Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean

by Fassbender, Tere Duperrault; Logan PhD, Richard D.

  A flock of sea gulls, drawn by the commotion, appeared overhead and dived for scraps of fish left by the barracuda. Several hovered over the raft, suspended in the wind, staring curiously at its little passenger. The birds gave Terry Jo a burst of hope that an island might be within paddling distance. But when she sat as upright as far as she safely could, she could see nothing. One gull came down for a closer look and seemed about to alight on the ring of the float, but Terry Jo moved and, with an excited flapping of wings, it was gone.

  Just as it flew away, Terry Jo saw some large, dark shapes just breaking the surface some yards from her raft. Her heart caught in her throat. They came closer and she thought they might be porpoises, but they were too large and dark and had great bulbous heads. They swam placidly near her, some twenty to thirty feet away, staring at her with large, impassive, dark eyes that barely broke above the surface of the water, spouting regularly as they breathed. The great whooshing sounds of their breaths spoke to Terry Jo and seemed to say, “We are life. You are not alone. We are here with you.” Terry Jo was immensely comforted by the presence of these gentle giants. She said a little prayer of thanks to God for sending them. They remained nearby for hours.

  Experts later decided that Terry Jo was kept company for a time by a pod of pilot whales, a species of large dolphin that grow to about twenty feet in length – and which are predators, though they tend to hunt squid.

  As the piercing sun broke through the clouds in the afternoon, Terry Jo splashed some water over her suddenly hot, drawn skin. How far away were the cool forests of Wisconsin and the cold waters of Green Bay? She had water-skied on the bay but she wasn’t very good at it, and had taken many a tumble into the cold water. Not pleasant at the time, it was now something she desperately wished for, especially because the waters of Lake Michigan were fresh, not saline.

  The sun dropped and finally sank below the horizon. Tuesday night came on and brought back the awful unknown of the dark, but it also brought blessed relief to her scorched body. Briefly she traded physical relief for increased psychological torment – until she began, again, to shiver from the cold as well as the mind-bending dark. Her temperature fell but she continued to suffer from heat exhaustion. Of the forty pounds of fluid in her body, she probably had lost five during the day. Her mouth was almost unbearably dry and she could muster no saliva. It was difficult to swallow.

  Through that cold third night, her raft rose and fell, gradually pitching on toward the west-northwest, and she somehow fell into a deep sleep. That night she had some hallucinatory dreams full of vivid images: oddly, although she had never flown, she dreamed that she was in the cockpit of an airliner coming in for a landing, and she saw the long, straight, converging lines of iridescent landing lights standing out with surreal brilliance against a deep, shiny blackness. Despite never having been in an airplane, the image she saw was exactly as it would look from a cockpit coming in for a night landing. The psychedelic nature of this dream indicates how the combination of trauma, exhaustion, isolation, and dehydration were beginning to bend her mind.

  She also saw her father, seated peacefully and drinking a glass of red wine. Although she had never tasted wine, it looked extremely refreshing; just what she needed to quench her thirst. And she heard his voice call out to her: “Come on Terry Jo! We’re leaving now!”

  Occasionally, a wave splashing into her face brought her into semi-consciousness. She was so numb now from shock, she felt even less fear. The confined world of the raft and the water was beginning to become her way of life. The previous world of the Bluebelle, her family, and her home was becoming strangely distant and incomprehensible.

  Wednesday dawned bright and clear, and it grew hot very quickly. The glare of the sun caused her dry, scratchy, and dimming eyes severe pain. She was now beyond hunger. More moisture was sapped from her body. All her muscles ached. Her skin burned through her blouse and pedal pushers. Her lips were rough and swollen. She had to balance rigidly on the edges of the unsteady float more and more because so much of the rope webbing had broken away. She hallucinated more now, even seeing the classic image of the tiny desert island complete with a solitary palm tree. She tried paddling toward it, but it disappeared. She slowly became delirious and, finally, lapsed into unconsciousness. That she managed to stay on the float in that condition is remarkable.

