For NY Tug Captain, Job That Runs in Family Turns Deadly Off Long Island

For NY Tug Captain, Job That Runs in Family Turns Deadly Off Long Island
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/nyregion/tugboat-captain-who-died-near...
By COREY KILGANNON
MARCH 18, 2015

A tugboat and a barge on the East River in February. Tugboats do the pushing, pulling and guiding for work boats, freighters and other vessels. CreditAndrew Lichtenstein/Corbis

There was rain, thick fog and an ocean swell — in other words, just another day on the water for Donald Maloney, 60, as the Sea Bear, the tugboat he was captaining, traveled along the South Shore of Long Island on Saturday.

The Sea Bear, which had three other crew members, had finished a dredging job in a bay just west of the Hamptons, and the blue and white tug was headed toward New York Harbor to pick up a barge.

The tug was about a mile from the Pines section of Fire Island, a few miles south of where Mr. Maloney grew up in a tugboat family in Farmingville, N.Y. He was scampering onto tugboats while still in diapers and accompanying his father, Donald Sr., also a captain, on the family’s tug.

“Donnie came from a long tradition of tugs in our family,” recalled Kevin Maloney, 58, one of Mr. Maloney’s four brothers, and also a tug captain h

Kevin Maloney, one of Donald Maloney’s four brothers, is also a tug captain. Donald died in a tugboat accident over the weekend. CreditHeather Walsh for The New York Times
Mr. Maloney’s crew members were able to put on insulated survival gear, known as immersion suits, that would help them avoid hypothermia. They went into the water and awaited rescue. Mr. Maloney, who had been a captain nearly all of his adult life, was apparently bent on trying to save the vessel. He finally abandoned ship but was unable to put on his suit.

In the icy water, he quite likely died within minutes and was separated from his bobbing crew, the authorities said. He was found about three hours later by another tugboat crew that had responded to the Sea Bear’s Mayday call.

News of the sinking spread quickly in the close-knit tugboat community, from owners to deckhands to relatives. Mr. Maloney’s death was devastating but not shocking, given the nature of tug work.

“I’ve pulled up a dead man crushed between two barges; I’ve had a deckhand with his fingers ripped off,” Kevin Maloney recalled. “You teach young guys that once they step on that deck, anything can happen.”

The Sea Bear was one of hundreds of tugs that ply the waterways in and around New York Harbor, along the Hudson River and on Long Island Sound. They are the muscle that powers the vibrant maritime economy, ushering millions of tons of cargo and fuel moving through the region’s waters.

Compactly built around a large engine, tugboats do the heavy pushing, pulling and guiding for work boats, tankers, freighters and cruise ships, crudely shoving them through strong currents and chop but also delicately steering them into narrow berths.

Donald Maloney, who died on Saturday.
Crews often remain together, sleeping on board, and shifts can last weeks or even months.

The Sea Bear, a 62-foot-long boat built in 1991, was one of the harbor’s smaller tugs. Its 1,000-horsepower diesel engine was more than adequate for working with barges, as well as maneuvering and assisting work boats.

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Donald Maloney had been captaining the Sea Bear for about five months. He worked with the same crew, two weeks on and two weeks off, and was close to them. They were nearly at the end of a two-week shift on Saturday.

The tug called for help shortly after 2 p.m., and the three crew members grabbed life rings and abandoned ship in their survival suits, Suffolk County police officials said. But an executive from Wittich Brothers, the tug company based in Bayonne, N.J., that owned the Sea Bear and employed Mr. Maloney, said the captain was delayed in abandoning the vessel.

“He was trying to do something about the situation, and something unfortunately happened that precluded him” from getting into his survival suit, said the executive, who spoke on the condition that his name not be published because of the delicate nature of the situation.

Soon after the distress signal, Coast Guard vessels rushed to the location. Suffolk police officials said that their rescue boats were prevented from responding because of icy waterways, and that the agency’s helicopter was unable to fly because of poor weather conditions.

Photographs of the Maloney brothers are on display in Kevin Maloney's home.CreditHeather Walsh for The New York Times
The surviving crewmates — Lars Vetland, 43, of Staten Island; Jason Reimer, 38, of Leonardo, N.J.; and Rainer Bendixen, 22, of Bay Head, N.J. — were not injured, the authorities said. None would return calls requesting comment. A woman who answered the door at the address of Mr. Vetland’s home on Staten Island, when asked how he was feeling, said, “Have you ever tread water for three hours?”

That is about how long Mr. Maloney was in the water when he was found around 5 p.m. by another tugboat, the Captain Willie Landers, which had volunteered to help in the search after hearing a radio distress call, the Suffolk County Police Department said.

Mr. Maloney was taken to the Fire Island Coast Guard station, where he was pronounced dead.

The survivors were in the water for about two hours before being rescued by the Coast Guard, the authorities said.

Coast Guard officials said on Tuesday that they were still trying to determine what caused the tug to sink, and that they were conducting an investigation that would include recovering the boat from the ocean floor.

Kevin Maloney said he was angered at widely published news reports describing his brother as having panicked and going into the water without putting on his immersion suit. “I can assure you Donnie didn’t panic — he’s been in plenty of situations like this over the years,” he said.

Photo

A photograph of the Mary Turecamo, a tugboat that Mr. Maloney's father, Donald Sr., worked on during his career. CreditHeather Walsh for The New York Times
The Wittich Brothers executive said that he had listened to the crew’s account, and that they said Mr. Maloney “showed complete valor to the very end.”

The Maloney family grew up talking tugboats around the dinner table, Kevin Maloney said. Their father, a tug owner, would take the family on vacations on the Hudson while he pulled barges.

Donald Maloney worked as a deckhand on his father’s tug, the Altoona, after high school, and began working as a captain a few years later. He worked for a half-dozen tugboat companies and became known as an easygoing but firm captain, widely respected for his skill and adamant about teaching new deck hands about the importance of safety, Kevin Maloney said.

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“He broke in a lot of guys,” Kevin said. “He knew his stuff and he knew how to deal with tough situations.”

The Maloney family has had many close calls.

In summer 1960, Donald Sr., who died in 2007, was forced into the waters of the Hell Gate section of the East River along with a dozen other crew members after their tug, the Devon, was rammed by a tanker. Steven Maloney, Donald and Kevin’s brother, was nearly killed when a tug he was working on sank in the Cape Cod Canal in 1983.

Kevin Maloney shared these stories from his home in Sayville, N.Y., on Monday. The Cape-style house was decorated in a nautical theme and adorned with photos of the family’s life on the water.

“It was his passion,” he said of his brother Donald. “He was doing the profession he loved.”

When Kevin Maloney learned of his brother’s death on Saturday, he was at work, pushing oil barges in New York Harbor. Still, he completed his shift, because “you have to finish what needs to be done.”

Ruth Bashinsky and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.