Steven Craig’s book “All Present and Accounted For” can be purchased at the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis or on Amazon.com, where the book received 4.7 out of 5 stars based upon 112 global reviews.
Author Steven Craig is pictured at the center of this photo, which he provided.
The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Jarvis is pictured in this photo provided by author Steven Craig.
Centralia resident and former Oakville and Chehalis Post Office employee Steven Craig has completed his third book — “All Present and Accounted For” — which tells the 1972 story of the U.S. Coast Guard’s cutter Jarvis that was caught at sea in a life-threatening storm and the crew’s efforts that saved the ship.
Throughout Craig’s 38 active and reserve years in the Coast Guard, he heard stories from those aboard the Jarvis about how it came dangerously close to disaster during a storm. He decided the story of the Jarvis cutter crew needed to be told.
“I interviewed 35 of the former crew members,” Craig said. “The story is nonfiction and 100% true. The names in the book are all accurate. Everything is based on the ship log entries or the crew members’ memories.”
In November of 1972, the Coast Guard cutter Jarvis hit a severe storm near Alaska and the crew was forced to anchor the ship.
Due to the rough seas caused by the storm, the anchor was dragged on the ocean floor, leaving a hole in the bottom of the ship. The crew repaired the hole as best they could and decided to try to make it back to Honolulu, but when they got out into the open ocean, 50-foot waves tore the patch off the ship and the engine room filled with about 13 feet of water.
“Of course it disabled the ship and they were floating without power. It was toward the end of November, so it was freezing temperatures — snow, sleet and freezing rain coming down,” Craig said. “And they were just bobbing around in those tremendous oceans.”
The Jarvis crew sent out an SOS while the ship was headed toward a rocky shoreline that would sink the ship. Jarvis crew members told Craig that boarding lifeboats was considered but the waves were too high and many crew members said they “would rather die on the ship than in a small boat in the ocean.”
“At 7:04 p.m., for one of the few times in Coast Guard history, a MAYDAY call for help would come from a Coast Guard vessel. This is the incredible story of the grounding and near sinking of the USCGC Jarvis and how her crew fought to save their ship — and themselves — from disaster,” states the book's description on Amazon.
Craig gathered information about the Jarvis and the near-disaster from former crew members, family members, essays and the ship logs acquired through a Federal Archives Center in California. Craig said it took about a year to write the book and often when he felt he was close to finishing he would hear from another crew member with more information.
“I wanted to get the whole story from the bridge to the engine room. A lot of the guys only had memories of what happened in their section and didn’t know what was going on with the rest of the ship,” Craig said. “After getting the whole picture, a lot of guys said they didn’t know it was that bad.”
Craig’s book “All Present and Accounted For” can be purchased at the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis or on Amazon.com, where the book received 4.7 out of 5 stars based upon 112 global reviews.
