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We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today Captain Stephen Craig retired from
the United States Coast Guard. Captain welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thank you Jim. Well we're thrilled to have you on. We don't get a lot of Coast Guard
guys on Veterans Radio because you're a small service and so we're thrilled to
have you. You also wrote a really interesting book called All Present and
Accounted For which is the story of the 1972 Alaska grounding of the US Coast Guard
cutter Jarvis and we're going to talk about that a little bit. But Captain
before we get started why don't you tell us a little bit about your career in the
Coast Guard. Well I enlisted in August 1972 when boot camp down in Alameda and
went through the enlisted ranks. Spent about four and a half years in my first
enlistment most of it over in Hawaii and that is where I first heard that story
about the grounding of the Jarvis out almost sank up there in Alaska. Good for
an half years got out for about a year. One of the reasons I got out was in
one year I got transferred five times and that didn't really settle in love with
me. I love the Coast Guard but I just didn't like it transferred so got out for
about a year and I thought well going to the reserves you know they never get
recalled and that was in 1979 I went in. During the course of the rest of my
career there I got recalled 13 times. My background later on was in a Mercy
management and that was quite popular with Coast Guard. That's all you have to
think as well. This is a safe billet they'll never move me from here. Yeah it's
like well with my first enlistment I was stationed at Barbers Point. I was one of the best
stations I've ever had at the air station there and I was there five months
and and this is 1974 and I loved it there and and I got transferred to Kauai in a
weird set of circumstances. I got transferred a week before district lost
control of transfers. My bowling team was in first place in the Coast Guard League
and I had the highest average and some senior officers got together and had me
transferred. You gotta love those kind of stories. Yeah and you know that was
verified to me later on by my Yeoman chiefs that I had but the captain was
so upset about me getting transferred because I was under two years they
wouldn't send my transfer my car and I only had a week notice transfer my car
so they the captain decided to have a training flight with C-130 over to Kauai
and they loaded up my Volkswagen bug with me inside and flew me over to Kauai.
So that was a sort of one of the bizarre stories people have. Everybody's got
stories. Everybody's got one. If you've been in service long enough you got
something weird to tell and that certainly is one of the weird ones. You
had duty assignments that and this is probably pretty typical for somebody
with the emergency management response background. You have a master's degree in
it but you participated in hurricanes like Katrina and over to Haiti, the Deep
Water Horizon oil spill. I mean sort of every coastal disaster Coast Guard shows
up doesn't it? Yeah I got my direct commission.
Oh heck about 1990 I think it was something like that and came in as an O2. I was a senior chief
element and told them I wouldn't take an answer and they said okay I would give you
JJ but I had retired 2005 from the post service. I went out and got my master's
degree in emergency management and that sort of made me a valuable asset to the
Coast Guard but being with that kind of background and knowing ICS, Incident
Command System quite well it was a valuable Coast Guard like and so I did
five trips for Hurricane Katrina and I wrote a book on that called Chronicles
of Katrina and basically all that was just capturing. I sent out daily emails
from the five trips I went over there and a lot of people found quite interesting
and that worked on planning for the port recovery for the Haiti operation. I was in
Virginia for that one, Deep Water Horizon and Hurricane Ike. I was also the
maritime planner for the APEC conference in Hawaii that was held back in 2011
where we had all the various heads of state, Russia, US, China, meet over Halu
and I was put on a one-year detail to help plan that. That was quite
interesting project to work on but all together I spent 38 years in the Coast
Guard reserve and active all together about eight years active and yeah it
just loved doing that kind of work. Well it's an interesting career and again
it's one that we don't hear much about and part of this is the Coast Guard is
you know really small particularly in-care person if you look at the army
size if I've got the numbers relatively right there are about 40,000 active duty
Coast Guard men and women. Yeah I think it's right around 33,000 but I haven't
seen those numbers in the last couple years so maybe it's greater. And the
reserve component I've got to note that it's about 7,000 so I don't know if it's
plus or minus that a little bit. Yeah it's around that ballpark yeah. And there's an
