KODIAK, Alaska — One fisherman is dead and three others are in the hospital after a Seattle-based 75-foot fishing boat sank in the Gulf of Alaska Tuesday night.
One of the four crew members of the Northern Belle died after suffered a head trauma while exiting the boat and was already deceased when rescuers arrived, but it's not clear if he died from the injury or hypothermia, said Dr. Phil Hess at Cordova Community Medical Center in Cordova, Alaska.
The crew of the Northern Belle sent a mayday radio call at about 5:30 p.m. that the boat was sinking about 50 miles south of Montague Island, said Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class David Mosley. That's near the mouth of Prince William Sound.
Fisherman Robert Jack, of Seattle, was one of the three members on board the Northern Belle. He spoke with KING 5 News from Anchorage Providence's Emergency Room, where he was taken after the crew was rescued. He recounted the events before the ship sank.
"We just finished dinner and I went up to the wheelhouse to drive while the captain went to his room," said Jack. "All of a sudden, the boat took a very large surge to the starboard side and panic started to happen. The captain ran to the engine room, asked me to steer. I couldn't recover the ballast on the boat. It was extremely listing - it got worse and worse."
Jack called the crew to the wheel room where they quickly got into their survival suits.
"At this time, less than three minutes had passed, the boat was almost a vertical starboard down-port up, straight up and down," said Jack.
Jack said they weren't able to launch the life rafts properly because of the position of the ship. At that point, Jack and the captain decided to jump into the water after they had their survival suits on.
"I jumped in first and I cut part of my survival suit on a piece of metal going out, and I was brought under during a surge," recalled Jack. "I brought myself back and I looked and the captain was jumping in the water too."
Jack said the strong surges of water prevented him from seeing the captain or the rest of the crew for the next hour.
"I knew there were two other crew members unaccounted for, so I pulled myself onto a bundle of wood that was part of the freight, so I could partially remove myself out of the water because I could feel I was starting to go into hypothermia," said Jack. "I took my light, turned it on, and blew my whistle as loud as I could until I got their attention."
Jack managed to pull one other crew member onto the freight. Jack told KING 5 the captain of the ship drowned after he was caught by a piece of freight and suffered head trauma. Authorities have not released the identity of the deceased until family has been notified.
Jack said the crew were floating in the frigid water for over three hours before rescue crews arrived. A Coast Guard plane dropped a life raft to the crew members before a helicopter from Air Station Kodiak arrived and pulled them from the water.
The three who survived suffered hypothermia but were in stable condition because they wore protective gear, Hess said.
"It's cold. They were wearing survival suits, which gave the other three the chance they had and they're doing well," he said.
The operator of the boat, Robert Royer, was among the crew, Petty Officer Jeffrey Roberto from the Coast Guard's Juneau office told The Seattle Times.
Records show the fishing boat is owned by Triton Inc., Roberto said.
