Rose­marie Sant

The Trinida­di­an cap­tain of the Galleon Ad­ven­tur­er, the barge which sank in the wa­ters off Grena­da in the ear­ly hours of Thurs­day, is still miss­ing de­spite search­es by both the Grena­da and lo­cal Coast Guard of­fi­cers.

The Galleon Ad­ven­tur­er was on its way to Grena­da with a sup­ply of con­crete slabs when it ran in­to prob­lems. There were six Trinida­di­ans on board, five crew mem­bers and the cap­tain.

The first hint that the ves­sel was in dis­tress was re­ceived by the T&T Coast Guard, which is the res­cue co-or­di­nat­ing Cen­tre for the Caribbean. On re­ceipt of the dis­tress call, the TTCG im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed the Grena­da Coast Guard which then sent out a broad­cast for ves­sels in the area to as­sist.

Coast Guard of­fi­cials told the T&T Guardian that the first ves­sel to ar­rive was the Eliz­a­beth 2, whose crew mem­bers res­cued five of the six Trinida­di­ans on board the Galleon Ad­ven­tur­er. The men were tak­en to the Grena­da Coast Guard base by an­oth­er ves­sel.

How­ev­er, the cap­tain of the ves­sel went to re­trieve some doc­u­ments from the sink­ing ship and has not been seen since.

An of­fi­cial of the Grena­da Coast Guard told the T&T Guardian that the Galleon Ad­ven­tur­er, was trans­port­ing con­crete slabs to Car­ri­a­cou, but be­cause the seas were “ex­treme­ly rough, the slabs shift­ed.”

He said the Ad­ven­tur­er start­ed “tak­ing in wa­ter and the small pump was not pump­ing the wa­ter fast enough,” and the ves­sel start­ed go­ing down.

Lt Sher­ron Man­swell, of the lo­cal Coast Guard, who told the Guardian that “we did go up to Grena­da to­day to see if we could re­cov­er the ves­sel or the cap­tain, but with­out suc­cess.” The search­es, he said, are “on­go­ing.”

Man­swell said the five Trinida­di­an na­tion­als who were res­cued were in­ter­viewed by im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties in Grena­da yes­ter­day and he was await­ing word on their re­turn.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter-Is­land Trans­port Ser­vice re­port­ed on Thurs­day that the car­go ship Cabo Star had gone off route af­ter leav­ing the Port of Scar­bor­ough on way to Port-of-Spain when it re­ceived the dis­tress call and veered off course to Grena­da to as­sist in the search and res­cue mis­sion in­volv­ing the Galleon Ad­ven­tur­er.

But a Coast Guard of­fi­cial told the T&T Guardian the Cabo Star did not as­sist in the search and res­cue.

The Cabo Star, with about 100 pas­sen­gers, even­tu­al­ly docked in Port-of-Spain just af­ter 3 pm on Thurs­day and made a re­turn trip to To­ba­go on Thurs­day night and sailed again on yes­ter­day.