3/17/2011
All hands above deck had seen her as we drove in from the Strait
of Aden, and now we could mark her standing-in to the quay we occupied. Low,
sleek, outwardly unmarked by the horror that had swept her deck and cockpit
only days before, she looked nothing more or less than a gleaming black, 58-foot
Davidson yacht, sails neatly stowed, running in to port on her auxiliary
engine. A sight seen in every harbor, every day, but this was not an average
port-call; the black yacht bore a large, stylized “Q” on her quarter, and her full
name in elegant script on her transom. Quest.
As we got to the business of loading cargo from the quay, Quest
moored a few yards ahead of our own spring-lines, her three-man crew deftly
bringing her along the wall and heaving precise arcs of polypropylene line to
secure her to bollards built to hold tankers and container ships. These men
were dressed in Tyvek coveralls and gloves, even in the day’s rising
heat—either in repect or fear they wanted no contact with her grisly interior.
A van arrived; more Tyvek-clad men with cases and boxes in hand.
The breeze captured one of their large blue bags, “hazmat” emblem clearly
visible as it soared off over the harbor. Clearly, this was a cleanup crew,
dispatched to scour the yacht, make her presentable, exorcise the ghosts if
possible.
The cleanup gang left an hour later, blue bags full of the debris
of their labor, stripping-off their coveralls as they climbed into the van. A
laugh drifted across from Quest’s berth—a sound so incongruous that Arctic’s
deck force started. We had not realized until that moment that we had been
carrying-out our duties without the usual chatter, jokes and calls. Performing,
without even our knowledge, vigil for the dead.
Quest was six years into a circumnavigation; Scott and Jean Adams were
fulfilling a dream of sailing this trim craft around the world. Their friends
Phyllis MaCay and Bob Riggle had joined them aboard for part of the voyage. As
to the wisdom of taking their small, slow, virtually helpless vessel into these
pirate-infested waters I will not comment here, but on 18 February they were
attacked and captured by nearly two dozen boarders. During negotiations, with
two of the pirate leaders aboard the destroyer Sterett things went
horribly wrong. When the violence ended the four tavellers and two of the Somali
pirates were dead. The Adam’s dream had ended in gunfire and bloodshed.
Today the surviving pirates—apprehended by a SEAL detachment—are
on trial in a Norfolk Federal Court. Hopefully we will learn what happened that
day aboard Quest, and in addition hopefully lessons will be learned to
help us avoid confrontations that can lead to such pointless acts. Perhaps some
good will come of this.
As we secured cargo handling booms and prepared to get underway
once more to rendezvous with Enterprise, perhaps the most grotesque
image of the day occurred before us. An SUV drove up to Quest’s berth;
two men and two women, dressed as if going to a casual boating party and
carrying what appeared to be bags of food and drink, climbed aboard the yacht
and began preparations for getting underway. It was as if by a few minutes
careful cleaning the memory of the people who died in that cockpit was swept
away by these intruders on her grief.
The contrast was shocking, and as I watched Quest, loud
music drifting from her deck, making her way under power from the mole to the
small-craft anchorage within the harbor of Djibouti, I couldn’t help feeling
that she had in fact been violated twice; once by acts of evil and brutality,
and again by the disrespectful jollity of these intruders soiling her deck. Her
period of mourning had been cut short, like the lives of her owners and
passengers, in what seemed to me a second act of piracy.
Tom Epps
Able Seaman
USNS Arctic
Djibouti
Tom Epps
Able Seaman
USNS Arctic
Djibouti
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