Tourist comes to rescue of Hatteras, N.C., ferry

HATTERAS, N.C.

Jason Bosley was relaxing with friends on the ferry to Hatteras after a long day of windsurfing on Ocracoke Island. The sky was inky black, and 35 mph winds whipped up the water in Hatteras Inlet.

A crew member suddenly shouted that the captain was down.

With his experience in first aid, Bosley rushed with the crewman to the wheelhouse of the vessel Cape Point, where he found the captain unconscious.

He also saw no one at the boat's controls.

"At that point in time, it was instinctive to take the wheel, at least to keep the ferry in the channel," Bosley said Wednesday in a phone interview from New Orleans.

The Sept. 19 incident is being investigated by the Coast Guard.

While two other passengers with emergency medical experience worked on ferry captain Lowell Schroder, Bosley took the helm.

"Everything happened really fast," he said.

Fortunately for the approximately 60 passengers and 26 vehicles on the vessel, Bosley, 35, is a licensed Mississippi boat pilot. He knows boats, he said, but he didn't know the shallow channel with its ever-changing shoals.

Bosley said he familiarized himself with the rudder and held the vessel in the wind. Then he saw another ferry coming at him in the narrow passage.

Veteran ferry captain Ronnie Van O'Neal had finished his shift and was hitching a ride on the ferry Thomas A. Baum back home to Ocracoke Island. The radio started crackling. Someone said the captain had passed out. Then he heard a voice on the Cape Point hail the Baum.

"He said, 'I'm running the ferry, but I don't know where I'm going,' " recounted O'Neal, a licensed captain who had worked for the state 26 years. O'Neal asked the captain of the Baum to pull up to the oncoming ferry.

"I said, 'Try to get up close enough to her so I can get up on her.' "

While Bosley slowed down to less than 1 knot and held the Cape Point steady as he could, O'Neal leaped into the dark from the bow of the Baum onto the stern of the Cape Point. He dashed to the wheelhouse, switched on the floodlights, and took the helm from Bosley.

O'Neal shrugged off a suggestion that his jump was heroic, saying it is just something you have to do sometimes when you're on boats.

But he did credit Bosley for his cool head and Susan Hilton, a paramedic from Carrboro, N.C., and Linda Kern, a physician's assistant from Glen Arm, Md., for trying to revive Schroder.

Schroder, 64, was transported to the medical clinic in Hatteras, where he was pronounced dead, apparently of a heart attack.

"The tourists more or less took over," O'Neal said. "It was just lucky for the people that somebody was there who knew how to hold a boat in the wind. He's saved people's lives, in my opinion."

O'Neal said that at best, the vessel could have gone aground. At worst, it could have strayed from the channel into the inlet, losing vehicles and passengers overboard in the rough conditions.

"It was a lot of things that could've happened," he said.

Under Coast Guard regulations, one master, the captain, and two able-bodied seamen are required to be on vessels operated for less than 12 hours with the same crew in a 24-hour day, said Frank Rego, Coast Guard Sector North Carolina Prevention Department head.

The Marine Safety Manual, used as guidance rather than law, recommends that a crew member on board should be a designated mate, who may not be licensed but is capable of taking over operation of the vessel, Rego said.

Jack Cahoon, director of the North Carolina Ferry Division, said that crew members on the Cape Point that night were qualified to steer the ferry, but they were not able to dock it. The able-bodied seaman who was trained to dock the boat had been dropped off earlier at the south dock by Schroder.

"All I know is it was a poor decision," Cahoon said. "At no point do I think anyone was in danger."

Catherine Kozak, (252) 441-1711, cate.kozak@pilotonline.com