CHARLESTON, S.C. — Two months after her husband, two young sons and nephew died at sea, Libby Cornett got a surprise visit from a U.S. Coast Guard commander who played for her a tape-recording of a three-second radio transmission.
"May . . . Mayday, U.S. Coast Guard, come in," cried a tiny, frightened voice that Cornett immediately recognized as that of her 13-year-old son, Daniel.
In the silence that followed, Libby pictured the pounding waves, the cold rain and her family clinging to a sailboat as it was being torn apart on a rocky jetty just a mile from shore.
She had always thought Daniel and the others who lost their lives aboard the sailing vessel Morning Dew that awful day in December 1997 had died beyond the reach of any help, bobbing in the cold Atlantic for hours until the dark waters finally chilled the life out of them.
But this three-second tape told her another story: that she had lost those dearest to her not because help could not come but because those responsible for saving sailors from the sea, whose entire image rests on their ability to stage daring rescues, did nothing.
"I realized at that moment that they didn't have to die," Libby would later say. "I knew they could have been saved."
That realization triggered a series of state and federal investigations, congressional hearings and a lawsuit that is expected to be decided in coming weeks. Most of all, it has posed some difficult questions about the central mission and obligations of the Coast Guard, which saves more than 5,000 lives annually. In this case, the Coast Guard not only ignored the Morning Dew's radioed plea but then tried to cover up its inaction.
To Libby, awaiting a decision from a federal judge on her case, the lesson is clear.
"Do not depend on the Coast Guard," she says. "Even if you are the most experienced sailor in the world, unexpected things will arise. And the Coast Guard will not always be there to help."
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For the Three Amigos--as their parents called Daniel, his older brother Paul, 16, and their second cousin Bobby Lee Hurd Jr., 14--a trip down the Intracoastal Waterway was to be their greatest adventure yet.
Libby's husband, Michael, a 49-year-old engineer and musician, had swapped a piece of land for the 34-foot sloop Morning Dew in November 1997 and was moving the boat from South Carolina to a berth in Jacksonville, Fla.
