How big was the crew? Surely they had inflatable life boats and life jackets.
They went to inflate the lifeboats, but only found Milo Dollars where it should be.
It was a pretty severe storm, apparently.
It is much harder to do a good rescue in heavy seas.
Heavy seas probably made a lot of radar noise, which may have made detection of the missiles difficult.
Given the incompetence displayed thus far, I wouldn’t be too sure of that.