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The Fantome Sinking was Romantic, another Shuttle Loss is everything but Sentimental


Romanticism and Conservatism are one and the same. It was Byron, Coleridge, Scott and the other Romantics who gave support to Burke’s new Conservative philosophy and his preservation of the English monarchy. Their main view was progress is important, but for a society to exist, traditions must remain.

32 year old Guyan March was not only the youngest Captain in Windjammer’s Barefoot Cruises, he was in command of their flagship, the 282’ Fantome. It was Sunday morning, October 25, 1998 and raining hard. With the Fantome docked at Omoa, Honduras, a jet was sent from Miami to pick up passengers, even though all computer models predicted Hurricane Mitch to move north into the Gulf of Mexico. March then began his move to save ship with only volunteer crew. His first instinct was to move north along the Yucatan peninsula towards the storm, yet after discussions with Windjammer HQ in Miami, the decision was made to trust the computer models and head south east towards the island of Roatan. With the computer models still showing the storm turning north, Guyan could harbor in Roatan, or at worst case, use it as a lie-to buffering the huge waves.

By early morning Tuesday, the Fantome was outside Roatan with seas too strong to make harbor. With horizontal rain making visibility less than ideal and no charts or GPS, March was forced to tack east and west under bare pole (all the sails were torn). At this point two caterpillar diesel engines and engineer Rhon Austin were the only things keeping the Fantome on course. At 1pm, a sailor’s worst nightmare became reality for Guyan March; Hurricane Mitch was at the same longitude and began heading south towards the Fantome. It was now impossible to bring the bow around and tack west and the winds were too intense to rope a dinghy overboard to act as a sea anchor, so March made the decision to go eastwards, into the dangerous semi-circle. At 3:30pm March reported breakers of 50 feet and gusts of 180mph. He also reported the upper wheelhouse breaking apart, so he was going below to navigate. By 4:30 pm Hurricane Mitch was on top of the Fantome and Captain March gave his last transmission, “I’m on a 40-degree heel.” This was the last anyone heard from the Fantome.

US Navy Commander, Scott J. Kelly, has no choice but to do as NASA says and land the shuttle without repair or removal of passengers. He might officially be commander, but the days of a captain of the vessel making decisions are gone with the new age bureaucratic world of governmental space flight. It would be laughable if not so tragic. At least the flight crew is diversified.

On board we have three white males, a black man, two women and a Canadian. No need to know sex or race when Canadian is more than adequate for diversity. Of particular note is teacher Barbara Morgan, the appointment of which has never made sense. Why are we sending teachers into space as some kind of symbolic gesture when we are not teaching kids how to read and write in the public school system here on Earth? NASA gave her the title of Mission Specialist, which five of the seven on board are titled. Guess this is the name given to people who have no business being up in space, but won the government’s political appointee lottery. Some lottery, they must be thinking right now as they contemplate their re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere with a big hole in their ship’s underbelly.

No matter, NASA is sending them home in the beat up space craft, to do otherwise would be an admission of their failed space transport system. There is too much money going through too many political beings’ fingers to let this gravy train of a space industry called Space Transport Shuttle end anytime soon. Two shuttle losses showing a 1/50 catastrophic failure rate when the original estimate was 1/10,000 should have been enough to ground the program, yet NASA operates in a world of free money, lowered expectations and absent leadership. This is typical of any government agency, given enough time.

When the Fantome sank many accused Windjammer Barefoot Cruises of trying to save the boat and thus responsible for the lives lost. It was also said March was too young to have made the decisions he made, yet March was steeped in sailing history, was considered by peers to be one of the top sailor’s in the world and knew all too well the implications of his decisions. He made some bad decisions, yet it was not about saving the boat. March spent his entire career with Windjammer and by now felt an obligation to save the ship. It is about more than just the ship though; it is about the life given to him by the company and its people and giving back to them. It is easy for us to second guess March and his decisions now from the comfort of our desk and chair, yet how noble and courageous an act. This nobility, courage and strength of character should always be remembered.

The shuttle has yet to land and given the opportunity to make decisions, what would Commander Kelly do? Abandon ship? Possibly remove all the passengers and fly the shuttle home. Maybe leave the teacher on the space station. We will never know because NASA makes these decisions and the space agency has a horrible record of decision making with the STS program. A 1/50 failure rate, given initial estimates of 1/10,000 is not a good batting average. In the case of the Fantome, it was not about the ship being saved, yet with the Shuttle Endeavor it is about the ship being saved. Captain March was steeped in tradition with his decisions, while NASA without its concern for tradition shows loss of sentimentality and lack of humanity.
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"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy