person. He picked where we fished.
29:02Fish master Satoshi Kono's job is to find the richest fishing areas for the ship.
29:08But investigators learn on a previous voyage, Kono also took control of the ship.
29:13How much longer till we're out of this ice, you think?
29:17Not too long.
29:20We'll get that.
29:25It was against regulations for the unlicensed fish master to take control of the vessel.
29:31For one thing, it could make the crew dangerously uncertain about who is calling the shots.
29:39Thanks, Eric. I don't know what I'd do without you.
29:41Theoretically, the captain's supposed to be in charge of the boat.
29:44As far as the Coast Guard is concerned, the captain's in charge of the boat.
29:48You done with that? I'm heading back down.
29:50Yeah, thanks.
29:52But the fish master on these boats is like the head guy. You don't mess with him.
29:57Find us the fish, buddy. Find that money.
30:01Yes, yes.
30:02There's no evidence that Kono was controlling the ship on the day of the disaster.
30:07But it's a worrisome sign that regulations weren't always being followed.
30:12Here and here. That's where we start.
30:16Let's have a look.
30:17Was the Alaska Ranger taking other chances to get to the fish?
30:25Takes a couple of days.
30:29Better to get there faster.
30:30We're there to make money.
30:33We're there to make money.
30:34So everybody wanted to be the first out there, first fishing.
30:37Beat the other guys.
30:39On the day of the disaster, the Alaska Ranger left port at about 12 o'clock.
30:46Several hours before their sister ship, the Alaska Warrior.
30:53Normally you go out there with another boat because if something happens, there's somebody close by to give you the aid, whatever you need.
31:02That far, we always went with somebody else. But for whatever reason, we didn't want to wait.
31:07Investigators want to know if the Alaska Ranger's need for speed could have caused damage to the ship's hull.
31:16Apparently they transited through ice sometimes, fishing on the edge.
31:21Now they may have evidence to prove it.
31:24We managed to get some pictures, some photographs that some of them had taken in the ice.
31:28A member of the Alaska Ranger's crew captured photographs and video on that earlier voyage.
31:33We had to analyze and determine whether that could have been a source of the flooding.
31:41The Coast Guard also has a fleet of icebreakers, so we had some in-house expertise.
31:47Okay, I got it all queued up here.
31:50Coast Guard experts study the images and are able to estimate the thickness of the ice.
31:56But they don't think it's what sank the ship.
31:58They looked at it and told us that, you know, from their experience that while the ship may have run through the ice, if the ice had caused the failure, it would have occurred at the time.
32:12It wasn't the kind of thing that they're going to hit a piece of ice now and two months later, a plate is going to start to leak.
32:18Sorry, gentlemen. I don't think ice is behind this.
32:20But in the end, there was really nothing there that we could say that how the ice at any time could have impacted the after part of the vessel.
32:32Investigators are back at square one.
32:35Thanks for coming in, Mr. Haynes.
32:37They return to testimony about the events of that night, hoping for a lead.
32:41Ship's cook, Eric Haynes, tells them he had a front row seat to everything.
32:47I went into the wheelhouse. There was all kinds of commotion going on.
32:52According to Haynes, something strange happened after they lost power.
33:04The ship started moving in an unusual way.
33:07All of us just lunged forward like this. We just...
33:11What would cause that? When you start losing power, what's going on?
33:15So after that, I went out to get the rafts, because Captain Pete said we were going down.
33:21When Haynes launched the raft, it unexpectedly pulled away, moving beyond the front of the ship.
33:26And that rope just took off, right through my gloves, right through my hands.
33:30Why would that happen? That makes no sense. Why is the raft shooting past the bow?
33:36Investigators know the bizarre movement of the ship and its life rafts could be the clue they've been looking for.
33:43It may finally explain what happened on board the Alaska Ranger moments before she went down.
33:50Investigators have heard the Alaska Ranger appeared to be moving away from her life rafts moments before she sank.
34:05They believe it might explain why the ship went down so fast.
34:13Hey, I've got the plans.
34:17Okay, let's take a look at this.
34:19We started to look at the design of the ship and try and figure out, okay, what was going on.
34:22The team starts by collecting technical plans of the ship's propulsion system.
34:29The Alaska Ranger had controllable pitch propellers.
34:33These propellers can shift into reverse without changing their direction of rotation.
34:38Instead, changing the angle of the blades determines whether the boat goes forward or backward.
34:45But there's an unusual feature on this propeller that's of particular interest to the investigators.
34:53The blades are kept at the correct pitch by electric motors.
34:57But if the power is interrupted, the pitch of the blades can drift into reverse.
35:02We're able to determine that should it lose power, the controllable pitch propellers would go full astern.
35:10Let's go! Watch the raft!
35:12Launch the raft!
35:14After the electrical power went out, the engines were still running, driving the ship in reverse at the worst possible moment.
35:22When Eric the Cook launched the raft, he started shooting past the bow.
35:27And then that's when we realized that the ship was going full astern and they didn't know it.
35:32With the stern compartments flooded and riding low, driving backwards would have buried the rear deck into the oncoming seas.
35:40As soon as she started backing down, you would expect the master to have killed the engine so that she wouldn't keep doing that.
35:47That didn't happen.
35:49And the master may not have had any idea. We don't know. We never were able to ask him.
35:54Abandon ship! Abandon ship!
35:58Let's go!
35:59Whether the captain was unaware or unable to shut down the engines, investigators now know why the attempt to abandon ship went so badly.
36:08But they still have no idea what triggered the flooding in the first place.
