Memorial honors Ship's doomed Crew

Reprinted from The New Orleans Times-Picayune

Thursday January 23, 2003

By Paul Purpura
Staff writer

When Coast Guard Group New Orleans moved to Bucktown last year, it was only a matter of time before its memorial to 17 members who died aboard the buoy tender White Alder followed.

The memorial is a reminder "of the trust that has been placed in us by the Coast Guard, as well as the mothers and fathers who have sent their sons and daughters to us from all across the country," said Rear Adm. Roy Casto, commander of the 8th Coast Guard District, at a ceremony rededicating the memorial on the 34th anniversary of the fatal collision.

On Dec. 7, 1968, the 133-foot White Alder collided with a 455-foot freighter about 20 miles downriver from Baton Rouge. All but three crew members died.

Among those at the rededication was Lenny Kopowski of Kenner, whose father, Bruce Kopowski, then 22 and a firefighter aboard the White Alder, survived.

"I was floored by the effort, thoughtfulness and just the sense of tradition of the entire Coast Guard district displayed in the rededication," Lenny Kopowski said.

It was a clear and windy evening, and the White Alder had entered the horseshoe-shaped Bayou Goula Bend in the Mississippi River near White Castle. The boat was due back at the old Coast Guard command center on the Industrial Canal the following morning, ending a mission during which it had collected 21 low-water buoys.

White Alder Chief Warrant Officer Samuel Brown Jr., 41, and his helmsman, Seaman Roger Jacks, 20, were in the pilot house. The crew was mostly below decks, two in the engine room, others in their bunks, according to investigators. Kopowski was on the mess deck playing cards.

The Chinese freighter Helena was heading upstream toward Baton Rouge. Harold Rowbatham of Jefferson Parish had come aboard that morning as pilot. One deck below the pilot house, the ship's captain, Shih Teh-Chang, was dining in his quarters.

When Rowbatham saw the lights of the buoy tender, he blew the ship's horn and tried to rouse the White Alder by walkie-talkie. There was no reply.

At 6:29 p.m., for reasons never fully fathomed by investigators, the White Alder crossed the Helena's bow. Crew members on both vessels heard four short blasts from the White Alder's danger whistle. Seconds later, the Helena smashed into the White Alder's starboard side, pushing the smaller vessel underwater.

The lights on the White Alder went out. Bulkheads crumpled, and water began pouring in. Coasties were knocked from their bunks. A seaman apprentice was scalded by hot water as he prepared to wash dishes. Kopowski, the only one of the card players to survive, was thrown to the floor, his son said.

Along with Petty Officer 2nd Class Richard Kraus, who was in his bunk, and Seaman Apprentice Lawrence Miller, who was scalded, Kopowski swam to a river buoy that apparently had dislodged from the White Alder's deck. The three men clung to the buoy for about a half-hour before they were rescued.

Teh-Chang told investigators that he ran to the freighter's bridge following the collision and ordered the Helena, which had sustained only minor damage, to drop anchor. Rowbatham notified his office in Baton Rouge and was told to call the Coast Guard. Other vessels were on the scene soon after, seeking survivors.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators found the navigators of both vessels at fault for not doing more to avoid the collision.

The bodies of 15 Coast Guardsmen were never recovered and the White Alder remains to this day in its watery grave 75 feet below the river's surface.

Kopowski's wife, Jean, was in a hospital bed with complications in her pregnancy when she heard about the collision on television, said Lenny Kopowski, who was born two months later. It was several hours before she knew her husband was not dead.

Kopowski suffered bumps and bruises and a gash above his right eye, but the emotional scars ran deeper. He believed that he should have died that night, and that he was living on borrowed time, Lenny Kopowski said. "He lived with really, really bad nightmares," he said.

Five years after the collision, Kopowski, no longer with the Coast Guard, died when two tons of steel fell on him in a freak accident at an eastern New Orleans shipyard. It happened on Lenny Kopowski's fifth birthday.

