A Speck in the Sea Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2017 John Aldridge and Anthony Sosinski

  Descriptions and photos in Appendix A courtesy of the United States Coast Guard

  Photos in the photo insert appear courtesy of the authors unless otherwise noted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. For information address Weinstein Books, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104.

  Book design by Timm Bryson

  Set in 11.5 Warnock Pro

  Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available for this book.

  ISBN: 978-1-60286-328-6 (hardcover)

  ISBN: 978-1-60286-329-3 (e-book)

  Published by Weinstein Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  www.weinsteinbooks.com

  Weinstein Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at Perseus Books, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  First Edition

  E3-20170427-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1 Overboard

  CHAPTER 2 Montauk Fishermen

  CHAPTER 3 A Speck in the Sea

  CHAPTER 4 “He’s Not Here”

  CHAPTER 5 Daylight

  CHAPTER 6 In the Command Center

  CHAPTER 7 “We’re in Big Trouble”

  CHAPTER 8 “Johnny Load Is Missing”

  CHAPTER 9 To the West-End Buoy

  CHAPTER 10 Command and Control

  CHAPTER 11 The Landward Watch

  CHAPTER 12 Cutting Loose

  CHAPTER 13 Found

  CHAPTER 14 “It’s Over”

  CHAPTER 15 Saved

  CHAPTER 16 The Good Daughter

  CHAPTER 17 Postscripts and Parties

  Epilogue

  Photos

  Appendix A: Assets Deployed to Find and Rescue John Aldridge

  Appendix B: “The Tale of Johnny Load”

  Index

  To the men and women of the

  United States Coast Guard

  and to all the people

  whose lives were touched by what happened

  on July 24, 2013, and who turned their focus,

  their prayers, their good will, and,

  in many cases, their time and effort

  to a man lost at sea.

  “The Ocean’s your mother, your bitch and your lover and nobody gets to ride free

  It’s a roll of the dice if she’ll let you survive so bow down, boys, to the Queen.”

  —The Tale of Johnny Load, by The Nancy Atlas Project

  “You are strong and you are resilient, remember this. You will have the strength to survive the current circumstances. Know that the Universe is ready with a huge cosmic second wind and take some alone time to tap into it when you need to. It is important that you remember how resilient you are. Also how resourceful. Take a break and come back to yourself and feel your strength again before making big decisions.”

  —Johnny Aldridge’s horoscope for July 23,

  the night the Anna Mary set forth,

  as it appeared in the Oakdale, Long Island,

  neighborhood paper.

  “I think all of Montauk felt that we were witnessing something extraordinary that day. You are able to see the very best in people when help is needed, and the instinct of so many is to do not only everything they can, but to push beyond that to never give up. And then to have the result be a miracle. I don’t even know this fellow personally, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day.”

  —Catherine Ecker Flanagan, Montauk native

  Acknowledgments

  First thanks go to Paul Tough, author of the New York Times Magazine article, “A Speck in the Sea,” which started the ball rolling and gave our book both its title and its impetus.

  To Geoffrey Menin, our agent and lawyer, thanks for guiding us through the new-to-us world of publishing, and to Susanna Margolis, thanks for guiding us through the process of putting our story into words.

  We are grateful to our friends at Weinstein Books for their support and all their help throughout this process—editorial director Amanda Murray, publishing director Georgina Levitt, project editor Cisca Schreefel, the entire production team, and, of course, Harvey Weinstein and producers Rachael Horovitz and Jason Blum.

  In addition to the many Coasties who feature so prominently in the book, we are also grateful to those members of the US Coast Guard who helped in reconstructing these events three years later. We acknowledge the contributions of Jordan P. St. John, deputy chief, Office of Public Affairs; Eric Best, officer in charge of Station Montauk in 2016 for extending the full hospitality of his facility and his staff to our researcher; Martin Betts, keeper and supplier of the complete recording of Channel 16 communications for the Aldridge SAR; Kevin Wyman, officer in charge of Station New Haven in 2016, who opened his doors to our researcher; Jeremy Will, Richard Standridge, and James “Nate” Slack, who answered endless questions about boat search patterns; and Morgan Gallapis and Bradley Nelson, “tour guides” through the New Haven command center.

