White Seal

"I've flown in some storms, but that day was the worse that I'd seen."
--Frank Flood

Here in the Coastal Empire and Lowcountry, we rarely ever seen snow. So when it does fall, it's quite an occasion. Well just up the coast, the situation isn't all that different.

On Thursday, January 23, 2003, unusually harsh winter weather moved over North Carolina's intracoastal waterway. An Arctic blast spawned a storm system along the edge of the Gulf Stream, and it produced one of the heaviest snowfalls to ever hit North Carolina's coast. It's a snowfall that brought Elizabeth City's 17-thousand residents to a standstill.

It's a storm that caused problems onshore and off.

180 miles south of Elizabeth City--Captain Yakov Korniyuk was guiding the White Seal, a 600-foot cargo ship, up the eastern seaboard. The ship was headed for Bridgeport, Connecticut, where it was supposed to pick up a load of automobiles.

Yakov's 16-man crew also hails from the Ukraine--where the average salary for sailors is only $600 U.S. dollars a year. These seamen must take whatever job is offered, on whatever boat they can find.

What's even worse...the White Seal is rusty and past its prime, with only one operative engine. It's a ship that can't handle this storm system.

Hour after hour, towering waves thrash the cargo ship. The vessel is tossed in the 20-40 foot seas.

Captain Yakov sent a telex to the shipping company--requesting to be towed into the nearby port of Wilmington, North Carolina. But the shipping company refuses.

Then the crew makes a horrible discovery. The frigid Atlantic Ocean is seeping through a hold into their rusty ship. Five feet of water is already in the cargo hold. The White Seal is on the verge of sinking.

Captain Yakov makes a gut-wrenching decision--he and the crew must abandon the ship, in the middle of the raging Atlantic.

To see what happens next, watch the full episode of Storm Stories: White Seal.