By
Graham Davis
Three
Royal Australian Navy sailors from HMAS Newcastle (CAPT Gerry
Christian), backed by the rest of the ship’s company, have
saved the lives of four Iraqi merchant crewmen thrown into the
sea when their tug sank in the northern Persian Gulf.
“They used their local knowledge, current and tidal flow
calculations, to find them,” commanding officer of Newcastle,
CAPT Gerry Christian said when his ship returned to Australia
last week.
Those involved in the daring rescue, conducted on a moonless night,
in Seastate 3 (2m plus waves) and about 35-knot winds, were LSBM
Samuel Perez, ABCSO Luke Hearn and SMNBM Jeremy Hulstaert.
CAPT Christian said Newcastle along with other Coalition vessels
was patrolling high in the northern Persian Gulf when the US Coastguard
cutter Adak detected the Iraqi tug Al Houda was sinking after
being flooded by a cross-beam wave.
“Adak found four crewmen from the tug in a rubber raft,”
CAPT Christian told Navy News. “Another four were missing.”
CAPT Christian launched one of his ship’s RHIBs crewed by
Perez, Hearn and Hulstaert.
The trio travelled more than 2.5 miles across the darkened sea,
saw where Adak was and where the tug had gone down, and calculated
where the four missing men might be. They were right.
“They were treading water and covered in oil,” CAPT
Christian said. “They had been in the water an estimated
20 minutes.” Meanwhile, the USS Germantown had launched an
11m RHIB carrying a medic.
The four from the Adak and the four from the RAN RHIB were transferred
via that large launch to Germantown before eventually being repatriated
to Umm Qasr.
