The Mysterious Short Life of the Traveler III

by Mike Crowe

Just ten years after being launched in Hong Kong in 1968, the 68' teak ketch Traveler III sank off Jonesport, Maine, a few minutes before midnight on June 12, 1978. The events that followed generated more curiosity than the sinking and are responsible for etching the tale into the memories of some coastal residents.

The John Alden-designed yacht was built for charter captain Arthur Crimmins of Miami and Freeport, Bahama. It had been chartered by the rich and famous, including George Harrison, Laurence Rockefeller and Nixon-era spy E. Howard Hunt. In the mid-1970s Crimmins sold the exceptional and highly regarded boat to an unidentified wealthy Saudi Arabian for $325,000.

The story that unfolded after departing Jonesport has all the elements of a Hollywood script. Mystery, murder, drugs, big money, stars, and smugglers were all part of the tale. The coast of Maine had been a haven for rum runners during prohibition and smugglers back to British colonial rule. In the 1970s, it had become a good place to hide and discharge contraband which was often marijuana and hashish.

The explosion in demand in the U.S. in the 1960s and ’70s led to more and larger shipments. The few boats caught generated re-circulating publicity, creating an illusion about how many were being caught, but masking the probable low percentage.

Fishermen were finding adrift bales of marijuana the size of baled hay and blocks of hashish that had been thrown overboard in plans gone bad. Like the tins of alcohol their fathers had similarly found adrift during prohibition in the 1920s, it was sometimes brought in and became known as sea hash, either because of its origin, the smell or both.

The Traveler III had sailed into Jonesport from Antigua, British West Indies. When it left Jonesport on a SSE course, the Coast Guard was not far behind. At 8:30 p.m. the Coast Guard cutter Yankton sighted the Traveler stopped, facing a northerly direction at a position five miles south of Egg Rock off Jonesport. It matched the description of a boat on a list of suspected smugglers. From two miles off, the Yankton went to intercept. The Traveler turned south and increased speed under power.

The Yankton approached then passed starboard beam to starboard beam. Traveler III radioed to ask the Coast Guard‚ its intentions. The response was to board. The Traveler replied that it looked too rough to board. The Yankton said it would not board and the Coast Guardsmen described what sounded like cheering coming over the radio as Traveler received the message.

The Traveler radioed that there were four people aboard and that they were bound for New Bedford, Mass. The Yankton slipped away and under reduced navigational lights followed at a distance. At 9:30 p.m. the Yankton received orders to board the Traveler.

The Yankton moved up on her and within a mile turned on all search-lights and ordered her to heave to.

The Traveler questioned the Coast Guard’s right to board a British vessel. When the Coast Guard confirmed their right, the Traveler slowed from 6 knots to 4 knots, but did not heave to. At 10:20 p.m. the Traveler reported engine trouble and that they could not stop their progress. At 10:40 p.m. they reported the engine problem solved, but a problem with a seacock had developed. She reported water in her bilge, but the pumps were working.

At 11 p.m. a Traveler crewman went forward on deck and set the jib. At the same time, white steam or smoke came from the engine exhaust. Shortly after this the boat slowed and a large number of torn pieces of paper were seen in her wake. At 11:20 the Traveler was seen to be lower in the water. The Yankton came along side to offer assistance, but it was refused. All four men were now on deck in yellow slickers, the hatch to the below deck area was closed.

The Yankton lowered a boat and at 11:37 p.m. a boarding party was on the Traveler. She was sinking rapidly and the crew was taken aboard the Yankton. Before the Coast Guardsmen could get back to her with pumps, the aft deck was awash; it was too late to board. She sank at 11:55 p.m., 5 miles south of Petit Manan Island, a boat worth nearly $2 million in 2010 U.S. dollars.

