Law School Professor Rescued At Sea

Most Harvard students are forced to only ponder the lifeboat dilemma in Professor of Government Michael Sandel's Moral Reasoning 22: "Justice."

Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree discovered the darker side of the sea when a simple fishing expedition turned into a harrowing tale.

In a story that is a cross between

"Gilligan's Island" and The Perfect Storm, Ogletree, his elderly father-in-law, a former student, a seasoned captain and other passengers lost power to their engine, received an unexpected helping hand, weathered a severe storm and ultimately had a brush with death.

At a reunion of the troubled ship's crew and their rescuers on Monday, they talked about the near catastrophe in late August as in the past, and they celebrated the bonds formed out of that distressful episode.

But they can also lucidly recount that day's events, and how they had worried for their lives more as the hours passed.

It began in the early morning of Aug. 29 when the crew departed in the Escort, an old, heavy, wooden 32-foot fishing boat on a day-long trip of yellow-fin tuna fishing.

The members of the crew left Gay Head's in Menemsha Harbor in Martha's Vineyard at 5 a.m. Although they expected to return in the early evening, it would not be until 9:30 the next morning that they would return.

A Smooth Start

For most of the day, the sea was relatively calm, with only a few swells. Ogletree and Dennis Sweet, an attorney in Jackson, Miss. who was a former student and a life-long fishing friend of Ogletree, were having a good fishing day.

The law professor had just been down to Mississippi on a fishing trip with Sweet and was returning the favor. Ogletree, who usually fished for striped bass and had just mounted a 53-pound fish, landed a 75-pound yellow-fin tuna that day.

Late in the afternoon, as Ogletree tried to reel in one more fish, the crew's good luck ran out.

Buddy Vanderhoop, the ship's captain, was unfamiliar with the boat and believed the battery could stand the large electrical usage.

But the battery died, leaving the crew stranded 45 miles south of Martha's Vineyard, with a dead engine and no radio, lights or bilge pump late in the afternoon. The crew was not worried, even as attempts to revive the engine failed.

The captain used his cell phone to call his brother to bring batteries to get them back to port, but ultimately, the brother suffered electronic problems of his own and had to be towed back to harbor by the Coast Guard.

With the crew not immediately realizing the difficulty, it seemed that the unfortunate delay even gave them a fish story to go along with the day. Ogletree tried to reel in a blue shark that probably weighed 350 pounds, but ultimately it got away, giving the crew their fish story for the day. However, rougher seas lay ahead.

Pooling Resources

Then a chance occurrence seemed to save the day for the crew as the Dorado, a lobster boat returning to port after three days, was spotted. It was 8:30 and darkness had fallen; Vanderhoop fired off powerful 2500 ft. rocket flares that he fortunately had in the cabin.

David Vieira, who had been banished to the Dorado's deck to smoke a cigarette, spotted the flare and went inside to wake the captain, Skip Harris.

The two boats approached each other, and Harris asked if they had working basic equipment: radio, bilge and other necessities. Finally, Vanderhoop recalls Harris asking if they had any beer.

Fortunately, the crew still had three bottles of Red Stripe left, which they happily handed over.

"Jamaican!" Harris exclaimed. Since they were returning from a hard trip, Vanderhoop recalls, they were overjoyed to drink a beer. As it turned out, beer was not enough to solve their problems.

The Perfect Storm

The journey back to harbor increasingly became difficult. The rope that towed the Escort was constantly strained and broke three times over 15 miles, slowing down the return trip.

As midnight approached, and the rope broke for the third time, it increasingly became clear the Coast Guard would be needed. The clear forecast of the afternoon and early evening had turned into rough seas, and swells measured nearly 15 feet.

Ogletree and the rest of the crew did their best manually bailing out of the boat an estimated 2,000 gallons of water, with Ogletree filling more than 100 buckets. Yet, the Coast Guard, which had initially said it would only take 45 minutes to arrive, took nearly three hours, arriving in a 47-foot boat instead of a 110-footer, which better suited the job.

Before the Coast Guard arrived, two larger waves of 20 feet nearly tipped over the old, wooden Escort, and Captain Vanderhoop briefed the crew on how to react to a capsizing.

Back in 1980, Vanderhoop had weathered Hurricane David off the coast of New Foundland. He told the crew, who donned life vests to prepare for a crisis, to stay together if tossed overboard and to try to avoid the possibility of receiving cuts which could attract sharks.

"If you get singled out, you are not going to make it, " Vanderhoop recalls telling them. "They didn't mind the fact that they had to go in the water, but the sharks really got to them," he says.

To make matters worse, it took the Coast Guard nearly an hour once they arrived to throw over a line to the Escort. And once the line was received at around 3 a.m., the long journey back to harbor still lay ahead.

After the crew finally made it back, they found that their rescuers in the Dorado had disappeared. Ogletree discovered later that they had called the Coast Guard to see if everyone had landed safely.

Finding Common Ground

When the crew of the Escort and the Dorado reunited this week in New Bedford in the appropriately named Davey's Locker restaurant, the rescued men came bearing gifts for the Dorado crew--and three cases of Red Stripe beer.

"[Harris] likes us and wants to get back together," Vanderhorn says. "A lot of people wouldn't have done what he did. If he hadn't done that, we would have died. It was a Godsend."

And while Vanderhorn took five years to return to the sea after battling waves close to 100 ft. in Hurricane David, Ogletree has already been back out three times since late August.

"The lesson is to be respectful of the sea and not to fear it," he says.

"It's an experience that makes you think carefully about how precious life can be. We were fortunate that God was looking over us," Ogletree concluded.