The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 9

A10 The Vancouver Sun, Saturday, Feb. 28. 1987 WEEKEND SPECIAL SCOTIA CAPE Continued from one John Shipbuilding and Drydock Co. Ltd. In New Brunswick for Superior Seafoods of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

Her huge Caterpillar turbo-charged diesel engine could drive the 34.4-metre vessel at 11 knots. The 181-tonne, steel-bulled vessel could carry an additional 170 tonnes offish. It was an amount she was to reach on many occasions. The four ships Scotia Cape, Scotia Bay, Scotia Point and Scotia Port were built to withstand the harsh North Atlantic. "We're dealing with a fresh-fisb market," explained B.C.

Packers' Gregory. "Quite often we would have the load sold even before she came into dock. So, it was important to know what she carried and what species." The Cape made neither call date, and by Feb. 6 the first small warning bells were ringing in the company executives' heads. Calls were made to other fishing companies and questions were asked about the last time anyone spoke to the vessel.

hrT8 nriV 4Sr3- The Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria was first notified by B.C. Packers at 4:12 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 6 that they couldn't raise Scotia Cape by radio. The coast guard also tried, unsuccessfully, and at 5:31 p.m.

the same day It issued a general marine broadcast asking for assistance. By noon Saturday, Feb. 7 the first military aircraft at CFB Comox began a search. A Labrador helicopter from 442 Squadron began searching the shoreline up the west coast of Vancouver Island. B.C.

PACKERS THE SCOTIA CAPE: ship and crew were called the Hlghllners, the best of the best "There was no weather in the world that could stop her," recalled Doug March, 30-year veteran West Coast trawlerman and managing-director of the Deep Sea Trawlers Association. "She was tough, and she was capable. And she was crewed by some of the best on the West Coast." The success of the boat was due in large part to the men who skippered her. Foote was recognized as one of the pioneers who scouted out and developed new grounds. "He had an incredible knack for finding fish," said long-time friend Jim Trimm.

"He always seemed to know where they were." Life on the boat wasn't all work. The Cape was equipped with videos and radios, and fresh-water showers were available. They even had their own 'newspaper', a collection of clippings and writings assembled by Lois Abbott, the engineer's wife. The paper was always in demand, and the crew would spend hours of quiet time poring over the articles and photos. "They used to get so mad if I missed an issue," she said.

"I would clip all the things that seemed important to them, paste them onto yellow sheets, and bind them together." Abbott's last issue, a 16-page paper, never made it aboard on the last trip. 4- -y- DECK WORK: Cape's nets bulge 1 L-' ii I a til hey mm. AGN MARK, a Dane who moved to Canada in the 1950s, was ready to quit the sea. He had owned nine boats over the years, from the six-metre troller Lone Rock to the Scotia Cape, and had carved out a reputation as one of the most astute, careful trawl-ermen on the coast. But over the last four years, Mark, 47, reduced his fishing to only three months of the year, and was spending more time with his family on his 175-hectare farm at Topley, near Smithers.

"He was planning on quitting and going back to the farm," said his wife, Mona Mark. "He'd fished for so long, and wanted a change. It was the freedom of it all. That's why he went fishing. Nobody was bis boss.

It's like the farm. He was his own man." "Vagn was an inventor, a prospector, much like Roger Foote, who was always looking for new places," recalled Doug March of the Deep Sea Trawlers Association. "He was experienced, and a very safe man to be out with." Vagn's son, Calvin, skippers a trawler. The Marks have three daughters, Marlene, 25; Wendy, 23 snd Christy, 16. "I've been out all of three times with Vagn," said Mona.

"I found it boring. But he loved it out there. These guys were men's men. They were tough fishermen. "He was not a risk-taker," she said.

"Otherwise he wouldn't have lasted out there so long." OGER FOOTE spent more time on boats than he did on Hand. He was a fisherman who would scout out new grounds and wouldn't settle for second-best. "He didn't care about anything else," said long-time friend Jim Trimm. "He's responsible for many of the fishing spots on the coast because he was a natural experimenter. He wanted to go fishing and that was it." Roger Foote was 13 when he learned his trade near Lockport, N.S.

and worked the boats until he moved to Prince Rupert in 1970 at the urging of his cousin, Tom Foote. Accompanying him were his wife, Liza, and two children. Two sons were born in B.C. Liza and Roger later divorced, and Roger took custody of the four children. "He wanted to fish until we were all out of school," said Russell, 22, who lives with his brothers Clifford, 16 and Michael, 10, and sister Bonnie, 22.

"I worked the boat for three years, but I didn't enjoy the life, the isolation. But be (Roger) did. He was a workaholic, and it was what he was there to do. He loved it." TED CIMOSZKO was 19 when he deserted a Polish fishing vessel in Halifax harbor in 1973. He left behind him in Poland his mother and two brothers and a way of life he could not stand.

