New Jersey Scuba Diving

Air‐Sea Hunt Is Pressed for Tugboat and Crew of 4

by Joseph B. Treaster
New York Times
Jan. 7, 1979

Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force rescue units yesterday searched the chill seas off Atlantic City for a 70‐foot tugboat and its crew of four who were last heard from five days ago. Lieut. Steve Harvey of the Coast Guard Rescue Center in New York Harbor said the tug, the King Cobra, was believed to have been carrying a life raft, wet suits and a week's supply of food. He said he thought the survival chances of those aboard were good.

Skimming beneath a thick cloud cover - sometimes as close as 500 feet above the white caps - five long‐range search planes and a helicopter were working their way methodically across a 12,000-square‐mile grid south of Atlantic City where a computer, calculating winds and currents, has indicated that the craft or, perhaps, a life raft - might be drifting. The aircraft were being assisted by the 95‐foot cutter Cape Starr.

By midafternoon yesterday, not a trace of the tug or its crew had been seen. “We're looking for a raft or debris or anything, really - anything that could give us a clue,” Lieutenant Harvey said. Those aboard the tug were identified as Michael Cowan, the 29-year-old captain, from New Rochelle, N.Y.; his brother, Pat, 27, of Mamaroneck, L.L; Arthur Smith, 37, and his son, Arthur H. Smith, 19, both of Warwick, R.I.

Late Tuesday night, Lieutenant Harvey said, Captain Cowan telephoned via the marine operator to an official of the Harbor Marine Salvage Company in Gil1 ford, Conn., the owners of the tug, to report that he was “encountering sloppy I weather off Atlantic City,” but that he expected to arrive in Camden, N.J., by noon Wednesday. Nothing more has been heard from the vessel.

At the time of the last contact, the Coast Guard said, near gale‐force winds, with gusts up to 90 miles an hour, were sweeping the area.