auxiliary but you know if you compare that to the army their army's got 400
500,000 folks in it so when you look at a 33,000 active duty component at the
Coast Guard you see why it's so small and why maybe you don't bump into folks
who are serving in that branch of the service very much but it's an
interesting duty and you certainly enjoyed it. I stayed around for 38 years and
had a very interesting career and you wrote you heard right almost from the
beginning about this grounding of the cutter Jarvis up in Alaskan 1972 but you
did a fascinating thing with this book that I want to start with because you
really talk about the namesake of the cutter and and where Jarvis fits into
history and Alaskan history so tell us a little bit about the namesake in his
efforts back in 1897. He he's selected help lead a mission there was 13 ships I
think stranded up in Alaska they got they stayed up in Alaska and those days
there was a lot of whaling ships that went up there and the storm came in and
basically trapped these ships up there and and if they didn't get the food and
supply up there they would have all these men a couple hundred of our
frigate numbers would probably perish up there in in Alaska the harsh conditions
that were up there so David Jarvis was selected to lead an expedition up there
to bring up all these reindeer that would be used for food up there once they
got up there but to go over the Alaska frontier to get up there and just
reading about it is it just seemed like mission impossible what he accomplished
yeah it was one of these stories where when you were telling it I'm going I
wouldn't believe it if it was a movie you know they've got they've got something
like 1500 miles to travel up to Point Barrow to get these stranded whalers
there's no food up there so this lieutenant Jarvis assigned this mission
to do this Alaska rescue goes well I need I remember the numbers but it's like
500 reindeer that that I'm going to essentially dog sled up to the these
stranded whalers so that they they have food and we can get through the winner
who would have thought you could move that many reindeer in the same direction
yeah I don't know how he could possibly do it but he did and he acquired some of
the reindeer on the way up there as well with promises of payments later in some
cases and this is one of this is one of these stories again kind of lost to
history it's you all you got to read it when you when you read all present and
accounted for it's the start of this story but it's a very fascinating part
of this story as it again ties in the pre-U.S. Coast Guard history and the
Alaskan history that becomes a relevant again back in 1972 when the namesake
ship the cutter Jarvis has its own problems up in the harsh harsh
environs of Alaskan waters yeah and to the state and the Coast Guard recognized
the leadership that took for David Jarvis to speed and they have their top
leadership who was called the Davis Jarvis leadership board that said
worded annually so the Coast Guard David Jarvis is like just a legend in the
Coast Guard well and I think that's one of the things the service generally does
pretty good about which is reminding the youngsters coming along that there were a
lot of guys in front of you who put this legacy together and really were
outstanding leaders try to try to live up to those standards that's that's part
of the message isn't it yeah yeah most definitely well tell us about the 1972
grounding of the US Coast Guard cutter Jarvis to maybe maybe start with what
kind of ship is it a lot of folks wouldn't wouldn't have an idea of what
kind of ship the cutter Jarvis is well it's a it was it was the Coast Guard's
newest vessel at the time but was a 378 foot high endurance cutter and they were
used mostly up in Alaska during that era for fisheries enforcement make sure
people foreign countries not illegally fishing up in US waters and that was
Bracklayer made in voyage going up to Alaska this is what this is another one
of those things in this story I actually had to back up and write the dates down
when I was doing it captain because I like we all know some guy who drove a
brand new car off a car lot and smashed it up right isn't that the worst fear of
the you get a new car you're gonna smash it up a meter okay they assigned the
captain our brand new Coast Guard cutter it's 1971 I think so commissioned it's
you know it's state-of-the-art 17 million dollars at the time a full
complement of new crew and what's he do with it it runs on the rocks so tell us
tell us a little bit about the captain who was actually quite a good captain and
and and how these circumstances came to fruition and Captain Woolley was the
command officer he had come over from the Merchant Marine there were stories
that he'd maybe according his daughter participate in the D-Day invasion one of
Merchant Vincels I couldn't find any specific record on that but I know one
of the ships that he had been one of the engineers on he had gotten transferred
