Recently, the Coast Guard concluded its investigation into why the five-year-old, 35-foot mussel dragger LITTLE RASPY, of Jonesport, capsized and sank on Dec. 14, 2000, and why Capt. Dwayne A. Smith, 21, of West Jonesport; Dawson E. Allen, 22, of Jonesport; and Michael A. Laytart, 39, of Addison; the three fishermen aboard her, lost their lives.

Arn Heggers, Fishing Vessel Safety Coordinator for Maine and New Hampshire, says an accident at sea is made up of a series of events, like stacked dominos. “If you remove one,” he said, “the event may not have happened. It’s all the little causal events.”

The Coast Guard’s Incident Report of the accident stated that the initiating event was flooding. The vessel flooded, it concluded, “through non-watertight deck hatches caused by rough seas and inability to drain water from [the] well deck due to blocked freeing ports. The crew improperly blocked freeing ports with cargo,” which did not allow for water drainage. The report also noted that the vessel was not designed to have the dragging equipment and gantry added.

The addition of aluminum rigging shifted the vessel’s center of gravity and became one of several factors that contributed to the vessel capsizing and sinking. Among other factors contributing to loss of life was the absence of personal protective equipment, including life jackets. Wearing lifejackets would have helped Smith, Allen, and Laytart survive the first three minutes or so of cold water shock. The report stated, “Lack of immersion suits contributed to the hypothermia and subsequent drowning of [Smith, Dawson and Laytart].”

The Coast Guard is not always able to solve the question of why a vessel sank. Sometimes there is no vessel to investigate or crew to interview. In this case, though, Capt. Dwayne Smith’s uncle and employer, Ralph Smith, of Jonesport, owner of Moosebec Mussels, Inc., was speaking on a cell phone with Capt. Smith when the vessel capsized.

According to Ralph Smith’s interview with the Coast Guard, LITTLE RASPY was fishing for mussels in the Masons Bay area of Chandler Bay, off Jonesport. Although he had originally ordered 160 bags of mussels, Ralph Smith called his nephew on his cell phone to cut the order to 130 when he found the weather was worsening. He said thirty minutes later his nephew called to say the weather was “getting real bad.” A southeast wind had picked up to 20-30 knots. “Fishing in the lee of the wind,” the Coast Guard interviewer noted, “they didn’t realize how much the wind had affected the sea conditions.” The vessel ran into eight- to-ten-foot seas.

Ralph Smith said he told his nephew at least four times during the five-minute phone call to “knock down the bags,” meaning to take the piled-up mussel bags, each weighing between 45 and 50 lbs., and lay them on the deck side by side to prevent them from shifting. He said he doesn’t believe the crew ever did this.

After taking on a large wave, the piled-up mussel bags shifted to the starboard side. Dwayne Smith asked his uncle what he should do and described the next three or four waves that came over each side of the boat. His uncle told him to start throwing mussel bags overboard and to head for the nearest shore. Ralph Smith said, “he told me [the vessel] dipped to the other side when he started to throw them over. He told me something else was wrong, but he just didn’t know what. I told him to beach the ship, but he said he didn’t want to ruin the ship. He told me he was going to get out of the seas and wind and hide behind Byron Island.” It was 500 yards away.

As soon as it became obvious that the boat was going to go down, Ralph Smith told his nephew to put on lifejackets. Twenty seconds later the phone went dead. The phone call had lasted about five minutes. Life jackets and an inflatable life raft were found floating on the water near the wrecked vessel.

The Coast Guard based its investigation on visual evidence, taped interviews, and a computer model of LITTLE RASPY made to test the vessel’s stability. The computer model was made using tonnage and measurements of sister vessels MISTY JADE and LADY C. The analysis concluded:

* The addition of the aluminum rigging to the LITTLE RASPY reduced the stability of the vessel by about 8 percent, freeboard by 21 percent, and downflooding angle by almost 4 percent. “This meant the vessel had less resistance to wind and wave action and decreased the vessel’s ability to right itself when heeled.”

* “The LITTLE RASPY’s stability was significantly reduced with the rigging additions and 130 bushels of mussels onboard,” the report added.

* “The total freeing port area was grossly inadequate for the size and type of vessel. (It totaled only 14 percent of the required freeing port area for this type vessel.”

* “The plugged freeing ports prevented any water that entered the boat from escaping. This water most likely migrated to the bilges, since the hatches and pilothouse door on the main deck were only weathertight.”

This series of events, like Heggers’s stacked dominos, led to the LITTLE RASPY’s loss of stability, causing it to capsize. Had Dwayne Smith and his crew understood the hydrodynamics of wave action, Heggers said, they would not have gone into shallow water where the waves built up faster and piled on. He explained, “the hydrodynamics of wave action is that a large swell is not a problem in deepwater, but it becomes a breaking wave in shallow water. Breaking waves crash over gunwales and if the freeing ports don’t shed the water fast enough or if the deck is not watertight, the capsizing sequence of events described in the report start to line up like those dominos.”

The LITTLE RASPY was a Cape Island Class “Novi” boat. Heggers said the Cape Island Class has certain characteristics that make it a good workboat, but has other characteristics that tend to create problems, according to a report done by Transport Canada. The Canadian report looked at the capsizing potential and sequence of events on these boats.

Heggers said, “This is another case of not knowing the inherent dangers of a piece of equipment so that you can compensate and reduce those dangers. If they recognized the trouble they were in,” he said, “they would have been taking appropriate action, not talking on the phone.”

Heggers said Smith didn’t fully understand stability issues on his vessel. “I talk to fishermen about these Novi boats and the things they can do to mitigate the problems,” he said. “[Smith and his crew] plugged the scuppers. [If you do that], you’re basically counting on nothing going wrong. It all about understands the risks. If he had understood the risks, he would have chosen a different route.”

Heggers went on to say there are courses available at the Maine Maritime Academy and other places, and he hopes Maine will add some safety training into the lobster apprentice program. “When you’re dealing in seconds,” he said, “there are things you must do without thinking about them. That’s what training provides.

“This was a real tragedy, and training fishermen to recognize the dangers of a situation and to react properly is so important,” Heggers said. “I’m hopeful the Maine DMR’s [Department of Marine Resources] new Commercial Fishing Industry Safety Advisory Council will be able to move forward on the Community Based Education Outreach recommendation that came out of [former Gov. Angus King’s] Commercial Fishing Industry Safety Task Force. Knowing what to do and when, will go a long way in saving lives. That one piece — understanding wave action and staying out of shallow water — would have broken this deadly chain of events. Recognizing the hazard is the key to survival.”

The Transport Canada Report, CMVDR – 9604, done by the Center of Marine Vessel Design & Research can be obtained through University of Nova Scotia, P.O. Box 1000, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3J2X4

Editor’s note: Continuing Concern over Safety

“Between Dec. 30, 1999 and Jan. 20, 2001, the U. S. Coast Guard in Maine responded to over 90 commercial fishing vessel accidents. Of those accidents over 20 cases involved flooding, 11 vessels were lost, seven fishermen sustained serious injuries, and nine died,” WWF reported in April, 2001.

An article in our February 2001 issue had focused on boating safety and one in the May 2001 issue emphasized safety equipment. Three years later the Coast Guard concluded its investigations into most of the accidents. The reports of those investigations, applied for under the Freedom of Information Act, were written up in our May 2004 issue.

Now the Coast Guard has completed its investigation of another accident from that same period. Again, the cause appears to have been flooding, coupled with instability due to the addition of rigging. Again, in the interest of safety, we report on the Coast Guard’s findings.

— ed.