  Was she back in the arms of her mother? Back in the safety of home, freed of her memories of the awful sea and the dark, bloody night on the Bluebelle?

  The seas grew rougher and tossed her raft, but she didn’t notice it. During the afternoon, she became comatose, her body shuddered in what might have been mild convulsions, but she was not aware of it. If her will to live had been weak, she might have died that day. The east wind was up to twenty knots and the taller waves towered thirteen feet over the raft. Somehow, she did not fall from the raft.

  In the cold of yet another night, her temperature again dropped and only for brief periods was she close to being awake and rational. But she also had dreams of landing on an island and finding her father. With every moment of semi-consciousness came renewed suffering. Lack of water had slowed her circulation and less and less blood was flowing to her heart as it thickened from severe dehydration. Her whole body was afire and her legs were racked by cramps from the loss of critical electrolytes and from the awkward positions she had to maintain to stay balanced on the float.

  She had found, after much experimentation, that the best and most stable way to sit in the lightweight raft was across the width of it with her shoulders resting on one edge, her arms stretched out on either side along the rim, her bottom on the webbing (and in the water), and her thighs up on the other edge with her feet out of the water. This position kept much of her weight on the edges of the float and off the fragile webbing.

  Generally she felt less and less, and had less sense of where she was. All hunger had long since left her. Without water, she no longer had saliva, and her body was saving all of its remaining fluids for her vital organs, so she had no digestive juices. If she had had food, she couldn’t have eaten it.

  She didn’t so much sleep that fourth night as drift in and out of consciousness. Though just as cold as the previous nights, she did not feel it.

  When the cruel sun rose Thursday, she did not feel its burning rays either. She was in the deep sleep that drifts close to the threshold of death. Her reflexes were almost gone and her blood pressure was falling fast. Her temperature had risen close to a dangerous 105 degrees. But somehow she still kept her precarious balance on the pitiful piece of cork.

  The sea was rough at first in the morning. Walls of steep, tumbling water, green mountains capped with white spume pushed by a stiff breeze, came at her in formation, one after another. Her raft was lifted high up on the tops of steep cliffs, then lowered into dark valleys. It was a miracle that it did not capsize and throw her body out to be swallowed up by the hungry ocean. As she lay unconscious, her body still in the shape of a crucifix with arms extended along the float rim, her hands were locked on the rim in a painful death grip. The waves broke over her constantly. But the cooling water may have prolonged her life just a little bit longer.

  Only the faintest spark now flickered in her sore and tortured body. Severely dehydrated, her fluids were going mostly to her heart and lungs, and less to her brain, which was shutting down. Her kidneys had stopped working. Yet, in midmorning, she somehow rallied out of her deep stupor and opened her dry, sore, and barely focusing eyes.

  Through her stupor she had sensed something. And, through the mist of half-consciousness and dim eyes, a huge, shadowy shape loomed before her like some great, rumbling, dark beast. Its rumble was so deep that she could feel its pounding rhythm in her chest. As she watched, it seemed to metamorphose from an unworldly vessel floating above the sea to a great whale, and then into a solid black wall suspended in the air above her. When she looked up to the top of that great wall, she saw heads and waving arms. She could dimly make out
voices shouting. She sensed that they were telling her to stay put.

  Digging deeper than she ever had in her life, with a supreme effort she struggled into a half-sitting position. She lifted an arm and managed a feeble wave, then toppled back onto the float. Somewhere, she found the strength to pull herself upright again and make a piteous effort to paddle with her hands. Her fiery will to survive still lived. Then she looked up and saw that barrels were being lowered over the side of the great chugging machine and figures were moving them together in the water. She fell back again, too spent to hold herself up anymore. Finally the strong arms of strange, powerful beings speaking an alien tongue were picking her up, and she felt herself suspended limply in space, being lifted slowly up and up as she slid back into oblivion.