and actually I believe was destroyed like a couple months after he had gotten
off it sunk by the Germans but he was very active in the Merchant Marines he
had extensive background and eventually got his own ship in the Merchant Marines
but he decided he was gonna make career of it and he had been out sea for like
nine months whatever and he came home and is he came walking in the house and his
daughter went screaming away from him saying there was strange man in the
house and that was when he decided the Merchant Marines was not going to be his
life and so he applied to the Coast Guard and was commissioned as an officer he
served in some other assignments and then he selected be the new command
officer for the Jarvis which was quite a distinction and he was he said he was
always fair he's rigid but he was he's just one of these guys that a lot of the
crew member they just most I think I'm gonna solve them loved him they say you'd
be walking down the passageway and he'd pull you inside and say you know pay
officer Jones how you doing how's your family and he always took an interest in
the men and and their families and whereas the the Exo was more of a rigid
straight military guy capemulio they said a lot of them say you know you're more
like a father or grandfather figure to him so the troops are absolutely loved
him but they'd gone up to Alaska this isn't a day before he had satellites and
weather forecasting all that and they got caught in the storm so they went to do
a safe try to find safe harbor and the captain been up for 20 30 hours and no
sleep I think one of their key officers had had taken a temporary assignment or
was on leave and they had put an incident on board in charge that night and
thinking it was probably safe to to have him on board for whatever reasons the
ships are dragging anchor and by the time the incident got the captain woke him up
to report it within minutes after the captain got up on the bridge the ship
ran a ground terror hole in the bottom of the ship there and they managed to
patch it up well that that's that that is a glossing over the the the rushing
water and fear that you write so well about in in the book that it sort of
grips you as they are really battling this gash to make sure this the ship
which was at anchor doesn't sink everybody's worst nightmare on the ship
maybe fires first and sinking second but if you if you've been on ship those are
your fears right and this this is you are really fighting mother nature in
this situation aren't you well yeah and it it's from there things just got worse
they said that that they could make it back to Honolulu which is where their
home port was and they hit a storm as worse than the day before and that's
where their real problems where the ship the engine room filled up with 13 feet
of water and it's freezing water and there was a lot of herorics to stop it
one guy happened to have his recreational scuba gear on and he managed to go
down 10 12 times whatever to he kept having to pull stuff out of the hoses
as they were trying to do water the ship rags and stuff will get into hose so he
died down pull that stuff out but the water is freezing it was snowing the
winds are blowing the waves were a lot bigger than the ship I had one of the
crew members called me up a couple weeks ago that I hadn't talked to and he said
he was certain he was gonna die a lot of them felt that way and what what captain
what time of year is this occurring this is toward the end of the mid to late
November and you know it's like the worst time to be in Alaska exactly so
picture this image folks it is colder than anything you ever want to be around
the wind is howling I think I read somewhere up to a hundred knots you know
you are fighting the elements and it's your little ship and mother nature in
this in this fight and if you can't stop the water from flowing in or pump it
out of the ship fast enough there's only one place that ships going down and
that's down to the bottom it was it was an incredible effort by the crew to
keep to keep this afloat and everybody alive tell us about how they came
together yeah yeah it was for every going toward that or floating toward
Accu-Tin Island they lost all their power and they figured in like 30 minutes
45 minutes they had they would crash crash on the island there and you know
with the freezing water and stuff you know they tied by a vacuum ship and some
of the crew members said refuse said no we're gonna go down a ship because you
put us in a rowboat in these kind of conditions we're dying anyway so the
there's a fishing crawler that was somewhat close by and they said you know
we can be there an hour and Jarvis said what the problem is we figured we're going
to ground 35 minutes and so the Jarvis officers and senior people they basically
had to take a lot of measures to slow the ship down even though without power
so that the fishing crawler could get there in time yeah this whole idea of
being dead in the water in the ocean and in this instance a particular
