Merrimack Valley

Ocean search unsuccessful after mysterious Mayday calls

By Stephen Tait
Staff Writer
Published: June 4, 2008

NEWBURYPORT — The U.S. Coast Guard scoured the Massachusetts coast for hours Monday evening after getting an urgent "Mayday" radio call that said a 185-foot boat was in trouble. But search efforts were suspended after an hourlong helicopter search came up empty, communication with the vessel ceased and information about the ship could not be verified in databases.

A Coast Guard spokesman would not speculate on whether the emergency calls may have been a hoax.

The Newburyport Coast Guard station received a Mayday on emergency channel 16 late Monday afternoon from a caller identifying as a ship either called the Lady Sally II or the Lady Sue, at least according to initial radio contact, Petty Officer Second Class Carl Heise said. "Mayday" is the most urgent call that mariners can make; it means that they are in imminent threat of danger or death.

There was no report of the ship taking on water or a fire, but the calls said one engine was disabled, he said.

Heise said the boat — roughly twice the size of the Prince of Whales whale-watching ship, which is the largest commercial boat in Newburyport — had a least two people on board, according to the Coast's Guard's radio conversations with the vessel.

Heise said the ship first gave its location as latitude 41 degrees north and longitude 71 degrees west, which he said would put the ship near Cape Cod. But further radio contact contradicted that information. Heise said the ship then gave a location somewhere off the Merrimack River.

"There was conflicting information about where they were located," said Lt. John Kousch of the Coast Guard's Boston Sector.

That is when communication with the ship ended, Heise said.

He said the Newburyport station passed along the information gathered from the radio contact with the ship to the regional office in Boston. Other vessels in the area were also told through radio broadcasts to keep a sharp lookout for a 185-foot long boat with a white hull and green stripes.

Heise said the Newburyport station used what capacity it has to search for the boat, but came up empty. He said the Boston Sector then started more extensive searches.

About 7 p.m., Kousch said the Coast Guard sent out a helicopter. That search last for about an hour and covered an area from the Merrimack River north to the Portsmouth, N.H., harbor and east — out into the ocean — about 25 miles.

Nothing was found, he said.

Furthermore, Kousch said the name of the boat — later determined to be Lady Sally Sue — could not be found in any of the Coast Guard's databases. Also, the type of the vessel could also not be determined, he said.

Finally, late Monday night, after The Daily News had gone to press, the Coast Guard officials suspended the search.

"We didn't find the vessel, and they didn't respond to any of our additional call outs," Kousch said.

Kousch said the search would resume if there were further developments.

Asked if he thought the Mayday calls were fake, Kousch paused for a long moment and said: "That would be mere speculation on my part."