The Gulf Majesty was an ocean-going tugboat. Towing a 750-foot barge, it was on its regular run to Puerto Rico. Hurricane Floyd was approaching, but, “not to worry,” they would avoid the storm center and they had a pretty sturdy craft.
But-Hurricane Floyd was big and strong too, as large as Florida and Georgia combined, and soon they were confronted by waves of thirty-five feet or more and winds rising from sixty knots.
The tug began to take on water, and then the engine room flooded. With their ship powerless “dead in the water”-the eight men aboard realized the ship was doomed. They cut loose the barge and notified the Coast Guard that they were abandoning ship.
Five of the men clambered onto a bright orange raft just as an even higher wave washed over the deck. Snapping the lines that held the raft to the tug, the raft with the five men aboard was swept overboard. The three men left behind could only go into the water. Wearing their orange life jackets, they leaped into the water too. Fifteen minutes later they saw their ship sink.
The Coast Guard had immediately begun trying to contact any rescue vessel that might be within reach, but all were fleeing the oncoming storm. At last they contacted the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy—140 miles away.
The captain of the Kennedy and the admiral commander of the group decided to turn the huge carrier back into the hurricane and search for the men. Two Seahawk helicopters went up into the storm. The helicopters fought the wind for an hour, following the radio beacon one of the men from the lost ship had clutched before leaping into the waves. At last the helicopter crews saw, not the big raft with eight men aboard, but “three orange dots” in the water.
“Like rag dolls in a washing machine,” the men were being tossed and tumbled in the waves. Still they clutched the emergency locator beacon-their only hope of rescue-and a broken broom stick to keep themselves together. They had been four hours beaten about by the tumultuous waves.
Staring at those waves, fighting the wind, the leader of the rescue mission shook his head. He had told his men, “Swimmers in the water only as a last resort-and only if you are comfortable with it!”
But there was no other option. The exhausted men struggling in the waves had to be lifted by a stronger power. And Petty Officer Shad Hernandez responded to their plight. He jumped into the dark waters at great risk to himself. “When I first went in, I didn’t know how big the waves were!” he said but he managed to swim to the men and attach rescue straps to two of the men. Then he rode up with the third.
A fearful experience-great danger for all involved, both seamen and flyers. It faintly echoes the whole human race, adrift and lost in a turbulent world, and the One who came from above to save and rescue-“to seek and to save.” The flyers were safe on the enormous aircraft carrier, far from the center of the hurricane-but they came back through the storm to where the exhausted men were, and then they had to go into the raging waves themselves to lift them to safety.
There was no possibility the men could reach up to the hovering helicopter, even as we can build no ladder to heaven! Only the Lord Jesus Christ could make the way, and at great cost to Himself. He had to go all the way into the cold, dark waters of death and He did it for as many as would accept His way of life and peace.
“He sent from above, He took me; He drew me out of many waters” (2 Sam. 22:1717He sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of many waters; (2 Samuel 22:17)). That was our side, and we can understand the despair of the men in the water and the almost unbelieving joy and relief when they were lifted to the deck of the John F. Kennedy, but who can ever, ever know what our salvation cost the Lord Jesus?
But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters crossed,
Nor how dark was the night the Lord passed through.
Like the men from the tugboat, we have nothing to offer but our grateful thanks and praise, but what does He ask of us? Only that we believe and receive!