  We are grateful also to Suzanne Pred Bass, LCSW, for her insights into PTSD and its effects, and to Bonnie Brady for her insights into the politics of fishing regulations.

  Cathy Patterson is not just a sister or near-sister to us both, nor is she just a key character in the events at the heart of this book. In more than two years of operating in her famed “business mode,” she managed the many details involved in gathering information and photos, lining up interviewees, scheduling conferences, managing every detail of our project, and keeping everyone informed. In doing so, she made it possible for the rest of us to do the research, writing, thinking, reviewing, editing, worrying, and fishing that we needed to do. A Speck in the Sea wouldn’t have happened without her.

  Thanks also to all the members of both the Aldridge and Sosinski families for their help and unwavering support, and a special shout-out to Laurie Zapolski for so ably assisting Cathy—and for other things as well.

  Prologue

  From the air, the most conspicuous natural feature on the far East End of New York’s Long Island is the nine-hundred-acre circular expanse of Montauk Harbor. On a clear, bright, sunny day, the kind of day that the East End experiences most of the year, everybody’s fantasies about a seaside community come dazzlingly to life in this place. The sunlight glints off the sea more radiantly than it does over fields and towns farther west toward New York City. Seagulls wheel overhead. Cloudless skies are cerulean, sand golden. Every kind of boat in the harbor—from sailboat to cruiser, motor yacht to dinghy, fishing vessel to kayak—bobs gently in its slip on the sparkling water, rising and dipping, knocking gently against the wooden dock while the breeze carries the scent of ocean salt across dunes and beaches, gardens and backyard decks.

  Radiating out from the harbor’s circumference is the storied hamlet of Montauk itself. “Downtown” is mostly south and west of the harbor, its shops and businesses low slung and understated. To the east, west, and south of the harbor, clusters of residential streets snake and spiral along the flat topography and fill but do not crowd the narrow available space, which extends just some four miles from north to south shore. Many of the houses, mostly of on
e or two stories, are sheathed in the gray shingle that is the classic Montauk look. They are ringed around and often partially hidden by thick shrubs and tall sea grasses, by stunted-looking scrub oaks and twisted black cherry trees that remain low and out of the wind, by clumps of mint and salvia and ferns, by gardens that in season sport every color and variety of perennial and annual possible in the loamy soil, not to mention the stalks of corn and vines heavy with tomatoes that exemplify summer here.

  The houses, the shops, the dunes, the broad beaches, the views of the sea from decks and terraces are hallmarks of the East End, yet all revolve in one way or another around the harbor, which is central to the life of the community and to the sense of place here. So it is perhaps ironic that there is nothing natural about Montauk Harbor at all. From the moment it was carved by glaciers in the Pleistocene Epoch until the early twentieth century, this body of water was a freshwater lake, the largest in a collection of lakes, ponds, pools, rivers, and marshes that dot Long Island. It was called the Great Lake, and at a point along its northern shoreline only a minuscule distance—maybe three-tenths of a mile—separated the freshwater lake from the open ocean of Block Island Sound.

  That is one reason the lake caught the attention of eccentric entrepreneur and real estate developer Carl Fischer, the man who, among other innovations, operated the first-ever car dealership in America. Fischer wanted to turn Montauk into the “Miami Beach of the North,” envisioning, in what was then a sleepy settlement a hundred miles from New York City, a high-end resort for millionaires. It would be up-market and pricey and would offer elegant hotels, a casino, golf courses—every amenity and amusement a millionaire could desire. Many of the guests of the caliber Fischer sought for the resort would naturally arrive by yacht, so in 1927 he blasted a hole in the northern shoreline of the Great Lake, dredged the lake, and made it the port for the East End of the island. On a small island within his new harbor, Star Island, he built the Montauk Yacht Club and the Star Island Casino, figuring he was off to a good start.

