Joshua Seemu­n­gal

The bod­ies of three of the four miss­ing crew mem­bers of the St Vin­cent­ian ves­sel, MV Fair Chance, have been re­cov­ered by the Coast Guard, 16 days af­ter the ves­sel over­turned five nau­ti­cal miles in the Gulf of Paria off Monos Is­land.

How­ev­er, divers say the fourth was “un­ac­count­ed for” af­ter search­ing Mon­day.

The re­cov­ery team, in­volv­ing Coast Guard and com­mer­cial pro­fes­sion­als, man­aged to get the ves­sel afloat Sun­day morn­ing, af­ter oth­er ef­forts to re­cov­er the bod­ies failed.

The Coast Guard is­sued a state­ment last night stat­ing that car­go and oth­er de­bris had blocked the hatch­es and door­ways, de­lay­ing their at­tempts to re­cov­er the bod­ies.

The Coast Guard said a com­mer­cial sal­vage com­pa­ny was hired to as­sist with cut­ting a hole in the deck so that ac­cess could be gained.

It said the hole was cut but divers from nei­ther the Coast Guard nor the com­mer­cial com­pa­ny could force their way in through the car­go and de­bris that blocked ac­cess to the ac­com­mo­da­tion ar­eas of the ves­sel.

“Recog­nis­ing that the on­ly way to get through the block­age was to raise the Fair Chance, the sal­vage com­pa­ny be­gan at­tempts to re­float her. This was a long process that was on­ly com­plet­ed on April 17,” the state­ment said.

It added that on Mon­day, the Coast Guard, ac­com­pa­nied by mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, was able to en­ter the ves­sel to be­gin the process of clear­ing of de­bris.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Coast Guard re­cov­ered the re­mains of three per­sons in­side of Fair Chance. This leaves one per­son still un­ac­count­ed for ac­cord­ing to the sur­viv­ing crewmem­bers res­cued im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the ves­sel over­turned.”

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that the miss­ing crew­man is Dex­ter Chance.

The re­mains of the oth­ers, Owen Prescott, Er­ic Cal­liste and De­von Ce­les­tine were re­moved for foren­sic ex­am­i­na­tion last evening.

One mem­ber of the re­cov­ery team told Guardian Me­dia that the con­di­tions in­side the ves­sel were haz­ardous, de­lay­ing the re­cov­ery of the three bod­ies.

They said that the team had to use a pump to re­move wa­ter from the in­side of the ves­sel.

The pump­ing went late in­to Mon­day evening.

Ale­sha Williams, the wife of Er­ic Cal­liste, said the wives of the crew mem­bers went down to Ch­aguara­mas yes­ter­day morn­ing to see if they could see their loved one’s bod­ies but the process took many hours and they couldn’t wait.

She told Guardian Me­dia that com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the peo­ple over­see­ing the res­cue op­er­a­tion and the rel­a­tives of the four crew mem­bers was poor.

“Why is it tak­ing so long with the re­cov­ery? Oh God, the men are done de­cay­ing al­ready. We would have liked to see the body re­main good,” she com­plained.

“We have to be fish­ing for in­for­ma­tion. They are say­ing we are call­ing every minute, but how will we get the in­for­ma­tion? They are sup­posed to have some­one com­mu­ni­cat­ing with us…In­for­ma­tion isn’t com­ing clear.”

Nonethe­less, she said she was grate­ful for their ef­forts.

Ac­cord­ing to Williams, her hus­band, with whom she shared two chil­dren, was a good man who lost his life try­ing to make a bet­ter life for his fam­i­ly.

She said it’s been a strug­gle to keep afloat men­tal­ly since he died—a strug­gle made even more dif­fi­cult, she said, by the length of time it’s tak­en to re­cov­er his body.

“Fam­i­ly and friends keep call­ing, wish­ing me well. Pro­vi­sions have been made for my chil­dren, but I have headaches for days. I am not feel­ing good. I think I should prob­a­bly speak to some­one to make me feel good,” she said.

“He went on the ves­sel for bet­ter­ment and ad­vance­ment. It didn’t turn out well. That day could have been a good res­cue mis­sion, but it didn’t turn out in a time­ly man­ner…Coast Guard said they had no lights and it was murky wa­ter, which I don’t want to hear. We should have all this equip­ment.”

The MV Fair Chance left Trinidad on April 2 with sev­en peo­ple aboard des­tined for Grena­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Dur­ing its jour­ney, for rea­sons yet to be con­firmed, the ves­sel over­turned.

Two crew mem­bers, Der­ron Small and Johnel McIn­tosh, were res­cued by a pass­ing ves­sel.

On April 7, the body of a crew mem­ber was re­cov­ered by divers.

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