Chief Mate Bob Cusick kept himself alive by singing. Drifting in the frigid Atlantic thirty miles off the Virginia coast, watching his shipmates die of hypothermia around him, Cusick repeated the words of Stan Rogers's folk song "The Mary Ellen Carter" -- a ballad about a loyal crew refusing to let their ship stay sunk. "Rise again, rise again," the chorus goes. Cusick sang it over and over for ninety minutes in the pounding winter swell, fighting the cold that had already claimed thirty-one of the thirty-four men aboard the SS Marine Electric. The ship's sinking on February 12, 1983, was not the worst maritime disaster in American history. But the investigation that followed would become one of the most consequential, forcing reforms that reshaped how the Coast Guard inspects aging vessels, equips crews for survival, and rescues sailors from the sea.
The Marine Electric was born as a World War II tanker. Built by the Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Company of Chester, Pennsylvania, she was laid down on January 10, 1944, as a Type T2-SE-A1 tanker -- hull number 437, U.S. Maritime Commission contract No. 1770. She was launched in May, delivered the same month, and spent the war carrying fuel. In 1947 she was sold to Gulf Oil Corporation and renamed Gulfmills. In 1961, Marine Transport Lines purchased her and renamed her Marine Electric, then sent the ship to Germany where the Bremer Vulkan yard in Bremen built a new midsection for bulk cargo transport. The midsection was towed to Bethlehem Steel's yard in East Boston and grafted onto the original hull, extending the ship's length to 605 feet. By 1983, the Marine Electric was thirty-nine years old. Her hull showed corrosion and structural damage. Chief Mate Cusick had noted gaping holes in the deck plating and hatch covers at multiple points. No effort had been made by Marine Transport Lines to fix them.
On February 10, 1983, the Marine Electric put to sea from Norfolk, Virginia, bound for Somerset, Massachusetts, carrying 24,800 tons of granulated coal. A fierce winter storm was building -- one that would set records. The ship neared the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay at about two in the morning, battling 25-foot waves and winds gusting far beyond safe limits. Then came an interruption: the Coast Guard contacted the Marine Electric and asked her to turn back and assist a fishing vessel, the Theodora, which was taking on water. The Theodora eventually recovered and headed west toward Virginia. The Marine Electric reversed course and resumed her northward run. In the early morning hours of February 12, crew members noticed the bow riding low in the water. The damaged hatch covers had let the storm pour seawater into the cargo hold, and 24,800 tons of coal was pulling the ship under. Multiple mayday calls went out beginning at 2:51 a.m. The Coast Guard dispatched USCGC Point Highland. Shortly after, the Marine Electric capsized and sank in 130 feet of water.
Marine Transport Lines tried to explain away the sinking. Company representatives theorized that the ship had run aground while maneuvering to help the Theodora, fatally holing the hull. The Coast Guard investigation, led by Captain Dominic Calicchio, demolished that theory. Independent examinations of the wreck confirmed what Cusick had testified: the Marine Electric had left port in an unseaworthy condition. The hatch covers, meant to seal the cargo hold against the sea, were riddled with holes. Deck plating was corroded through. The ship had been inspected and certified as seaworthy -- a failure of the inspection system itself. The investigation exposed a pattern in which aging vessels were repeatedly passed by inspectors despite obvious deterioration. The findings triggered an overhaul of Coast Guard inspection standards for older commercial vessels, establishing stricter criteria for hull integrity and cargo hold integrity that remain in force today.
The reforms that followed the Marine Electric disaster reshaped American maritime safety. The Coast Guard mandated survival suits for all winter North Atlantic runs -- the kind of equipment that might have saved the thirty-one men who died of hypothermia in the water that night. Congress pushed the Coast Guard to establish a formal rescue swimmer program, training enlisted personnel to jump from helicopters into open ocean to retrieve survivors. The Aviation Survival Technician rating, as rescue swimmers are officially designated, became one of the most elite and demanding specialties in the Coast Guard. Every rescue swimmer who has pulled a sailor from the sea since then traces the origin of their program back to the waters where the Marine Electric went down. As for Cusick, he survived and wrote to Stan Rogers about how the song had kept him alive. Rogers invited Cusick to one of his last concerts and announced from the stage that he would write a new song about the sinking of the Marine Electric when he returned to Canada. He never got the chance. Rogers was killed aboard Air Canada Flight 797 in June 1983, leaving the song unwritten. The Marine Electric lies in 130 feet of water about thirty miles off the Virginia coast, a corroded monument to the cost of neglect -- and to the reforms its loss demanded.
The SS Marine Electric sank at approximately 37.882°N, 74.776°W, about 30 nautical miles east of the Virginia coast in 130 feet of water. The wreck site lies in open Atlantic waters east of the Delmarva Peninsula. There are no surface markers visible from the air, but the approximate position is east of Chincoteague Island and the Virginia barrier island chain. The mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, where the ship battled the storm before turning north, is visible to the southwest. Nearest airports: Accomack County Airport (KMFV) approximately 30 nm west, and Wallops Flight Facility (KWAL) about 25 nm west-northwest. The area can experience rough weather, particularly in winter -- the same conditions that doomed the ship.