  And so he was, and so he might have continued, but the Crash of 1929 put an end to Fischer’s wealth and to his fantasy of a northern match for Miami Beach, where, some years later, he died in poverty.

  In a way, of course, Fischer’s fantasy came true: the East End of Long Island is indeed a celebrated playground for the rich and famous, the Montauk Yacht Club thrives, and the harbor Fischer built became the main port of the East End, an important Navy station during World War II, and the current site of the US Coast Guard station. Today the “unnatural” Montauk Harbor Fischer created is New York’s premier fishing port, home base for the state’s largest commercial and recreational fishing fleets.

  The locals who make their living off the work of these fleets constitute a unique and tightly knit community—men and women linked to fishing down the generations, or through friendship, or through being born here, or because they chose this place and this community at the easternmost edge of a jutting island above all others, and because they take pride in weathering the financial, physical, and emotional highs and lows of their livelihood together. Considering their impact on the industry, their numbers are small:

  The commercial fishing fleet, the professionals who pursue for profit the wild fish and seafood we eat, consists of only some forty vessels. They go out in search of a select few species that flourish in the waters off Montauk—especially tilefish, squid, fluke, whiting, scallops, crab, and lobster.

  Five boats in the fleet trap lobsters. Four of them do so within twenty miles of the shore. Only one fishes out of sight of land, farther out in the Atlantic.

  That is the Anna Mary, a forty-four-footer built in 1983 and owned since 2003 by John J. Aldridge III and Anthony Sosinski, both residents of Montauk. The men are opposites in style, personality, and appearance. Although both are slight of build, Sosinski is fair, blond haired, and operates at a finger-snapping pace, while Aldridge, olive skinned and black haired, is deliberate in his speech and movements. But they have been professional partners almost as long as they have been friends—that is, for most of their lives. Assisted, typically, by an additional crew member, they cocaptain the boat on twice- or thrice-weekly outings, weather permitting, during a fishing season extending from April through the end of December. They head out to “their” fishing grounds—ocean real estate marked by the presence on the sea floor of their traps—and hope to haul in an abundance of lobster and crab for sale to the wholesalers who will distribute it to markets and restaurants.

  On the evening of Tuesday, July 23, 2013, at the Westlake Dock at the end of Westlake Drive in the Anna Mary’s slip—second on the left from the road—the two men were preparing their boat for just such an outing. Evening departures are typical in their business, and on that evening, everything was business as usual…

  Chapter 1

  Overboard

  July 24, 2013

  “Did you go clamming today?” I ask Anthony as he arrives, which he does by jumping down from the dock onto the deck of the Anna Mary.

  “This morning, yeah.”

  Anthony goes clamming and oystering almost whenever he can. He doesn’t just wade and wait for what he can pick up either; he puts on fins and a mask with snorkel and goes venturing out to explore more deeply, searching for the very best specimens, the kind that fetch the best price. He has been doing this ever since we were kids.

  “Did you call Bob or Marie at the Fish Farm?” he asks me now. “They good with taking our catch?”

  “All good,” I answer.

  We’re getting things ready, preparing to head out to sea for the next thirty hours or more, checking our traps and lines and other equipment, and waiting for our supplies of bait to be delivered. I see Anthony zeroing in on one of the lobster traps we’ve just repaired. He examines it—seems it’s okay to him.

  I get a whiff of cigarette smoke coming out of the wheelhouse. That would be Mike Migliaccio, our crew member for this trip, as for many, many trips over the years.

  “Mikey!” I yell. “Smoke outside, will you? You’re killing me with this stuff!”

  Mike emerges, puffing smoke. Migliaccio is rarely without a Marlboro Red stuck between his lips. It is one reason—if only one—why he is a man of very few words.