36:15We were struggling. We knew that it happened in the stern. The flooding had started in the stern.
36:21But we really couldn't find that one piece of evidence that gave us that, aha, this is what it is. This is where it came from.
36:29With the formal hearings over, the Marine Board turns their focus to the ship.
36:36So on one hand, we approached the investigation from the standpoint of collecting testimony from all the surviving crew members.
36:43And that kind of helps us build a story of what happened.
36:46But in a similar manner, we have to rebuild the story of the ship itself.
36:49And it's often laid out in the plans of the ship and the modifications that were made along the way.
36:56They subpoena the owners of the Alaska Ranger for their files.
37:00And start digging through her service record looking for clues.
37:04Was there a weakness in the ship's structure?
37:07A faulty repair or modification that could have triggered the disaster?
37:14So she was built in Louisiana to supply the oil rigs.
37:17The Alaska Ranger was built in 1973.
37:21And at some point, she was bought and converted into a fish processor.
37:26Records show that over 45 years in service, the ship underwent numerous modifications.
37:32What the impacts of those modifications might have been on the vessel and how they may have been part of the loss is, you know, something we need to piece back together and reconstruct.
37:43Once again, investigators turn to engineer Ken Olsen to see if something's been missed.
37:52As Olsen searches through the ship's maintenance records, he notices something intriguing.
37:58Over the years, a series of small fractures have been repaired in the aft section of the hull.
38:02Olsen wonders if they could be related.
38:03It clearly pointed that there was a lot of stress and strain on the aft end of the vessel.
38:15Then he gets a lucky break.
38:16He discovers a photograph taken during one of the repairs, showing where struts connect the ship's propeller ducts to the hull.
38:24In that photograph is a guy welding on one of the struts.
38:31Wait a minute, why would they have to be welding on the struts?
38:34You ask yourself.
38:36Now that's weird.
38:37If there was any aha moment, it's when you're looking in this photo of this repair work being done.
38:44It doesn't seem to make sense in the first place.
38:46The repairs are for stress cracks.
38:50Ken Olsen thinks they may have been caused when heavy steel propeller ducts were added to the ship.
38:56The ducts surround the propeller to improve thrust and fuel efficiency.
39:01Extremely heavy, they can weigh more than a ton each.
39:06The struts that hold the ducts in place need to tie into the internal structure of the ship.
39:11If they're attached only to the outside surface of the hull, the hull can weaken and fracture.
39:20Perhaps the unusual repairs were done to fix a botched installation.
39:25Here are the modification plans.
39:28Olsen has searched the records.
39:31He found plans for two different methods to safely attach the ducts.
39:36And B.
39:37So which one did they use?
39:39Neither.
39:41So the struts weren't welded into the frame?
39:44No, sir.
39:46Rather than going through the hull up into the structure and the beams,
39:49they just attached it right to the outside of the hull, which is not a good way to hang it.
39:54Now you have something that's subjected to a lot of vibration by the rotating propellers.
40:01And eventually these welds that are holding it to the shell are going to start to crack.
40:07And then we looked at the maintenance records and realized that they had done repairs around the nozzles almost each time the ship had been in tridock since they'd been installed.
40:18If the weld on the starboard strut gave way, it would have torn a hole in the same area in the rudder room where the flooding began.
40:26The struts being directly underneath the rudder room certainly would have fit the scenario Rodney Lundy saying it's flooding.
40:37The location of the strut weld is so close to the rudder post that even a seasoned crewman like Rod Lundy could have mistaken the source of flooding.
40:48Wheelhouse. Dave, it's Rod. We got major flooding in the rudder room. Sound the general alarm.
40:55I still kind of remember that day when we're like, it's this. This has got to be it.
40:59Two years after the sinking of the Alaska Ranger, the Coast Guard concludes the tragedy likely started when a strut attaching the starboard propeller duct broke, tearing a hole in the ship's hull.
41:13It triggered a massive flood in the ship's rudder room.
41:16Now, wake up. Get up. Come on, come on. Get up.
41:22What's going on?
41:23Everybody to the bridge right now.
41:27Lack of watertight integrity due to poor maintenance allowed the flooding to spread.
41:32No, no, no, no. We got to get out of here now.
41:36There was nothing the crew could do to stop it.
41:39The flood led to a power failure.
41:46Which caused the controllable pitch propellers to shift into reverse.
41:53As the ship buried itself into the sea, the captain was either unaware or unable to shut off the engines.
42:02It condemned five men to their deaths in the ICC.
42:06In their final recommendations, the Marine Board of Investigation takes direct aim at fishing companies with poor maintenance standards that put crews lives at risk.
42:19One of our primary conclusions was the Coast Guard had to go back and seek more legislative authority to be able to require fishing vessels to be inspected by the Coast Guard to determine that they are being maintained properly.
42:33The Alaska Ranger got a lot of significant attention and has, I think, really helped improve the safety of some of these vessels, these older fishing vessels that are still out there.
42:44We know that some of those fishermen going to sea are safer now than they were before.
42:48But that said, you know, we're tireless about pursuing safety and we're not going to stop until we know that people are safe at sea.
42:59The story of the Alaska Ranger is one of tragedy marked by the loss of five men.
43:05But it is also the story of survival and daring rescue.
43:09Once I got home, it was like I used to be a fisherman and that was cool, but I also knew I never was going to do it again.
43:17I love that boat.
43:19I mean, it was like, like a piece of me went down with the Ranger.
43:23I look back and it kind of, kind of haunts me a little bit, the guys that didn't come home.
43:29Because it didn't come home.
43:59I'll see you next time.
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