Mumbai: “The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too” wrote Vincent van Gogh. The pearls are what the Indian Navy found in the officers and men that navigated the three ships INS Kochi, INS Kolkata and INS Talwar to search and rescue 710 men from the eye of Cyclone Tautkae. A feat which till now had no standard operating procedure, precedent to follow or has ever been tried by any Navy across the globe.
The search and rescue operation, which would now go down in the annals of Indian Navy’s history, was set in motion when an emergency distress signal, from the oil rigs in Bombay High, was picked up on the fifteenth floor of Makers Towers in South Mumbai, on the morning of Monday the May 17, that houses the office of Flag Officer Defence Advisory Group, and the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre. An accommodation barge of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), with 261 crew members onboard, had lost its mooring and was adrift in the high sea about 160 kilometres from Mumbai coast. A second distress signal was soon picked up where barge Gal Constructor, with 137 people onboard, reported a similar situation.
Barge P-305
With Cyclone Tautkae, just south of Mumbai’s coastline and scheduled to pass by in the hours to come, a decision was taken by top Navy officials to launch INS Kochi which was anchored at the outer dock at the Navy’s dockyard in Mumbai, and Captain Sachin Sequeira the commanding officer of INS Kochi was instructed to get ready to sail at around 10.30 am.
The windspeed had picked up to 100 kilometres per hour, the sea state was at 7 or 8 which meant that the waves would be anywhere between 9 metres to 14 metres. Captain Sequeira and his 300 men had to work through the odds that nature’s fury was about to present them.
An hour later at 11.30 am, INS Kochi set sail from the docks and the Vessel Traffic Monitoring Systems (VTMS) alerted Captain Sequeira that channel to get out Mumbai harbour was getting dangerous as anchors of some vessels were dragging which meant the vessels were adrift, and that it had not control over these vessels.
It was just the beginning of what would be a nightmarish experience for all the crew members of INS Kochi. To navigate a 163 metre long guided-missile destroyer with close to 8000 tons of displacement through the narrow channel of Mumbai harbour, with boats floating, was the first challenge placed before Captain Sequeira and his crew members. “The visibility was zero when we set sail. Windspeeds were touching over 100 kilometres per hour accompanied by heavy rains,” said Captain Sequeira recounting the Monday morning.
“It is not normal for navies to go into the cyclone. Mariners normally stay out of the cyclone and if possible get to the closest harbour. But we were going into the cyclone, and as close as 50 miles away from the cyclone. But it was our duty, and that’s our ethos,” said Captain Sequeira.
For the first time Captain Sequeira and his team had to rely on the electronic gadgets onboard the warship to navigate which otherwise is normally used to supplement visual navigation. “And in such inclement weather, the radars do not pick up small boats. This made the situation extremely precarious. There were moments when I felt we would have crashed into another vessel, and that would have been calamitous,” said Captain Sequeira, who with extreme care and precaution, slowly navigated past the Mumbai harbour.
But what was in the offing for Captain Sequeira and his team was even more ominous. After battling the rough sea for nearly 3 hours, INS Kochi was in the vicinity of Bombay High at around 2 pm. But then the barge which adrift had floated away from in its initial position. “We figured that the drift in the sea was about 5 knots or 10 kilometres per hour and it was in the northerly direction. We started our search operations from then and at around 3.30 pm we saw them,” said Captain Sequeira, and added, “But we were not in any position to get close to them. The waves were around 8 to 10 metres high and the ship was pitching and experiencing a roll of anywhere between 40 to 50 degrees on either side.”
There was an offshore support vessel Ocean Energy in the vicinity, and INS Kochi requested if it could move closer. “Despite being low freeboard vessel, the conditions made it very difficult for it as well to move closer,” said Captain Sequeira.
“An hour passed by and we could see it slowly going down. The water was seeping into the barge, and hence he lowered lifebuoys into the water,” added Captain Sequeira.
Lieutenant Commander Siddharth Chauhan, who was onboard INS Kochi, said, “We used our LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Devices) to communicate to them and asked them to remain in groups, and jump in groups.”
At about 10 minutes to 6, the barge capsized. But by that time INS Kochi’s crew had been divided into separate groups with personnel on the starboard and port side of the ship looking out for survivors. The medical teams were in place, the men in the engine room were constantly on duty checking every minute aspect of the engine bay to ensure the ship doesn’t stall under any circumstance, and each parameter had to be maintained.
