LEAHY FIREFIGHTING EFFORTS RELATING TO A FORMER USN MSO.......

A Fire in June 1976 on the "Aquasition" an Ex MSO that was overhauled/renovated by Fairfield Geophysical and retrofitted as a seismic research vessel and named "Aquasition".
I am trying to gather some information on and identify a particular MSO that was decommissioned and sold to a buyer in California on or about 1973/74. It was retrofitted as a seismic research vessel and named "Aquasition". The company (Fairfield/Aquatronics) that
operated the vessel was based in Houston, but the vessel was overhauled in Long Beach. I worked two summers aboard that vessel
offshore California and Gulf of Alaska. In the month of June, 1976, she suffered a catastrophic fire while underway 30 or so miles off the coast of San Diego. Both the Coast Guard and the US Navy responded to our maydays with two cutters, helicopters, and the guided missile cruiser, USS Leahy, who happened to be in the vicinity. The 22 crew members of the Aquasition were rescued by Navy lifeboats (some of us being plucked out of the water). Fire personnel aboard the Leahy unsuccessfully fought the fire for some 9 hours, eventually resorting to setting charges and scuttling her.

After going through the list of MSO's on the web, I've narrowed the list of possibilities (according to disposal dates) to either the Conflict - 426, the Endurance - 435, the Guide - 447, or the Loyalty - 457.

In 1975, while a geophysics student at Texas A&M, I got a summer job for Fairfield Geophysical (later to become Aquatronics Geophysical) based in Houston, Texas. I was sent to Long Beach early June and first saw the boat at that time. I remember specifically being told she was a Korean war vintage minesweeper, 170 or so ft. long, wooden hull, and was wrapped internally with de-gaussing cables. She was undergoing the final touches of her overhaul/renovation. I was put to work scraping and painting and installing wood paneling in the captains's quarters. Most of the serious work had been completed by then. I don't know if any major hull, engine, prop work had been done, but I do seem to recall that the overhaul had taken several months. The outfitting Fairfield had done to get her ready for geophysical work involved several large winches on the fantail for towing seismic cable arrays, and other equipment, and installing a computer room midship with all the data recorders and processors. I seem to recall the total cost of the project being around $4 million. I don't think Fairfield owned her outright but was partnered (or in some lease agreement) with the original owner of the boat (the name Rick comes to mind, and I think he was from Long Beach). There was a lot of excitement about using the minesweepers for geophysical work, due to the wooden hull. I think we were the first to use an MSO for this type of work, and the whole industry was watching us carefully to see the results.
Fairfield specialized in doing shallow water geophysical surveys, primarily engineering studies for pipeline, and offshore platform
placement. We ran high-resolution seismic, magnetometers (hence the bonus of having a wooden boat), gravitometers, side-scan sonar,
and occasionally underwater video. Some of our clients back then were Texaco, Arco, Chevron, etc.
About mid-June, we received our first job in the Gulf of Alaska. Normally we ran a total crew of about 25. Ten or so actual contracted boat crew, and the remainder being Fairfield employees. I was a junior seismic observer, and so spent a lot of time watching flashing lights and data coming off the recorders. We also spent a lot of time fixing the cable arrays. Sharks for some reason found the cables pretty tasty or were just curious. The trip from Long Beach to Alaska was scheduled to take 8 to 10 days, so all of the Fairfield crew, except me, was sent home (and would later fly back to Alaska). Not being one to miss out on an adventure, I volunteered to stay on with the boat crew and help pilot her to the Gulf. The Captain saw something in me as he made me second mate and gave me the two 4 to 8 watches at the wheel. Not bad for a 19 year old who had never been out to sea before. Our destination was Yakutat, a small fishing village on the coast, about halfway between Juneau and Anchorage. Some of my most vivid memories of that boat was how she behaved in big seas. With her hull shape and shallow draft she would really roll, and then going straight through big swells, the boat would ride up a crest and then slam down into the trough with such a force that it would shake your teeth loose. Or at least levitate you out of the bunk if you happened to be sleeping in the bow quarters.
I rejoined the crew the following summer in late May ('76). I don't know what the boat had been doing in the 9 months that had passed, but I presume it had stayed offshore CA as there were a number of offshore lease sales for oil exploration going on. We spent a few weeks doing some work around the Channel Islands, and then around the third week of June, we came into San Diego to provision. I don't remember the exact date, but we docked on a Friday, spent the better part of Saturday in the bars, and then early Sunday morning left port to return to a new job. A replacement water heater had been installed in the engine room over the weekend, and would prove to be the cause of the fire. We had been underway for 3 or 4 hours and most of the company crew were sleeping late (or sleeping off the late-night partying), when I awoke to the smell of smoke. I first thought the cook had burned breakfast when various alarms started going off and the call went out for everyone to get up on deck. No one had time to retrieve anything as smoke began to fill below decks. The fire had started in the engine room and was probably associated with the water heater. It very quickly spread to the bilges as we had had a diesel spill just a few days before. All of the company crew were herded up on the bow while the boat crew did their best to fight the fire. There were 22 of us on board. It soon become obvious that the situation was out of control and a mayday was sent out. About that time an Irish freighter was passing by and offered assistance. The seas were a bit rough, 10-12 foot swells, and the freighter crew fumbled around for 30 minutes or so trying to deploy their lifeboats. About that time, we noticed a dot on the horizon that rapidly grew from a dot to a large ship. It was the USS Leahy, a guided missile cruiser, that had been out in the shipping lanes and had heard our distress call. They went to flank speed and were at our side within 45 minutes. Before we knew who they were, however, the freighter had given up and pulled away, and we were trying to make the decision as to whether we should get in our own lifeboats. The fire was completely out of control by then and smoke was billowing out of every scupper and every hatch. The Leahy crew got us all off safely using their own lifeboats about the time that the Coast Guard showed up with two cutters and two helicopters. Then the fire fighting started in earnest. What ensued was somewhat of a comedy of errors, as the fire fighting techniques of the two groups (Navy and CG) were not necessarily compatible. The Navy was blanketing the decks with foam (I remember it was pink in color) while the CG copters dropped a powder of some sort from the air, while the cutters simply hosed the whole mess off the decks and into the sea with their water cannons. The Coast Guard eventually retired from the scene and left the job to the Leahy crew. They actually put quite a number of men on board and below decks to fight the fire and eventually used the entire complement of foam they had on board. After 8 or so hours of getting nowhere, they cast her off and we watched as it drifted a half mile or so away when an explosion scuttled her and down she went. I surmised they set charges to sink her and get her out of harm's way. The Navy personnel were wonderful. They fed us, gave us clothes to wear (some of us only got away with a pair of boxers), and took
us back to San Diego. Of course all the local media were there with TV crews, etc. We made the headlines of the San Diego paper and I believe the LA Times. My parents first heard of the event on the NBC nightly news. My parents have saved those papers, so I could get the exact dates from those (I believe it was the 17th of June, give or take a week).
The loss of the Aquasition was financial disaster for the company, as it was the beginning of the end. Within six months of that loss, the
company had a boat in the Red Sea that was shot at by the Israelis after it was mistaken for an Egyptian spy boat. Then they lost a boat in Nicaragua to a capsizing (3 crew drowned).

Blake Weissling
May, 2002

Ref: http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Bunker/2170/msocasualties.html

Submitted by: Tony LaTourette