inlet where you're just at the will of whichever way the waves are going it's
just frightening and and I want to bring in the you write about the helicopter
that the Hilo that's on the Jarvis and what they have to do with it because
many of us know that Coast Guard cutters do have helicopters on them but you
never really think about well if things are really are really bad how do we get
that helicopter off the ship and and that's a very interesting story here
yeah it's very intense there's discussion about they knew they need
some room on top of the ship to bring supplies fuel and stuff and so the Exo
they talked about they were just going to dump the helicopter just off the side
there and Lieutenant Hilo was the the pilot and he got together this crew and
his co-pilot and they told the Exo look we think we can get this off and they
said okay we'll give you one shot to try to get it off otherwise it's going over
the side and imagine the ship three or seventy foot you know it's it's going you
know sideways and and it just hard to take off so to take off they had these
tie downs but they had to have the rotors going full blasts so as helicopters
just straining like crazy trying to take off it's tied to the deck and their
first attempt at to take off one of the guys failed to get the tie off and the
helicopter almost tipped over so they had to put tied all back down again and
then the pilot called over the crew members that were to release the tie
downs and said look if you don't get these off at the same time he says this
helicopter will crash and if it crashes the rotors will kill everybody up on this
deck and he says so he got sorry got their attention and he also told the
Exo that he was going to drop his crew members off on the island nearby island
and he was going to come back and he told me says I'll come back until I run out
of fuel to rescue as many as crew members as I can so on the next attempt
they they they got the tide tie-ons all off at the same time just as they
looked as the ship tilted and one of the crew members said that it looked to him
like the helicopter had had disappeared into the water you know and then also
it just shot straight up in the air but it's a crazy story the way you write it
it is like man intense and if you're into aviation or helicopter of the
theatrics boy this is a read you got to do let me back you up and we're talking
to captain Stephen J Craig who's retired from the United States Coast Guard he
wrote all present and accounted for and we can report that very recently his
book took home the silver medal in in the history category from the Military
Writers Society of America so congratulations on that captain thank you
I wanted to I wanted to come back to the rescue though because I think in an
era where we don't think anybody cooperates with anybody it's kind of
interesting that this floundering listing rockin ship is ultimately towed to
to safety by a Japanese and I don't know if it's a trawler or if it's a freighter
it's a coil Maru tell us a little bit about that rescue and the sort of
international flavor of it the fishing trawler and its sister ship was also on
the way to because week or two earlier the Jarvis that helped rescue an injured
fisherman from that vessel and that second vessel wanted to help out as well
but the the efficient vessel Maru they they got there on scene but the the
the conditions were horrendous to the point that
governor's made chief Jack Hunter talked to several times he had to fire over the
line to where they could tie up and be towed out of there they said the ship was
moving so much back sideways and all directions that he had to shoot from his
his knees the line over to the other vessel I believe they missed the first
time so he had second time second time they managed to connect with the fishing
Japanese fishing trawler I I know one of this seaman bronchi was on deck at the
time he later retires as a commander but he was telling me that it looked like the
fishing vessel was going to collide with him and he said it's just outstanding
seamanship of the Japanese captain that they just barely missed each other yeah
it's so dangerous that this rescue is so dangerous as you as you talk about it
and and trying to resupply fuel and other things to the Jarvis while it's
crippled by Coast Guard cutters again another one of these immensely dangerous
efforts to save the ship were you surprised at the level that everybody
went to here I'm not really with Coast Guard you know you have anybody especially
that fellowship and dangerous all hands on deck well that clearly comes through I
mean it is very very clear and then there's a you have to do this massive
repair effort to make this seaworthy again and again this is one of these
portions of the story where the the general news would stop writing about
but it's a very fascinating effort to try to make such a massive repair up in
Alaska isn't it yeah they would have these guys go in the engine room and get
in this it's like oil and fiberglass and one of the nicknames they called it