Given refugee status, Ted worked in East Coast restaurants until Immigration Canada offered to move him to the West Coast. He worked as a mechanic in logging camps until 1980, when he started as a deckhand on the trawler Zeal. "Ted is a real success story," said sister-in-law Dale Cimoszko. wot "When he came here he had nothing, and he started from the ground up." Ted's younger brother, Jurek, was sponsored into Canada by Dale when she married him in 1981. Between the two they tried to bring over the third brother, Grzegorz and his family, but since 1982 the Polish government has refused to issue them passports.

Like many of the othr crew members, Ted Cimoszko missed his young family. Anne and Ted have two children, Tristan, 2, and Ryan, seven months. "He told me many times that he didn't like to be away for so long," recalled his wife Anne. "It has been really difficult on me. I never really liked him going out, but I couldn't force him to quit.

It was what he wanted to do." It was his experiences in Poland, and starting out new in Canada that gave Ted his strength and fortitude, said Dale Cimoszko. RUCE McDONALD and his family have been dealt cruel blows in life. Born 38 years ago near Lockport, N.S., he was the only one of three brothers who went to sea as a fisherman. He went to school with Tom Foote, Roger Foote's cousin, and learned to fish at an early age. It was while he was out with his father-in-law, Allan Poole, that he had one of his first brushes with death.

Their fishing boat caught fire, and they narrowly escaped by jumping into a lifeboat. Eleven years ago, the McDonalds decided to leave tiny Osbourne Harbour, N.S. and come to the West Coast. It was a decision that was easy to make, said Irma McDonald. Only two days after they had finished rewiring their newly-bought home, it caught fire.

They lost everything. "We came here because the fishing was good and we had nothing back there, anyway," said Irma. Bruce was soon hired as a deckhand on Scotia Bay, where he worked until it sank in 1979, and then started aboard the Scotia Cape as soon as Mark and Foote sailed it around from Nova Scotia in 1980. Irma always met the Cape when it would come into Steveston to unload. "It is what little time I have with him," she explained.

Bruce always set aside one of his two home days to spend with his five children and two grandchildren. TO 33 YEAR-OLD Roxy Stove, Steveston was only a place to unload the fish, get supplies and leave from. "She was so proud of that boat," said Jean Littwin, her mother. "I don't know what it was, but she had a facination with that boat. She loved to be up in the wheelhouse, and she'd come home and say: "Mum, you should have been out there and seen the waves coming over the For seven years, Stove was Scotia Cape cook.

When she wasn't in the galley, she was deckhand, or in the wheelhouse. Stove was five feet, two inches tall, but could handle the work. "She's very strong, very set in her ways," recalled friend Geri Lennert. "All she ever wanted to do was go fishing. And that's all she "Please, when you write this, do it in the present tense," Bruce McDonald's wife Irma pleaded in a shaky voice.

"I've not given up, and I believe he's still out there and he'll come home." Hope is something all the families cling to, believing by some miracle that the men and woman could have survived the sinking, the stormy weather and a month out in the open, undetected. Only Mona Mark's family has held a memorial service for the missing skipper, but they hope by some chance the crew will be found. Some families have launched private searches, while others have placed faith in psychics, who maintain the crew are alive and stranded on an island in the Queen Charlotte Sound. "You have to have hope," said Dale Cimoszko, Ted Cimoszko's sister-in-law. "If you can't remain positive, you have given up hope, and it is too early to give up." Late Sunday, Feb.

8, after two Buffalo fixed-wing aircraft, two Labradors and a fisheries department tracker aircraft had failed to locate the vessel, rescue officials concluded the ship must ha ve sunk, and began looking for the two, 15-man orange inflatable liferafts the Cape was said to have carried. The coast guard plotted probable drift patterns, including the use of a sea anchor to help stabilize and slow the liferafts. In 1982, four fishermen from the sunken vessel Ramsay Isle diifled in a herring skiff for 51 days before being found dead. An extensive search then for a Isferuft had not accounted for variations caused by the skiffs sea anchor. According to the Coast Guard, the Scotia Cape did not carry an emergency radio beacon, and its two liferafts weren't the type that automatically discharge when they are immersed in water.

It carried enough survival suits for every member of the crew. But the suits were known to be stored in the crew's quarters up front, and not in the wheelhouse, said Capt. Bob Morris of Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria. There were at least two life preservers on board, but they were probably clipped down, said March. "Look, anything that was loose on that ship would have come off the last trip around," he explained.

"Out there the ship takes a beating, and nothing can be left loose or it goes over on the first big wave." Over the next 13 days more tkan 360,000 square kilometres of sea and land, from Tofino on Vancouver Island to 160 kilometres north of Sitka, Alaska, and from the mainland to 555 kilometres out to sea, were searched, Morris estimated the cost of the search was well over $1 million. "I can 't remember a more extensive search," he said. Nothing, not even a life preserver, was found. "It is wrong to suggest what might or might not have happened to the Scotia Cape," said March. "We Just don't know.

What happened to the crew may always remain a mystery. "What I can tell you is that they were the best. They left nothing to chance, and they weren't fools. They had a good boat, and a perfect crew." For the wives and families of the Scotia Cape, the official search may be over, but they, like many of the crew's friends, cling to the belief that they are out there alive, somewhere, waiting to be rescued. "When Roger comes in, you have to promise me that you'll come down and talk to him," said Trimm.

