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"Comstate Kodiak, Comstate Kodiak, this is the F/V . . . Mayday! Mayday!" I remember the first time I ever heard that. I was working as a processor on the M/V Polar Command and we were waiting for a storm to blow over. During the day the skipper had stopped work on the processing deck several times as he circled the island, trying to find a leeward side of an island with no sheltered bays. We finally settled in to jog back and forth on a side where the waves weren't as high as any where else. It was too rough to work and we processors found ourselves with sleep under our belts and time on our hands to kill. The assistant engineer was standing wheel watch and my roommate wanted me to come topside with her and visit him. We sat around talking, clinging to whatever was near as the waves tossed the ship around and it bucked back and forth in the waves. There was a lot of idle chatter on the radio. "Damn those guys, I told them to make sure everything was tied down and we just lost one of our totes!" "That's okay, just take it out of their pay." "Gee zuss! Would you look at that wave!" "Well, Peggy said 35 ft. seas, with 80 knot winds, do you think it's that bad?" "Yep, sure is. And to think I could be in Hawaii on a sunny beach right now." The banter passed back and forth across the air waves as the three of us sat talking about anything and everything under the sun. We guessed that when the storm abated we might end up with time off until the fishermen could bring in more crab. There wasn't a whole lot left in the holding tanks when we finally gave up on processing. Suddenly a call came across the radio that stopped everything. "Comstate Kodiak, Comstate Kodiak, this is the F/V . . . Mayday! Mayday! This is the F/V . . . longitude . . . latitude . . . six souls on board. Mayday! Mayday! Vessel in distress!" No one spoke, on the radio or in the pilot house. Silence was like a mantle of stone. Its weight pressed down on our hearts until they were beating at the backs of our throats. Our lips seemed to freeze, paralyzed by the fear in the voice on the radio. No one moved except to cling with unconscious grasps at supporting structures. Only the sea was unaffected, raging and tossing outside as the terrible winter winds howled and made the rigging sing and whistle. But it was as though the outside world had disappeared and the only thing we could see or hear was the radio. "F/V . . ., this is Comstate Kodiak, please state your position again and the nature of your problem." In comparison to the fishing vessel in trouble, the voice from Comstate sounded so loud, so clear and calm. "Comstate this is F/V. . . latitude . . . longitude . . . We've lost the main . . . the engine room is flooding . . . we can't get the pumps going, we're taking on water! Mayday! Mayday! Vessel in distress!" That boat never delivered to our vessel. We had no idea who they were or where they were from. But in that moment they became our brothers. It was as though we were there with them, praying for them, hoping against hope they would some how save their ship. Comstate Kodiak began assessing the situation and as we listened vessels began singing out their positions, north, south by southwest, or east. They were 10 miles away, or 15 miles away, one was only five miles away, but all the closest vessels who just might make it in time to rescue the crew began heading that way. We could hear the desperation in their voices as they announced their intent, telling the wounded vessel to hang on and stay afloat. The sinking vessel kept transmitting all the while, reporting changes in position, direction of drift, actions taken to try and save the ship. The names of the crew were given and at last the skipper announced he was assembling the crew in the pilot house to don their survival suits when the transmission broke in mid sentence. What had happened? Did the ship suddenly go down? Did any of the crew make it off the ship? Did any of them have their suits on? The questions remained unspoken as we listened intently. Only the lowering of the atmosphere in the pilot house and our silence indicated the sense of doom and loss as we felt as we waited, listening intently. Five miles is a long way in 35 ft. seas for a vessel that can only do 12 or 14 knots in calm weather. It might take half an hour or more to reach the last reported position of the vessel. We murmured to each other our hopes for their safety and rescue. We were hoping the sudden loss of communication was a power failure and that the emergency system would kick on the batteries and give the radio life again. We waited, listening to the desperation rise in the searchers voices as the first to reach the location found no ship. I felt like I was suffocating as they reported no life raft, no signs of suits or survivors. They were going to keep looking. The other ships were still coming, they would help. No one wanted to leave a single person in the sea if there was any way to find them in time and rescue them. It was an hour from start to finish before other people began talking on the radio again. The vessels who were looking had promised to keep doing so until morning. If anyone was out there, swimming for their lives or drifting in a survival suit they were going to find them. Meanwhile, the people who knew the crew began to express their prayers for them. People who didn't know them simply said, "Poor bastards, hope they make it." And we, who had been strangers only a short while ago, sat together in the pilot house with a peculiar sense of mourning and connectedness to the missing crew. I don't know how to explain it. On land it's not the same. People die and you say, "Oh what a shame," or "that's awful," and it may be. But it doesn't reach down to the bones of your heart and settle in to make every beat seem like the belaboring of an instrument of lead. They were strangers and it was too bad they had to die they way they did, but they are strangers after all. But out on the sea we are all brothers and sisters, kith and kin, when those final moments come across the air waves. For a few moments we sink beneath the waves with the imperiled and we too are lost at sea. Left drifting in a feeling of abysmal mourning. They were never found. Vessel and crew were lost. F/V . . . and six souls. It doesn't matter what the name of the vessel was, when they sink they are all the F/V Lost At Sea. In Seattle or Kodiak, and here in Dutch Harbor the bell would ring on memorial day six times. And if other ships were lost with some or all of their crews then the bell would ring for those crew members as well. I don't know if the bell calls lost souls home, or merely signals their time on earth is done and they may go home now to their final port. But that sense of connection I felt the first time I heard that Mayday will stay with me for the rest of my life. And when that bell rings, every time, it rings for me.
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