The four crewmen were charged with removing and destroying goods and merchandise on a sailing vessel by scuttling, a misdemeanor. They were tried in U.S. District court in Bangor where they were first represented by attorney Marshall Stern of Bangor, well known for representing drug cases, and later by two Boston lawyers. They were released on $1,000 bond and later convicted. The 27-year-old skipper did not show up for court, where the others were given two years in prison. The court later noted the skipper was deceased in 1983.

That would have been the end of the story for most interdiction cases where quick evasive action and good lawyers were involved, but not this one. Questions and speculation mushroomed all over the place. Why had the Coast Guard backed off, was there a fifth person on board, was someone on board well connected enough in Washington to influence the case, why was the government so determined to raise the boat, why was someone so determined not to have it raised, was the boat loaded with cash, hard drugs, counterfeiting plates, and just when had Jimmy Hoffa disappeared?

The social and political atmosphere at the time goes some way to explain the reaction of the government and the public to the sinking of the Traveler. The recreational use of drugs had sloshed out of the counterculture groove into the social mainstream by this time. Government conspiracy hangovers from the 1960s and Watergate were breeding rumors about the government’s role in the case.

Almost immediately there was a plan in place to raise the Traveler. A group, apparently people who had chartered the boat in the past, familiar with the Traveler and its original owner, had put together the money to raise the boat. The source of the money was never made clear and some wondered if government money was being brought in the back door. The operator of an engineering company in Waldoboro arranged a salvage plan.

One of the divers described the Waldoboro organizer as a novice and the plan driven by a gold rush mentality. There was pressure from the salvage company and the government to bring the boat up soon. According to divers, swarms of DEA cops were all over the diving operation. A 100-foot barge equipped with a crane had been brought out to the site. The pressure was on.

Mistakes are made on any job, but factor in bad weather, long ascents for divers, gear failures, the inherent danger of working offshore at 240 feet, cops all over the place, financial pressures, competing egos, and some sense of the working conditions for the divers, the only ones at risk, comes into focus. If all that were not enough, some of the divers interviewed for this story did not want to talk about their work on the project, two decades later, because they and their families had received telephone threats while they were on the job.

Divers were to attach a 2" wire cable to the upper mast shroud, below the cross trees and haul the boat up with the barge crane. The Traveler was sitting on the bottom upright with one sail still raised. Divers were going to attach the cable and raise the boat off the bottom enough to haul it to shoal water in Pigeon Hill Bay off Milbridge, where it could be inspected by the DEA. The cable was mistakenly attached to the mast above the cross trees. When lifted it snapped off the upper part of the spar. The project was running out of money, it ended amid rumors of possible government funding as winter set in.

This plan gave way to another group that became the primary salvage company the following year. Hope Industries of Pennsylvania brought in a submarine tested to 300 feet, which was believed to be the right tool for the job. The company owner designed and built the subs and brought more than one version to the site.

Hope hired Harold Jacobsen to oversee the operation and run the submarine. Jacobsen had experience diving, using submersibles and making a reputation for himself in downeast Maine. He was a diver when there were not many downeast. In the 1970s he had built a submersible that he ran in shoal water (in Rhode Island). He liked to talk and some said he would try anything. It was his work with subs that brought Jacobsen and Jack Hope of Hope Industries together. Jacobsen introduced Hope to the prospect of raising the Traveler. Hope, too, would have a few sleepless nights after telephone threats regarding the project.

Jacobsen set up a base of operations at a friend’s place in Sullivan where he stayed, filled his diving tanks with heliox mixtures for deep dives, and made plans to use the two-man submersible for diving to the Traveler.

Gouldsboro fisherman Jim Guyton, while dragging, had come across the Coast Guard at the site the morning after the Traveler went down. They warned him off when he came too close. With his navigation equipment and observations he calculated their position. Hope later hired Guyton and his 35-foot fishing boat to take three divers and gear out to the site. The plan was to take the divers out every day at 5 a.m., make the hour and a half trip to the site, do the 20-minute dive, use the 15 minutes of bottom time, go through an hour and forty minutes of decompression and then go home. But again the weather, the gear, the currents, the huge costs and the danger made that ideal seem absurdly impossible. With a dive of over two hours, weather and seas could change dramatically before divers returned.

