Posted on 09/09/2005 7:42:49 AM PDT by SmithL
Stonington — As Alan Chaplaski, captain of the fishing boat Neptune, was trawling for red shrimp on the morning of Aug. 25, his vessel suddenly came to a dead stop 95 miles southeast of the Town Dock.
At first Chaplaski thought his net had snagged on the bottom, 1,200 feet below. Then something began pulling the 150-ton steel boat backward, causing it to shake violently.
Chaplaski raced to the winch to release the brakes on the five-eighths-inch-thick steel wire attached to the net and the twin 1,000-pound “doors” that keep the net open. That prevented the boat from capsizing. He later discovered that one of the wires had been sliced in half.
“It was over in a matter of seconds, but the crew was really shaken,” he said. “It could have been much worse.”
Chaplaski, who lives on Flanders Road, is convinced that his gear became entangled with one of the two U.S. submarines he had seen about two miles from the Neptune shortly before the incident.
“It could have sunk the boat and killed all of us,” he said. “It could have been a lot worse than it was,but we try to be prepared.”
Lt. Mark Jones, public affairs officer for Submarine Group 2 at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, confirmed Thursday that the Navy had several submarines from Groton and Norfolk, Va., operating in the area in which the Neptune was located at the time of the incident. He said an investigation is continuing into exactly what happened and whether a submarine snagged the boat's fishing gear.
Jones said the submarines did not sustain any damage that prevented it from continuing its operations in the area. If a submarine had become entangled in the steel wire, it likely would have scraped or damaged its hull.
Jones said the Navy told Chaplaski to file an admiralty claim with the Judge Advocate General's Office in Washington, D.C., to seek reimbursement for his damaged gear. Chaplaski submitted the claim this week. A decision will be made after the Navy concludes its investigation.
Eleven days after the incident, the Groton-based submarine USS Philadelphia collided with a Turkish freighter in the Persian Gulf, though neither ship was seriously damaged. Earlier this year, the USS San Francisco struck an underwater seamount, killing one sailor and injuring 100 others.
•••
Chaplaski said that within an hour or so of the incident, one of the submarines radioed him and asked what his intentions were in the area. He said he responded that he was about to make some tows with his net, and the submarine gave him the OK. He said the submarine was at the surface at the time and that when he scanned the horizon he saw the periscope of another submarine off to the other side of his boat.
After that, Chaplaski and his two crewmen began to tow the net about a half-mile behind the boat. That's when the boat began to be pulled backwards. Chaplaski said had heard of the same thing happening to other boats and had planned what he would do if it happened to him.
After the incident, Chaplaski said he hailed the submarine over an international distress channel to determine whether the submarine had encountered his gear. Someone aboard the submarine told him it had not.
“Well, how about your buddy?” Chaplaski said he answered, referring to the other submarine he saw in the area.
“We're trying to contact him,” the submariner responded.
Chaplaski said he tried to raise the other submarine on the radio but that it would not answer him. He said he heard the two submarines talking back and forth to each other on another channel.
Chaplaski said that when he got back to the dock, he had to buy new wire for the net. He then returned to the site of the incident and spent 12 hours recovering the net and other gear from the bottom. In all, he said, he lost four days of fishing while he repaired his gear. He declined to say how much he is seeking in damages from the Navy.
Chaplaski questioned why a submarine would be unfamiliar with the type of gear used by his boat and why it would fail to give it a wide berth.
“If this had happened in the middle of the night, it could have been a lot worse,” he said.
Arthur Medeiros, who heads the Southern New England Fishermen and Lobstermen's Association, said Chaplaski and his two crewmen “were pretty lucky.”
Retired Town Dock fisherman Joe Rendeiro said he had run-ins with submarines back in the 1970s and lost thousands of dollars worth of gear for which the Navy refused to pay him.
“With all the sophisticated equipment these submarines have, it's hard to imagine they don't know there's a fishing boat above them, especially with all the noise it makes,” he said.
I think he needs a bigger boat.
How does he know they were U.S. Submarines? If he was fishing in Lake Nagin, this could of been one of the hundreds of elusive Yellow Submarines.
"Give me one ping and one ping only!"
I am glad to read he was being fairly reasonable about the event. I expect he should be compensated, and they should do right by him because he is not making a huge deal out of it and trying to get rich threatening lawsuits, etc...
Sometimes an accident is just an accident. I hope they don't give him the runaround because he sounds like a reasonable guy.
Maybe it was a Russian Sub.............
There have been instances of tug boats mysteriously & rapidly sinking that were towing barges. One of the theories behind these so-called "trippings" was that the tow cable got snagged by a sub. These sinkings were so fast in some instances they weren't able to get a distress call off.
Submarine? What Submarine?
Too bad the Navy can't be bothered to do the right thing. What a bunch of boobs.
Just another example of a graduate of Canoe U wrecking his career and future prospects for pushing papers in a quiet corner of the Pentagon until he receives his pension.
Seriously, this is a skipper in deep doo-doo.
Then again, I've seen an aircraft carrier run aground on sand bars (USS Enterprise c. 1986 in Tokyo Bay, where I was an AO3 at the time), and that was above water with harbor pilots guiding the ship, so I can sympathize.
May not have been a submarine according to Coast to Coast Am listeners....
Maybe a better idea would have been to relocate where there were no subs. Duh.
It's Bush's fault. Or will be made to appear that way......
Cool. If he had brought it to the surface, would he get to keep it?
"Chaplaski said that within an hour or so of the incident, one of the submarines radioed him and asked what his intentions were in the area. He said he responded that he was about to make some tows with his net, and the submarine gave him the OK. He said the submarine was at the surface at the time and that when he scanned the horizon he saw the periscope of another submarine off to the other side of his boat. "
Wonder how it felt aboard the sub?
I agree with the poster who speculated it could have been a Russian, if they still can afford to have their subs so far from home.
Amazing that he could hear our subs talking to one another on the radio, the Russians tried for years and were unsuccessful. Guy is a super spy genius.
Cannot prove it was a sub, maybe it was a whale.
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