  Sailors aboard the Greek freighter Captain Theo gather around Terry Jo’s blanketed form shortly after her rescue from the waters of the Northwest Providence Channel.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Recovering

  Terry Jo’s hospital room was closely guarded against the frenzy surrounding the fate of the Bluebelle and against the uncertainty created by the suicide of the captain. Here, she played – seemingly happily – with dolls, stuffed dogs, games, and many other presents sent to her by a sympathetic public. Her story had stirred wonder, sympathy, and admiration around the world.

  By Thanksgiving Day, November 23, she was able to order a turkey dinner with all the fixings. She had only her aunt and uncle from Green Bay with her on a day when close-knit families traditionally gathered, but she seemed cheerful and was smiling and she ate heartily. Terry Jo still had given no indication that she was aware of her family’s fate. She had not cried and she had asked no questions. People read the lack of tears as a sign of bravery, and they were partly right. In fact, for the next several years she would hear herself referred to as “brave little Terry Jo.” There was little doubt that she knew her family was gone although it would be years before she would come to accept that her father, whom she never saw that terrible night and whose body was never found, had died with everyone else.

  Her sunburned skin was peeling but her physical recovery now was complete. Dr. Verdon examined her and said she would soon be ready for release from the hospital. She had snapped back with amazing vitality from her agonizing ordeal on the raft.

  Four days later, on November 27, eager to close any gaps in Terry Jo’s story of the Bluebelle disaster, Coast Guard investigators called on her again.

  Captain Barber showed her a sketch of the Bluebelle deck. “This,” he said, “is what the vessel might have looked like that night if things happened as people said they happened. Now, Mr. Harvey told us that a large part of the main mast broke off and fell down through the deck and bottom of the boat. Now, if this happened the way he said, the cable, the rigging, the sails, the mizzenmast would have been lying all over the deck, a terrific bundle of wires and sail, a real mess. Now, can you remember if you saw any such mess as that all over the deck?”

  She shook her head firmly. “There wasn’t any mess at all,” she said.

  Barber: “You told us that when you went up on deck that first time, that there was light on the deck, from the light up near the sails or on the mast. Do you remember saying that?”

  Terry Jo: “Yes.”

  Barber: “And you have a clear recollection of this light, and the masts were standing up?”

  Terry Jo: “Yes.”

  Barber: “This point is quite important because Mr. Harvey’s story is all based on the fact that these masts came falling down. You told us the last time that one of the masts was tipping over, slanted over a little bit. Can you tell us again what you thought you saw?”

  Terry Jo: “I had thought that maybe something hit it and it was laying over that way.”

  Barber: “Do you understand that this mast is normally straight up on the deck?”

  Terry Jo: “Yes.”

  Barber: “And you feel, looking back, that one or both were leaning? Can you describe why you believe this?”

  Terry Jo: “Because when I put the raft over the side, the boom was way out and the sail was kind of out in the water and the mast was leaning that way.” She held up a fountain pen indicating that the mast was leaning about ten degrees from vertical. Of course, by the time she was up on deck and launching the raft, it is entirely possible that the boat, filled with water, was listing to the side where the boom was way out. That could have made it appear that the mast was leaning.

  Barber: “Terry, when you first went up on deck, did you notice any damage to the rigging wire, the stays holding the masts up?”

  Terry Jo: “All the wires were perfect.”

  Barber: “Mr. Harvey told us that when the main mast fell down, this dragged over the mizzen mast. The rigging between dragged over the mizzenmast, which fell down and struck the deck. Did you notice the mizzenmast down on the deck?”

  Terry Jo: “It was standing up.”

  Barber: “Terry, in looking back now, do you believe that Mr. Harvey harmed any of your family?”

  Terry Jo hesitated. “I really don’t know, because – he might have.”

  Barber: “Do you remember any arguments between Mr. Harvey and anybody on the boat?”

  Terry Jo: “No.”