Elven snot it was so sticky and guys would go in there and work you know 8
12 hours a day and come out and all of them just coated top to bottom with this
oily stuff and new crew would go in and clean up the engines because they had to
get everything cleaned up once they got up the charter break everything cleaned
up and get the engines going so they could get go back to Halu for dry dock
and so it's a long long recovery up in Alaska couple weeks to get all that
ready to go and just a sticky mess well and again once you write it down and we
think about it we go well that makes sense that you know you have 13 feet of
water in the engine room all that stuff's got to be dried out it's all
salt water it's all got to be cleaned so that you're not damaging the gears and
the motors and the you know everything else because of that corrosive
environment so it as I say it was really a massive repair effort saving the ship
so that it could make its way back to dry dock and and either even further
repairs remembering again veteran radio listeners as we talked to captain
Craig about the 1972 Alaska grounding of the USS Coast Guard cutter Jarvis this
was the maiden voyage essentially of the ship and it stayed in it stayed in
service for you know decades thereafter we should you know tell the end of the
story that the ship was saved as were the men and and the ship was kept in
service I think it was I think you you write that it was sold in 19 or I'm sorry
it's sold in 2013 to the Bangladesh Navy but it you know they they saved this
$17 million ship which would have otherwise gone down on its main voyage
were I did did you serve with any of the men on the on this ship or was it was you
came back to write about this was this all sort of new facts and and information
to you well in 1973 I was stationed at base hall little and I ran across one of
the crew members which I'd be curious see which I was and he told me a story and
I thought I said you know I never even heard of this you know so it's saved in
the back of my mind for decades and then I formally retired from work here a
couple years ago and I was gonna write a magazine article about the Jarvis and
just it just sort of exploded on me the more stories I heard and just I talked
to 35 the crew members and I talked to the various senior people that served on
the ship and then I also talked to the pilot of the helicopter and then there
was two C-130 pilots that were involved and their stories were harrowing telling
me about the you know dropping off fuel barrels onto the Jarvis and and in fact
one one situation the pilots got blinded by the ship lights they had to get so
close to the ship that they basically had to fly for a couple minutes away from
land because they couldn't see and it was just quite interesting getting all
these stories and then putting it together I had to go down to San Bruno
get the ship logs so I could put in a time sequence because one of the things
all the crew members mentioned me was nobody knew the rest of the story
those in the engine room didn't know what happened up topside and whose topside
didn't know what happened in the engine room and they didn't know the command
decisions and and when they got back to Honolulu a lot of them been on the ship
for two three years and they all got transferred and there was never a big
formal meeting where they could all talk about lessons learned like they would
probably try to do now so they were all a lot of comments about how they liked
fact I got story out so they could learn what the whole story was well it's a
great book we can recommend to folks it's all present and accounted for kept in
the Stephen J Craig if folks want to follow along with things that you might
write in the future or this book in particular where do they keep in touch
with you I've got a website it's www.stevenjcraigbooks.com I found out I
had put J my mill initial in there because turns out there's another Stephen
Craig books naturally naturally I try to keep that updated on a weekly basis and
that you can buy the book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any major even
Walmart you can order online through them so the books really available and I'm
hoping they do a book tour I had 15 of them scheduled this year and of course
they all got canceled so I'm hoping to do one next year it's gonna be my I think
guide it's over the quarantine book tour and I hope to get over to a lot of the
Coast Guard exchanges when that happens well we want to thank you for taking
some time on your day to talk to Veterans Radio about the Coast Guard about
your career and and the whole David Jarvis and in the Carter Jarvis story
so that we can inform more people about it we really appreciate your time
captain now I appreciate the interview me Jim and I want to thank everybody for
listening to Veterans Radio today I am Jim Fawson it's been a pleasure to be
your host I'm a Veterans Disability lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans and
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