On February 6, 2018, the fishing vessel Fisherman’s Provider II left port in Canso, Nova Scotia on a five-day halibut fishing trip. After nearly two hours of erratic steaming behavior, including going around in circles just off Canso, the vessel ran hard aground on a well-known shoal. At first, the skipper and three crewmembers had plenty of time to comfortably get off the vessel, but the captain, Roger Stoddard, was apparently not about to leave his vessel under any circumstances. This is Part II of Providing No More.
As crewmen Roy Campbell, Brian Sinclair and Anthony Cooke donned their survival suits, they were also getting the vessel’s life raft ready as they prepared to abandon ship.
Afraid that their already listing boat would start taking on water and roll over further, they wanted to get to safety quickly. But it suddenly became obvious that their captain was in no mood to join them.
Roger was still at the wheel, attempting to manipulate the gears and throttle in an effort to shake his boat free from the rocks. Knowing how hard aground they were, the crewmen were yelling at Roger to forget about the boat and come with them. But he was having no part of it.
“Do whatever you want, I’m going fishing,” he yelled back.
But Roger Stoddard was not going fishing. The vessel wasn’t budging and if anything, Roger was probably making a bad situation worse as the boat dug deeper into the rocky bottom not far from the Canso light beacon.
Back in Canso, Cory Mackenzie heard the Provider’s mayday at 7:57 P.M. He was skipper of the Miss Lexi and just happened to be docked at the Canso wharf at the time. He called to a few of his friends on the wharf telling them to jump aboard because he was going to Frying Pan Shoal to try and rescue the crew of the Fisherman’s Provider II.
It was an overcast and very dark night without a moon to help spot the Provider from a distance. To further complicate a visual sighting, there was a light snow falling, but most importantly there were positive conditions also; it was still calm and making a successful rescue should be possible once they found exactly where the vessel had struck the shoal.
Captain Mackenzie was the first to arrive on the scene, but he was careful not to get too close to the stricken vessel for fear of becoming a victim of the same shoal. A few minutes later, Brian, Roy and Anthony got in a raft and for as long as they could, stayed alongside their vessel, still pleading with Roger who was then standing on the party-submerged deck to come with them.
Finally, the skipper left the deck, but instead of joining his crewmates, he went back inside the wheelhouse and refused to even acknowledge their pleas.
By the time the three crewmen paddled away from the shoal, Cory Mackenzie had wheeled the Miss Lexi around in a position to comfortably get them onboard his vessel and back to Canso where an ambulance was standing by to take them to hospital.
All three were visibly shaken by the events, especially their captain’s weird behavior, but they were in good physical condition.
As the three men paddled their raft toward the rescue boat, they continuously squinted their eyes in the direction of the Fisherman’s Provider II through the darkness and listened intently in case their captain had changed his mind. There was no sign of Roger and no sound of a voice.
By the time the men were safely onboard the Miss Lexi, a small flotilla of other boats of varying sizes had arrived on the scene.
Repeated calls to Roger Stoddard on VHF Radio and to his cellphone went unanswered. Some smaller boats were able to draw near enough for men to shout to him, but there was only silence in return.
About an hour after the Provider struck the rocks, two Canso men in a small speedboat managed to get very near the grounded vessel. But even though winds were light, an ocean swell was breaking over Frying Pan Shoal causing the Provider to list back and forth making it too dangerous to climb over the side to see if Roger was well.
However, there wasn’t any concern that the vessel was in immediate danger of foundering, so they did manage to secure a line to the stern of the Provider and hitched it to the Melissa and Papa II to provide grater stability.
According to a National Post newspaper report, the men also tied a life raft to the vessel in case Roger came back on the deck and wanted to abandon ship.
Several skippers and crewmembers of the growing number of would-be rescue vessels, some of them crewed by friends and acquaintances of Roger Stoddard, could be heard chatting on VHF Radio as they idled as near to Frying Pan Shoal as they dared.
Some expressed their feelings of helplessness and frustration knowing that one of their peers was just a couple of hundred feet away and there was nothing they could do to save him because he refused to cooperate and help himself. Many said Roger was a good man, a good skipper and a kind person, but they also admit that he was stubborn as a mule.
For the next few hours, several vessels stood by helplessly because it was too dangerous to attempt a boarding. All they could do was watch and wait to see if Roger Stoddard was going to finally send a message that he was fine and was ready to be rescued. That call never came.
Shortly after midnight, the Coast Guard vessel Bickerton from eastern Nova Scotia arrived on the scene. But what it encountered was different from anything it had confronted before.
This was the first time any of them, including the captain, had dealt with a rescue mission where the captain of a stricken vessel was still onboard and refusing to abandon his ship. The dilemma was how to proceed with a rescue attempt.
The Coast Guard has no authority to force a captain from a sinking vessel, even if his life is in danger. Marine rules are different from legal authority on land. For instance, if a firefighter of certain rank considers a fire is life threatening, he/she can order firemen to physically remove a person from a burning building without a warrant, even if the person is resisting rescue.
In the case of Coast Guard rescuers, an old code remains in effect that seems to be based on a centuries-old custom that the captain’s obligation was to do everything in his/her power to save the crew and passengers first and if that means time has run out for his own safe abandonment, he then goes down with the ship.
In the case of the Fisherman’s Provider II, rescue officials were totally aware that Captain Stoddard made a conscious choice. He had an opportunity to leave his ship, hours after grounding, but he clearly decided against it.
His last known words were “I’m going fishing.”
Join us next month for the third and concluding Part III of “Providing No More” as we tell you the amazing outcome of the saga of Captain Roger Stoddard and the Fisherman’s Provider II.