“But the sea was not giving us any solution. We had to keep all our engines running, and pull off a manoeuvre where we could get as close as possible to the survivors and get them in the four scramble nets that we had lowered,” said Captain Sequeira.
While the focus was on the search and rescue, at the back of his mind Captain Sequeira was also worried about his crew members. “We had ensured that all our men who were on the deck were with safety harnesses. I just couldn’t think of loosing one of my men,” said Captain Sequeira.
But the commitment showed by the men onboard INS Kochi was exemplary. “Every man, even those not trained to handle a situation like that chipped in with all they had. It was heartening. There were guys who were seasick but were carrying polythene bags in their trousers. They would puke, dispose it off and then get back to work again,” added Captain Sequeira.
While all this was happening, the ship had to be manoeuvred close to the survivors and Captain Sequeira had to handle the ship in such a delicate manner to ensure that the vessel did not run over any of the survivor. “We positioned ourselves downstream and positioned ourselves in such an manner that we drift towards them. The exercise was similar to catching a crab out of the water,” added Captain Sequeira.
Exactly half an hour after the barge sank, at 6.30 pm INS Kochi made its first rescue. “It just instilled a great deal of belief in all the men who from then on were relentless in the mission,” said Captain Sequeira
Like Lt Cdr Siddharth Chauhan, Lt Cdr Akhilesh Sharma who too was on the deck of INS Kochi involved in rescue operations said, “The conditions were very tough. It was not a normal situation. There was great danger involved in what we were doing. But that did not occur to us. I guess that is not the first thing that would come to anyone’s mind when you see people out there in such a condition. Your instinct is to save them at any cost.”
Lt Cdr Chauhan chipped in and said, “There were times when that the men would be tired. But we in groups, and each one of us kept pushing each other. We also took a lot of courage from those whom we rescued. They were extremely courageous and had great fortitude to survive in such conditions.”
Captain Sequeira pointed out one instance when one of the men whom they had rescued was unconscious and frothing when he was brought on the deck. “The medical team quickly swung into action and administered the necessary treatment. And within three to four hours, the man was normal.” There were people who had lacerations and the medical team stitched them up and were constantly talking to the survivors to keep them in good health.
Captain Sequeira also remembered an instance when one person was trapped in the scramble net with his leg up, and a diver who was hooked on to a rope climbed down the scramble net braving the waves and rescued him.
“Though I had it in the back of my mind all the time, my crew did not care about the danger that was attached to their lives. And as night set in, the visibility was all the more low. But my men were relentless and till 5 am on Tuesday morning we had rescued over 110 people.”
Chief petty officer Mohan Lal of INS Kochi too relieved the close to 36 hours at sea and said, “I have been on rescue missions before at Vishakhapatnam and Kerala. But I don’t think I have ever been in a rescue mission like this.” Similar were the views that sailors like Vishwakant, GS Sambyal and Ajay Sharma among other crew members of INS Kochi.
A week later, what went through is still to sink in for Captain Sequeira who led INS Kochi and rescued 125 persons by the evening of May 18. But after that came the bodies. And that’s a feeling that will take time to sink in. “The feeling is yet to sink in. I could see death all around,” said Captain Sequeira.
