11 Years After ‘Alaska Ranger’
Today, March 23, 2019, marks 11 years to the day since the sinking of the F/V Alaska Ranger in the Bering Sea on Easter Sunday.
In the time since the sinking, a book has been written about it, Popular Mechanics magazine profiled it, and several documentaries have been made about it.
All of them combine to tell the full accounting of what is widely believed to be the most daring and ambitious rescue in Alaskan history - 47 people forced into the water in the early morning hours, with just enough time to get off a ‘mayday’ call to the communication station (CommSta) in Kodiak.
42 of the 47 souls onboard the Ranger survived despite grueling hours adrift in the Bering Sea.
Nothing but time, cold, and darkness to keep their company.
The sinking capped the first week of our three-month Alpat (Alaska Patrol), which would also be my final patrol onboard Coast Guard cutter Munro, after three years onboard.
For all of us onboard Munro, it was a day none of us will ever forget, which is a sentiment that should win ‘Understatement of the Year’.
It didn’t start that way.
The preceding day was a typical one at sea. We stood the watch, compiled a list of boats to target for fisheries boardings, held a CIC (Combat Information Center) watch supervisor qualification board, and held our nightly ops briefing.
Every patrol starts the same. We’d leave port, get out to sea, and then make our way through the Aleutian Chain towards the Bering where we’d “stretch our legs.”
That would mean testing out the turbines to ensure our ship could reach maximum speed if needed, which was 27–29 knots, depending on wind speed and seas.
Sounds easy enough, but Munro, like all high endurance cutters, was old. She was easily the most reliable of the 378s (which is short for 378 feet in-length, which at the time, was the largest model of ship in the fleet), but was still prone to mechanical issues, large and small, from time to time.
But with a recent drydock not long behind her, Munro was fit for full duty.
It was a strange time for me. There was excitement and anxious anticipation in knowing that, after three years away, I was returning to Texas for my next unit. I was engaged to my now-wife and we’d be getting married not long after I left Munro and resettled in Corpus Christi.
But it was bittersweet. The ship, and my shop in particular, CIC, was the closest thing I had to home since leaving home. I loved (almost) everyone in that shop. We were a misfit group of individuals but we made a bad ass team.
When I reported aboard Munro in October 2005, I was 19 years-old, way over my head, and completely lacking in the discipline department. I didn’t know shit, and those guys and gals saw that instantly.
I couldn’t fake it until I made it. They tore me down, kicked me out of the shop on that first patrol for being as useless as a cup without a bottom, and forced me to man-up.
I still have my very first employee review, signed by my chief, Luke Cutburth. To this day, it is as scathing a rebuke of another human as one could be without it being aimed at a terrorist. Even after I turned it around and 14 years elapsed, it still has fucking teeth.
I kept it all these years to remind myself of how far I’ve come. I needed that. It wasn’t tough love, it was just tough. They had no loyalty to me, no reason to feel remorse over treating me that way. I was nobody to them, just some punk ass who wasn’t holding up any end of the bargain.
The catalyzing event for that rebuke was an incident with shredded paper that I’ll embarrass myself with at another time.
The point is, in the time between my first patrol and my final one, I had come a long way. CIC was a haven for me and we were already losing members of the shop that I valued.
Times were changing, the shop was changing, and soon, we’d all be off to new units and new beginnings.
But on March 22, 2008, all anyone seemed to care about, if anything, was the festivities for, and preceding, Easter. The morale committee (not completely unlike Dunder Mifflin’s Party Planning Committee) was hard at work, plotting out easter egg hunts and other things I was sure to avoid in favor of laying in my rack and playing PS2, drinking Mountain Dew, and generally maintaining my status as a Sex God.
The qualification board we held was for Josh Vanskike, our longest-tenured OS (Operations Specialist) at the time. Josh was leaving after the patrol as well, but after three years and change as a Radio OS, he was crossing over to CIC.
Luke had always talked about merging our two shops. Cross-training and qualifying was something, he hoped, would start on Munro but spread like wildfire throughout the Guard. It made sense, but it was slow-going for a couple years. Once the crews began turning over in 2007, he saw an opening and went for it. Also, that’s what she said.
Quickly here: qualification boards are essentially job interviews. You’re tested on practical knowledge via written examinations (sometimes), and then you have an oral board (most of the time) where numerous members of the shop sit-in and ask situational or procedural questions. I think you can figure out the rest.
Josh aced it, but he foreshadowed his impending first watch as a qualified supervisor, scheduled for midnight shift, by saying something to the effect of, “watch, I’m gonna get a fucking SAR (search and rescue) case tonight.”
We hadn’t had a SAR case in over a year, so it seemed unlikely.
As we pushed north, the driving wind and snow was causing outdoor temps to plummet. Seas were predictably rough and everyone was trying to get their legs under them.
Knowing I had watch at 0700, I set my alarm for 0600 and hit the hay around midnight.
Around 0300, I was woken up by the sound of our twin turbine engines roaring to life. The berthing area was otherwise dark and quiet, save for the rack locks slamming into the racks every time the ship rocked back and forth.
Not knowing if anyone was awake, or present, I yelled out, “why the fuck are we doing turbine tests in the middle of the fucking night?!”
