Tangled gear doomed trawler off Cape May, lawyer says

CAPE MAY - The way the Lady Mary is resting upright on the ocean floor, her nets loaded with 18,000 pounds of scallops 200 feet below the water's surface, tells attorney Stevenson Weeks that the March 24 sinking of the 71-foot trawler was no ordinary shipwreck.

"This vessel did not roll over and sink," Weeks said yesterday, following the second day of hearings in a Coast Guard Marine Board investigation of the incident.

Video taken from a remotely operated underwater vehicle brought by the Coast Guard to the site about 60 miles off Cape May shows that the ship's dredge - a heavy metal-framed apparatus with an attached net - is intact. Almost all of the red-and-white steel-hulled vessel appears undamaged. But the dredge's tow cable is missing, Weeks said.

The maritime lawyer, hired by Royal Smith, who lost two sons in the incident, theorized yesterday that the craft was pulled downward when its dredge gear became entangled in rigging from a passing ship or was snagged by something on the ocean floor. Vessels often tilt or flip as they sink, Weeks said. That a full catch remains in its nets is evidence that the Lady Mary was dragged down, he said.

"When you're fishing, there's no reason to disconnect the dredge from its tow cable unless you run into a problem," said Weeks, of Beaufort, N.C.

The Lady Mary was dredging in a deep-water area known as Elephant Trunk when something went awry on the rough sea just before dawn. Within a short time, the trawler sank to the ocean floor.

Four crewmen were never seen again. Two, whose bodies were plucked from the water by the Coast Guard about three hours later, drowned. A seventh man, Jose Luis Arias, was saved by the Coast Guard and is expected to testify today.

Arias told his rescuers that he was asleep when the ship began to sink at around 5 a.m. He quickly slipped on a Neoprene survival suit before plunging into the roiling water and clinging to a piece of driftwood.

Exactly what sank the Lady Mary is the focus of the investigation by the Coast Guard, aided by the National Transportation Safety Board. The hearing opened on April 14, but went on hiatus the next day to allow Smith, who the Coast Guard says owned the Lady Mary, to retain legal counsel. In addition to his sons, Royal Jr. and Timothy, Smith lost a brother, Bernie Smith, in the accident.

As a party of interest, Royal Smith, of Mesic, N.C., had been allowed to ask questions of witnesses at the inquiry. He decided to hire a lawyer when the Coast Guard said it planned to question him.

At the hearing yesterday, a Coast Guard search-and-rescue coordinator pinpointed the location of the Lady Mary in relation to about two dozen vessels in the area at the time.

Afterward, Weeks proffered the theory that the Lady Mary's dredging gear became entangled with something.

Weeks said video taken by the Coast Guard undersea vehicle showed the Lady Mary positioned upright on the ocean floor. The only thing out of place appears to be that the dredge cable isn't connected to the vessel, he said.

Weeks said he was confident that testimony before the five-member panel would clarify what lead to the accident.

In addition, a private dive team from New Jersey has offered to make what could be a very dangerous trip to the Lady Mary. Its information also could shed light on what happened, Weeks said.

A Coast Guard spokeswoman declined to comment on Weeks' theory. The Guard is using the hearings to gather evidence and will issue a report later. Video from the underwater vehicle is expected to be introduced into evidence later this week.

Those testifying yesterday included a Coast Guard safety inspector who gave the Lady Mary a clean bill of health during an inspection eight months before it went down, and two search-and-rescue coordinators who said they heard no Mayday calls until two to three hours after the ship is believed to have sunk.

No one knows why it took the ship's electronic position-indicating emergency signal so long to alert rescuers.

"I think we have pretty much established that we didn't hear a Mayday call. It is disappointing that we didn't know about it before we did," testified Coast Guard Lt. Tim Marriott, a search-and-rescue coordinator for the Delaware Bay sector. "We can only act on what we know about."

Marriott said that he later reviewed radio calls beginning at 4:30 that morning and heard nothing that indicated a problem.

Another mystery is why none of the ships fishing in or passing through the Elephant Trunk area heard Mayday calls.

"We are trying to understand why all those fishing vessels who were right there didn't hear something," said Marriott, who gave a detailed presentation on where various vessels - some much larger than the Lady Mary - were when the ship sank.

His findings, taken from satellite information, indicated 22 vessels were within a six-mile radius of the ship. One freighter, the Alexandria Dawn out of Montauk, N.Y., may have passed within 800 yards. Another, the Cap Beatrice, was within one mile. Its registry is unknown.

Besides Arias, the lone survivor, representatives from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration are scheduled to testify today. Officials said the hearing is expected to last through the week.