by Cris Italia
In a tape obtained by the Herald, a desperate Robert Hammon makes a last attempt for help before he would never be heard from again. Hammon and his son, Robert Jr., of Valley Stream along with Robert Wright and Peter Quinn of Island Park were all on the 25-foot fishing boat lost after bad weather and waves of over five feet overturned the ship off Jones Beach.
The four men were competing in the 30th Annual Freeport Hudson Anglers Shark Tournament, the winner of which would receive a grand prize of $20,000. Despite the bad weather, anglers decided to continue with the tournament, but many participants returned shortly when they saw the sea conditions.
The call came after 9:00 a.m. The Coast Guard reportedly could not make out the name of the ship through the call.
"They went into blind waters," said George Scocca, publisher of Noreast Magazine. "After about an hour and a half they gave up on the aerial search, because they had no other calls and basically they didn't know what they were looking for. What could they find in an hour and a half?"
Scocca's magazine has covered the annual shark tournament before, and he has had a relationship with all the members of the Eleni II. After listening to the tape and playing it over four or five times, the name of the boat was heard.
"The tape is about 52 seconds long and you can hear the name," Scocca said. He added that he took the "buzz sound" out and could clearly hear Hammon's cries for help. "If I could do it with my equipment I see no reason why the Coast Guard couldn't do it."
The second search for the fisherman began after dusk, but by then it might have already been too late. "Those men died of hypothermia, but they could have been saved," Scocca said. Although he says both the contest organizers and the fishermen were at fault, he feels the Coast Guard might need to look at their procedures. "The Coast Guard should have never called off the search that quickly. ... Maybe they need to change their procedures."
Lt. Bill Berry, spokesperson for the Coast Guard said the call was played over and over, but they could not make out the name or location. We reviewed [the mayday call] a number of times, the name of the boat could not be heard through the call, Berry said. He added that not even their digital equipment could clear up the call enough to hear the name of the call or the coordinates.
So we didn't have an actual location. Our sea search lasted about five hours before we decided to call it off and then we continued later that evening, Berry said. If we had a location we could have done a search between to sights, but we didn't have that. We never had an actual location.
Search Over
On Wednesday, Coast Guard Cdr. Dennis Sens announced the rescue effort was over. "The Coast Guard made a very difficult decision to suspend their search for the four fishermen reported overturned at a fishing tournament off Long Island [last] weekend," said Cdr. Todd Nelson, Commander of Coast Guard Group Moriches, Long Island.
"As a commanding officer myself, I can tell you that the most difficult decision a commander has to make is to suspend an ongoing search. I can assure you that [Sens'] decision was made after very careful consideration by our expert search and rescue planners, who have exhausted every reasonable effort in our search for survivors," Nelson stated during at press conference at the West Boat Basin Coast Guard base in Freeport.
The search for the four fisherman stretched from the shores of Long Island up to Cape Cod and down into Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
"I met with the relatives of these four men earlier today to provide a detailed summery of our search efforts over the past four days. ... It is with great sadness that we were compelled to suspend the search," said Sens, Chief of Search and Rescue with Rescue Coordination Center in Portsmouth, Virginia.
Sens added that the survival time for a person in 60-degree water is not greater than 15 hours at best, even with properly worn survival suits. After 80 hours of searching, the Coast Guard called off the search.
Taking action
Although families of the four men have either declined to comment or have said little to the press, one family is looking at an attempt to pursue a wrongful-death lawsuit against the organizers of the shark tournament.
"They've lost their husband, their father, who drowned at sea," said Larry, an attorney for Robert Wright's family. "The belief here is that this would not have happened if the organizers would have called off the contest."
Elovich claims that since the incident representatives from the Hudson Anglers have gone into hiding. "No one has heard from them and I have not had any contact with them."
Calls to the Hudson Anglers have gone unanswered.
One body found
The body of Robert Wright, 46, of Island Park was found on Saturday. Wright was found about 30 miles off the coast of Manasquan, NJ. by a fishing boat crew.
After the body was identified we sent search helicopters out for hours, Lt. Bill Berry, a spokesperson for the Coast Guard said. The helicopters searched 81 square miles of water where the body was found, but we did not find any other bodies or debris from the boat.
An autopsy was performed Sunday night, but the results have not been made available.
Wright is one of four men lost at sea during a shark tournament off Jones Beach. The three other men still lost are Robert Hammon Sr., 61, and his son Robert Hammon Jr., 39, both of Valley Stream, and Peter Quinn, 35, of Island Park.