"There was something special about this historic mission and the business of keeping commerce moving through our ports," said Rear Adm. Casto, who as a Coast Guard Academy cadet had served aboard the White Alder four months before it went down. "I was also impressed with the way White Alder's crew worked so well as a team to horse the 8-foot-by-26-foot, 12,000-pound buoys on deck, repairing them and then returning them to the water, properly 'winking and blinking,' as we say in the business.

"It was back then that I first decided I was going to work toward getting a buoy tender as my first duty station when I graduated the Academy, a goal I was fortunate to achieve a year and a half later," Casto said.

Paul Purpura can be reached at ppurpura@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3791.

1947-1968 stationed at New Orleans, LA and used for A/N.  

In mid-November 1965 she escorted raised barge carrying chlorine to a chemical plant; 4 December 1968 refloated cutter Loganberry, which had been beached on 3 December.

At approximately 1829 c.s.t. on 7 December 1968,  the down bound White Alder collided with the up bound M/V Helena, a 455-foot Taiwanese freighter in the Mississippi River at mile 195.3 above Head of Passes near White Castle, LA and sank in 75-feet of water.   Three of the crew of twenty were rescued, the other seventeen perished.  Divers recovered the bodies of three of the crewmen but river sediment buried the cutter so quickly that continued recovery and salvage operations proved impractical. The Coast Guard decided to leave the remaining 14 crewmen entombed in the sunken cutter which to this day remains buried in the bottom of the Mississippi River.

The Coast Guard dedicated a memorial to the White Alder and her crew on 7 December 1969.  The memorial is at the Coast Guard base in New Orleans, LA.

USCGC WHITE ALDER CASUALTIES:

Seaman Apprentice Walter P. Abbott, III

Electrician's Mate, second class Michael R. Agnew

Seaman Frank P. Campisano, III

Fireman Maurice Cason

Quartermaster, second class John R. Cooper, Jr.

Seaman Richard W. Duncan

Seaman Apprentice Larry V. Fregia

Seaman Apprentice Ramon J. Gutierrez

Seaman Roger R. Jacks

Seaman Steven D. Lundquist

Yeoman, second class Joseph A. R. Morin

Commissaryman, second class Charles R. Morrison

Engineman, third class Walton E. O'Quinn, Jr.

Engineman, first class John B. Rollinson

Chief Engineman [ENCP] William J. Vitt

Boatswain's Mate, third class Guy T. Wood

Chief Warrant Officer [BOSN] Samuel C. Brown, Jr.

USCGC WHITE ALDER SURVIVORS:

Fireman Bruce L. Kopowski

Boatswain's Mate, second class Richard (n) Kraus

Seaman Apprentice Lawrence E. Miller

OTHER:

Chief Boatswain's Mate [BMCP] Richard F. Batista was ashore on authorized leave at the time of the collision.

MEMORIES OF THE WHITE ALDER
Dedicated to the Buoy Tender WHITE ALDER
In loving memory of
John Boyd Rollonson and shipmates
By
Mrs. Pat W. Rollinson, Mother

Out of her dock in New Orleans
She left on her final trip
The buoy tender, White Alder
A gallant little ship
Just 133 foot of wood and steel
She did her duty brave.

Not a sailor on board had dread or fear
Of meeting a water grave
The last buoy had been retrieved
And near the Bayou Goula Light
All men were thinking of shore leave
Homeport was near in sight.

Then came the 455 Chinese freighter, Helena
Cruising around the bend.
Colliding with the little White Alder
A hurt that time will only mend.
Death was at the wheel that night
He served as pilot too.
And took the lives of 17 brave men
That formed most of her crew.

On this unusual moonlight night
To everyone's awakening.
The shocking news of this mishap
Brought tears and hearts a-quaking
Unfortunately as this story is retold
To all who read, as of this day.

The little White Alder presently rests
At the river bottom to stay
It's not for us to judge the dead
such men as those deserve a crown
For when the warning whistle blew
The men were duty bound.

With men like those the Coast Guard boasts
And as of old can sing:
"O grave; Where is thy Victory?"
"O death; Where is thy Sting?"