The drawer to my rack kept popping in and out (kind of what she said) thanks to my apparent disdain for padlocks. Not wanting my drawer to go flying into the rack across from me, I timed an acrobatic jump out of my rack, both to avoid the metal drawer hitting me and to prevent it from hitting others.
Only the jump was what you’d expect from a previously-balled up Mexican trying to make anything seem “acrobatic”. The edge of the drawer stuck me in the back of my thigh, leaving me bleeding like a stuffed pig, holding paper towels to it while sitting in a chair next to my rack, in my underwear.
As that image endured, Josh stormed into the berthing area and told us that Luke, our first class, Erin Lopez, our OPS boss, XO, and CO had assumed control of the watch thanks to a distress call relayed to us by CommSta Kodiak.
We were now headed towards the last known position of the F/V Alaska Ranger, full speed ahead with the wind at our backs.
In that moment, I thought “maybe I should go down there.” But as Josh was vanquished from CIC for, I assume, rest and some quiet before the storm, I figured I’d sleep a couple more hours and head down early for my watch.
I was up again at 0530. I got dressed and made my way towards the mess deck, expecting to simply grab an apple or some cereal before heading down to CIC to get caught up and help prosecute this case.
What happened instead was I walked into a room transformed into a makeshift MASH unit, with wool blankets covering strangers I’d never seen before as they peeled off red survival suits.
After a few moments watching crewmembers scrambling around to help the influx of survivors, I made my way straight down to CIC.
It was organized chaos down there as myself and others arrived to start thinning out the list of responsibilities. I could see on camera the helicopter, or helo, being refueled in-flight after dropping another basket filled with a survivor. Luke was manning the first chair, Erin was next to him, Captain Lloyd had the CO’s chair behind them, and numerous officers and watchstanders were already in-play.
I was put in charge of log-keeping at first. Jotting down every relevant event — helo arrival and departures both on the ship and on scene, arrival time of survivors onboard Munro, as well as when one would arrive onboard the Ranger’s sister ship, Alaska Warrior.
Then, at certain times, we would rotate responsibilities. I would be on the radar, or manning the radio, or plotting positions on the chart.
Every activity seemed to elapse in a matter of seconds, even as hours drifted by. The only activity that would capture people’s breath would be when the helo would begin hoisting a survivor up from the water.
That pull takes a matter of seconds, but that time draws out like a knife. Any and everything can go wrong. These men were in the progressive stages of hypothermia; they’re panicking and not thinking clearly after having been in freezing water and darkness for hours on-end.
When one survivor failed to make it into the helo, instead falling 40-feet back into the Bering, our worst fears were realized.
Information was flying all around at that point, but there was a brief, notable hush that fell over us all. Very brief.
You tend to get lost in the moments as they’re happening. You’re too focused on the task at hand, and ensuring you’re doing a good job of it to really realize what just happened, but we knew what that was. We just kept on.
My reputation onboard Munro was that of a good kid, but one who didn’t tend to take things overly serious. I had passed up the opportunity to seek advancement to E-5 because I didn’t think I was ready in spite of Luke’s recommendation. But on this day, like everyone else, I was focused.
It was inspiring to see us all working in concert so well together. We knew our jobs and we did them, large and small, with precision.
By 1700, both Munro and Alaska Warrior, the Ranger’s sister ship, had, what we thought, was a full accounting of all 47 crewmembers, alive and dead.
As Alaska Warrior began the journey back to Dutch Harbor, I was left on watch.
About an hour in, I was tasked by our OPS boss to call the Alaska Warrior on the radio to check and see if they had a particular crewmember onboard. When they confirmed that they didn’t, we stayed behind, launched the helo again and conducted another day-long search. By Monday evening, we ended the search with no success in locating that member.
The survivors onboard were housed in rec deck areas and any free racks available. We all bought them cigarettes and snacks from the ship store, and I donated a chunk of my sizable Mountain Dew/non-perishable soup and snack stash. We gave them movies to watch and reading material to pass the time with.
I recall one guy coming into the berthing area to use the head (restroom). Me and the guy I was speaking with asked if he was good and needed anything. “My life,” he told us, “and you guys gave that to me, and I thank you.”
When we arrived in Dutch Harbor, it was a bizarre scene. There were camera crews and lights, reporters and families, ready to receive their loved ones, or their remains. Very irregular for an otherwise quiet, remote place like Dutch Harbor.
Shortly after, we were back underway; off to complete a three-month fisheries patrol that, otherwise, was pretty tame.
Still, the events of that day, 11 years ago today, remain cemented in my mind. Every March 23rd, for me, is a reminder of what happens when people clamp down and work together. The amazing things we can do and the odds we can defy together.
None of those 42 survivors are alive today if the guys at CommSta Kodiak, the helo crew on St. Paul Island, the helo crew on Munro, the entire Munro crew, and the Alaska Warrior don’t do their jobs and then some.
This was an extraordinary event, with a case of this magnitude being executed amidst -24 F wind chills, 20 foot swells and 30 knot winds.
47 people descended into the black, icy abyss of the Bering Sea and 42 emerged with their lives intact. Four were recovered and given a chance to be mourned and celebrated by their families and loved ones. One was lost to the sea.
I, myself, was a microscopic participant, but it made a monumental impact on my life and put a happy ending on my incredible career aboard Munro.