  Barber: “As best you can remember, he was not angry with anybody on the boat?”

  Terry Jo: “No.”

  Replying to more questions, Terry Jo said she and René ordinarily slept together on the three-quarter berth in the small aft sleeping cabin, but on the night of the disaster, she had gone to bed by herself. Her father had planned to stay on top during the night and help Captain Harvey with the steering, and René was to come down later to sleep with her mother in the main cabin. Mrs. Harvey sometimes stayed on deck all night, too.

  Barber: “Mr. Harvey told us that all of you were on deck when the mishap happened, that you were asleep in your mother’s lap in the cockpit at the time. Was that a true statement?”

  Terry Jo: “No.”

  Barber: “Was it absolutely wrong?”

  Terry Jo: “Yes.”

  She said she didn’t know if René ever came below that night.

  Barber: “Terry, when you first woke up that night and came out of the cabin, I believe you told us you saw your mother and brother lying on the floor. Did you go close to them?”

  Terry Jo: “No, but when I looked they were both lying on their backs close together in front of the kitchen door. I couldn’t tell what caused the blood.”

  Barber: “When you first went up on deck, you told us that you saw Mr. Harvey with something in his hand which could have been a pail or bucket. Did you get the impression that he did not want you to come forward toward the forecastle?”

  Terry Jo: “Yes.”

  Barber: “Please tell us why you had that impression.”

  Terry Jo: “I thought there was a whole bunch of blood and stuff and he thought that would make me sick, so he made me go below.”

  Barber: “Terry, I believe you know now that Mr. Harvey did away with himself after he learned that you were alive. Do you know why he did that?”

  Terry Jo: “No.”

  Barber: “When you first were awakened that night by screaming sounds and stamping of feet, you told us that you heard your brother scream. Did you hear anything else?”

  Terry Jo: “No, but my brother was saying, ‘Help, Daddy, Help!’”

  Barber: “You heard this quite clearly?”

  Terry Jo: “Yes.”

  Barber: “You didn’t hear anyone else say anything?”

  Terry Jo: “No.”

  Barber: “Did you ever find out what the stamping noise was?”

  Terry Jo: “I thought it was my brother stamping.”

  Barber: “By that, you mean you’re not sure whether the noise came from the upper deck or the lower deck [the main cabin]?”

  Terry Jo: “I think it was the lower deck. I wasn’t sure.”

  When the screams stopped, she s
aid, she heard someone pound up the companionway stairs.

  Barber: “Then, when you went up on deck and saw Mr. Harvey come toward you, how did he look?”

  Terry Jo: “He seemed angry.”

  Barber: “Did you notice any blood or cuts or bruises on him?”

  Terry Jo: “No.”

  Barber: “Later, when the captain came into your room, do you still believe he had a rifle in his hand?”

  Terry Jo: “Yes.”

  Barber: “When you were first awakened, how long did you lie in your bunk before you got up?”

  Terry Jo: “It might have been five minutes or ten minutes.”

  Barber: “Was the door to your room closed?”

  Terry Jo: “Yes.”

  Barber: “Before you got up, you thought you heard someone going up the stairs. Is that right?”

  Terry Jo: “Yes.”

  Barber: “Do you think that your mother and brother were in such a position that they could have fallen down those stairs?”

  Terry Jo: “I don’t think they fell down.”

  Barber: “How long was it from the time you first awakened until you left the vessel in the life float?”

  Terry Jo: “About a half hour.”

  Barber: “How deep was the water in your room when you got up the last time?”

  Terry Jo: “Up to my waist.”

  Barber: “Terry, Mr. Harvey told us that after the mast fell down and he went forward to get the cable cutters, he could not get back to the stern because a fire broke out between him and the others. Will you tell us again if you saw or smelled or in any way detected a fire that night?”

  Terry Jo: “I was positive there wasn’t any fire, but I did smell something like oil or something from the engine because the engine was right down near my room.”