  “Hey, Mike,” Anthony yells out. “You still living at Gary’s place?” The playful taunting of crew members by captains is a cherished tradition aboard fishing vessels, so co-captain Anthony is taking his turn against crew member Migliaccio.

  Mike spits the cigarette butt overboard. “I’m moving out of there,” he declares. “That place is a mess.”

  We laugh—Mike does too.

  L&L pulls up with our bait. They’re a bait wholesaler from up-island—Bayshore, to be exact, about seventy-five miles west of us—and they’re here to drop off some two thousand pounds of frozen bunker and skate in large cardboard flats. The three of us unload the bait into twenty plastic crates stacked behind the wheelhouse, then supplement it with baskets full of bycatch from other boats along the dock. In this business nothing goes to waste.

  Sometime between 8:00 and 8:30 we pull out of the slip—a calm, warm summer night, with a little bit of daylight still holding on to the horizon. I’m in the wheelhouse and nose the boat up to Gosman’s, the wholesaler outfit big enough to have its own dock in Montauk Harbor, for a quick stop to fill up our ice coolers—four of them, each capable of holding two hundred pounds. One cooler is for the food we will eat over the length of our trip; the other three are to chill the tuna and mahi-mahi we will troll for when we’re heading from one string of lobster traps to the next. It doesn’t take long to fill the coolers, and pretty soon Anthony is at the wheel, driving the Anna Mary through the jetty at the northern tip of the harbor, and we are steaming east along the beach to round Montauk Point.

  On the bluffs above us I can see the monument to East End fishermen lost at sea as well as the Montauk lighthouse, pictured on all those postcards and posters, and I feel the ocean
getting a little bit wilder. By about nine o’clock we are beyond the Point and free of the land, headed south into the Atlantic toward our traps.

  Anthony calls me into the wheelhouse to tell me about a radio report that a boat that fishes south of us just landed three thousand pounds of lobster at Gosman’s. We all agree the report sounds promising. Still, we are about eight hours away from our first string of traps—anything can happen.

  I am set to take the first watch, and we are looking at a long day of work once we get to our traps, so Anthony puts the Anna Mary on autopilot, and he and Mike both head down to their bunks to go to sleep. I am alone in the wheelhouse.

  I don’t mind being alone. I like it. The Anna Mary has done this exact trip so many times she can almost do it herself, so the work isn’t hard. Besides, we had been ashore for a couple of days, and I am always glad to get back to sea. Time ashore is typically spent getting the boat ready for the next trip, which means doing routine maintenance, or changing the oil, or splicing ropes, or, mostly, repairing traps. We have eight hundred traps, and we haul four hundred–plus per trip, so something always gets broken, and repairing is practically a full-time job.

  That is why it always feels good to me to get back on the water. On the water is where I’ve wanted to be since I was a kid. Not just because I’ve always wanted to be a fisherman—although I always have—but also because I like being my own boss, with no other person or people controlling my life or dictating my destiny or yakking at me to do this or that. Anthony never tells me what to do; we have been fifty-fifty partners for a long, long time. And when we’re at work, sliding traps along the rail and taking our catch, it’s a clockwork operation, two pairs of hands working as one. But three grown men on a forty-four-foot boat like the Anna Mary make for close quarters. So with Anthony and Mike asleep and snoring down in the forepeak and with nothing but warm summer air and an almost full moon for company, I am just fine being on my own in the wheelhouse. I lean back in the well-worn captain’s chair—a black, fake-leather throne that has been repaired so many times it looks like it is upholstered in electrical tape—put my feet up on the dashboard, take a sip out of the water bottle that sits on the window sill next to the chair, and just rock as the Anna Mary rises and falls over light swells, the residue of a storm a few days before. The radio is silent except for the occasional hail that the two parties then quickly take to another channel. The pale moonlight and the Anna Mary’s lights show calm open water ahead. I am content to keep an eye on the gauges and the radar and just feel my boat chugging along at her usual six and a half knots.