Barge Gal Constructor
By 1300 hours on Monday, Navy had mobilised INS Kolkata, the lead ship of the Kolkata-class guided missile destroyers, to search and rescue 137 persons onboard Barge Gal Constructor. Captain Prashant Handu faced similar problems to that Captain Sequeira in exiting the Mumbai harbour. “We gingerly made past it past the Mumbai harbour,” said Captain Handu. And soon after, INS Kolkata picked up Barge Gal Constructor’s position somewhere towards the north of the channel on the Automatic Identification System (AIS). “It was drifting further towards a north-north-easterly direction, and we kept chasing him till we reached a position where the depth of the sea was just 12 metres. The draft of the ship being seven and half metres, we could not proceed any further,” said Captain Handu, who by then knew that the barge would ground and would be safe. Also, an emergency towing vessel Water Lily was mobilised towards Gal Constructor. “It was around 8 pm and the barge had grounded. But there was panic onboard Gal Constructor and there were messages of the crew planning to jump. We had to convince them not to jump and that they were safe,” said Captain Handu. Captain Handu explained to the master of Barge Gal Constructor that the vessel had grounded and there was nothing to worry, and that no lives would be lost. He also convinced them that Navy helicopters will fly in early morning to carry out the rescue mission. Captain Handu then turned INS Kolkata towards barge P-305 but one of his men pointed out that he had seen a green flare at a distance. “Green flares are essentially distress flares, and the position of the flare was towards the south. We had to go and search that area,” said Captain Handu who to his surprise found two crew members of tug boat Varaprada. “One person was young. And the other person was the chief engineer of the boat and was not conscious. The young person kept telling us that all in the boat were dead. But we had to do our search,” said Captain Handu. Till then, nobody knew that tug boat Varaprada, with 13 people onboard, which was supposed tow Barge Gal Constructor had capsized. The position of INS Kolkata was about 13 miles away from Barge P-305 and once again set sail to assist INS Kochi. “We reached well after midnight. And we saw that there were four vessels including INS Kochi carrying out the rescue mission. We did not want to disturb the processes and informed INS Kochi that we would be towards the north and create a barrier, as the drift was towards the north, and would save any survivor that INS Kochi would miss,” said Captain Handu, whose crew rescued 3 persons and collected 18 bodies. “We send in divers one after the other to gather the bodies. Unlike rescuing a person, gather bodies is extremely tough,” said Captain Handu. Amit, a marine commando, was the first to dive in to recover the body under extremely inclement weather. “We have been trained to carry out operations like this. I just followed what I had learnt and tried to recover as many men as possible,” said Amit. Six divers from INS Kolkata gathered 18 bodies. But what moved Captain Handu was when he saw his men clean the bodies, photograph them, write down their identification marks and carefully wrap them in body bags with utmost respect. “I was moved to tears when I saw my men doing such a dignified job. It’s a matter of pride when I was informed that all the bodies from my ship were in good condition and had been identified. That is the kind of work my men did selflessly,” said Captain Handu.
INS Shikra
On Tuesday early morning, with the weather still inclement, the Sea King helicopters from pressed into service from naval air station INS Shikra at Colaba. Lieutenant Commander Raghavendra Dixit who was among the pilots who flew many sorties to rescue 35 crew members from Gal Constructor said, “With wind speed exceeding 100 kilometres at times, it was one of the toughest challenges to undertake. It was all the more challenging to keep the helicopter hovering above the barge, which had a crane by its side.” For Lt Cdr Dixit, and his counterparts, a moment of error could have seen a tragedy unfold.
“The Sea King has an endurance of around 3 hours at sea. So, we had to keep that in mind. We needed to calculate time to reach the place, and to come back. And we also need to see the time each diver would take to go down and winch. We needed to figure out the weight that the winch could carry else the motor would heat up and render the winch being useless,” said Dixit, who added that each sortie had approximately about 25 to 30 minutes to rescue people.
Sagar Bhushan, Support Station 3 and Great Ship Aditi
The Navy also got distress calls from Sagar Bhushan, Support Station 3 and Great Ship Aditi off the Gujarat coast with similar problems that stemmed because of Cyclone Tautkae. INS Talwar, the lead ship of the Talwar class frigate, was pushed into action and to save 196 personnel on board SS3 and 101 persons onboard Sagar Bhushan. Captain Partha Bhat who kept a close watch on the three vessels and stayed in contact did something which was out of the normal, said senior Navy officers. “The masters of the ships wanted to reach Pipavav port, but it was dangerous to do so under the circumstances. This was primarily because the ships had run out of potable water and had no food,” said a senior Navy officer, requesting anonymity. INS Talwar which has RO plant that can desalinate sea water but the sea was such that the plant could not be operated. But Captain Bhat had other ideas. “He gathered 200 kilograms of food packets and 200 litres of water that was available on the ship, and chose to fly out a helicopter twice to deliver it to the vessels in extreme weather conditions,” said the naval officer. As the cyclones intensity waned off, Great Ship Aditi was able to anchor. While Sagar Bhushan and Support Station 3 were towed into Mumbai harbour by ONGC’s support vessels.
By the time the search and rescue operation ended, Indian Navy had covered over 10,000 square nautical miles with its P-8Is, helicopters and other support warships.