"He's going to have a good laugh over this one." with red snapper "I sons. "You know, inexperience wasn't one of their faults," he said. IT WAS self-sufficiency learned as a Saskatchewan farmboy that won Ken Abbott a job on a deep-sea trawler. "He was always looking after things," recalled Jim Trimm, a 35-year trawlerman, "If anything screwed up, he was always there to fix it. And he was always around to help out." Abbott, who moved to British Columbia as a carpenter, joined the trawler fleet in 1978 after a snowstorm idled his construction job and left him out of work.

Since 1984 he was the Cape's engineer. "It is probably the only job he's ever really loved," said Abbott's wife, Lois. "He loved being out there, and he was always playing pranks on the rest of the crew." Lois recalled the time Abbott and his friends aboard the trawler Zeal took a couple of bites out of some toast destined for the skipper up in the wheelhouse. They covered their work with a fresh piece of toast, and when the unsuspecting cook took the food up, the skipper, who was in on the joke, ripped into him for eating the food on the way up. Fishing is a family affair for the Abbotts; their son Dave, 24, crewed on the Cape last year and deck-handed for others during the salmon season.

They also have a daughter, Sylvia, 25. Dave Abbott will be out on the herring fleet this year. FIVE OF missing seven crew are cook Roxy Stove (top left), co-owner Roger Foote (top right), engineer Ken Abbott (above left), Ted Cimoszko (above centre) and Bruce McDonald, with former ship's dog Blue. Dog was not on final trip. At 1:05 a.m., Jan.

28, an hour after the Scotia Cape bad cast off at B.C. Packers' plant in Steveston, Environment Canada posted a storm warning for Johnstone Strait and Queen Charlotte Strait. Storm force winds of 50 to 70 knots bad developed over the two bodies of water. By the evening of Jan. 29, storm warnings bad been posted for most other areas of the coast, including the rich fishing grounds the Cape was believed to be headed for.

"It was what we call a Rupert Special of a blow," said McNabb. "Dirty, rough weather, the kind we get in here and make stories of. In 1975 Vagn Mark, Tom Foote and Allan Marsden bought the Scotia Bay from the crown-owned Nova Scotia Fishermans Loan Board for $157,000, and two years later Foote sold his share to his cousin, Roger, and went fishing on another boat. Marsden retained his share of the Scotia Bay. "Roger loved the sea, and wanted to own his own boat.

Vagn didn't want to work all year round, and he'd been doing it for so long. He wanted to go back to the farm, so they went into partnership," recalled Mark's wife, Mona. "It was a great partnership. They worked well together." Mark and Roger Foote spent many years together on the boats, both the Cape and the Bay. The Bay capsized and sank on Sept.

6, 1979, but everyone got off safely. One man suffered a broken arm when a containerized liferaft was dropped on him. Six months later Mark, Roger Foote and B.C. Packers bought the Scotia Cape back east. B.C.

Packers retained 51 per cent of the shares. "They (Foote and Mark) were familiar with the Scotia Bay, and it fit their licence," said Tom Foote. "They ielt comfortable with the Cape." Both the Cape and the Bay had been converted to trawlers from seiners while on the East Coast. "They felt very safe in that ship (the Bay)," said Mona Mark. "If they didn't think it was safe, they'd never have bought this one.

They really liked it." On Jan. 31, the fishing boat Freeways heard a weak signal from Scotia Cape trying to raise Bull Harbour coast guard radio, rescue officials said after an exhaustive search. The radio report was unverified; remote tape recordings never picked up the Scotia Cape call. B.C. Packers and Scotia Cape had two pre-scheduled radio days.

If the ship was able to catch its limit early, it would have radioed Feb, 3 to say it was coming in. But if the fishing was only moderate, the ship would stay out, and would radio in two days before its pre-set docking day, Feb. 7. ever talked about. That darned boat." Stove told her mother and friends she was aiming to get her masters' ticket.

"She wanted to be a skipper," said Littwin. "It just was in her to do this, and I still don't know why." SCOTIA CAPE was home to Newfoundland native Al Barnes only when he wasn't aboard his 14-metre troller. In the summers he'd book off the Cape and use his own boat as he had done for 15 years. But he'd learned his trade as a trawlerman. "Al's dragged since day one for 25 years," said his wife, Jackie.

"You know, once it gets in your blood, you can't get it out, and you learn to love it." He and Jackie have two sons, aged 13 and 17, He's a really uptown guy," said March. "Al and I went through a lot together in the fisherman's strike in 1967. But I first remember him when he was on the old Gail Bernice the wooden dragger. He knew his stuff." For the last four winters, Barnes, 43, was a Cape deckhand and built a name as one of the solid, hardworking fishermen on the Coast. "He only worked the Cape in the winters," said Doug March.

"His real love was trolling. Said Richard Gregory of B.C. Packers: "Al was an above-average fisherman. He's been talking about buying a boat for one of his.