Between August and December they made 40 trips out, with a dozen more starts canceled by bad weather, but only 19 dives. The divers had to use a helium-oxygen mixture for the deep dive. Before each dive a series of tanks were strung along a down line for the decompression trip back. Every work day the Coast Guard was 60 yards off watching, waiting to be sure they would be among the first to see what was on the Traveler.

While this was at best a distraction, it was another boat that appeared as a target on Guyton’s radar everyday, out to sea and just out of view that made him uneasy. As a man who had spent his working life on the water, he described the presence of this boat as odd and somehow ominous. It was closer in low visibility and moved off when it cleared, six miles at times. The Coast Guard would have come from another direction and there was usually a Coast Guard boat already there.

On the Traveler, the divers found the companionway locked and the skylight removed. But there were bars across the opening in the deck for the skylight preventing access. They also saw that the intake water lines for the diesel engine had been cut to sink the boat.

The sub proved to be less than ideal under the circumstances. It was designed to allow the crew to manipulate tools from inside. Jacobsen, whether succumbing to the pressures on site, the fear of going down in a submersible to 240', the kind of threats the others had received, or the lure of life off site, didn’t show up regularly. Without a manager, the scene on site was chaotic in the first couple of months. After three months, Jacobsen had only made three trips to the site and Hope let him go.

The objective was to attach eight cables to the stays on the hull and lift it off the bottom with air (lift) bags. A barge was moored at the site with an air compressor. The 80' long, 5/8" cables were attached to the Traveler’s shrouds on one end and to a nylon line on the other that ran up another 40 feet. Lift bags would raise the boat off the bottom 120 feet, where divers could work on it using air. But, with divers only able to spend 15 minutes on the bottom, some descending while others ascending, with an hour and forty minutes ascending, all in an environment where working conditions change quickly, plans and outcomes could easily diverge. The powerful 5 knot currents created storm like working conditions for the divers below the surface.

The eight lines were clustered together at 120 feet. A 6-foot oblong yellow canvas and rubber air bag, like a huge couch cushion, with 5 tons of lift was to be tied to each line. A 9'x10'x4', 12-ton air bag was to provide the lift to uncluster the other bags and bring the Traveler to 120 feet. A Rhode Island diver, little known to the others on the dive boat, actively sought the job of tying the lift bags to the ropes. Guyton was suspicious of this diver’s attitude and his pushing himself into being the one to tie off the lift bags. The lift bags were filled using thousands of feet of tubing from the compressor.

When everything appeared ready the big bag was filled and began to rise. Rather than one bag per line as planned, all the bags had been attached to one or two lines. The bags lifted the Traveler two fathoms before tearing loose from the hull and shooting toward the surface, expanding as they rose. Jim Guyton heard the whoosh of air behind the bags and saw them headed for his boat. The diver decompressing 50 feet below on the down line said the terrifying sound was like a freight train roaring past him. Guyton jumped to throw the boat in gear, moving it just in time to see the bags burst through the surface 40 feet off his stern. The yellow bags shot up 50 feet above the water and exploded, the big one first and the others, three at a time. The bubble had burst for Hope, the project and the raising of the Traveler.

Harold Jacobsen didn’t give up on raising the Traveler, although it was less likely than ever at that point. Jacobsen was different things to different people. He may have gotten into something over his head, may have received phone call threats as others had, but he went to the local store at dinner time the spring after Hope had left and never came back. Just disappeared, people said. With him, talk of the Traveler began to disappear. But two years later, not far in the woods across from the place he lived, his body was found. The constable said suicide; his friends didn’t agree. His reputation as a hard-charging guy clashed with typical suicidal personality profiles.

Meanwhile, the Traveler III lives on, alive in the memories of those who were in her wake. She grips the bottom doing 5 knots in the current that has sent so many ships to their graves on the rocks at Petit Manan Island.