History and mysteries · Point Pleasant, Cape May and offshore waters
Viking II: rescued crew, unidentified leak (2012)
Documented history · Source reviewed
Several rescue attempts could not save the vessel, and the final report left the source of its flooding unresolved.
Pumps in the darkness
Viking II left Point Pleasant on October 6, 2012 to assist a cable-laying project. That night a bilge alarm woke its captain and his two sons. Water was entering the engine room faster than the onboard pumps could remove it.
An Atlantic City Coast Guard helicopter delivered another pump. A second pump dropped by aircraft could not be recovered from the sea. The crew ultimately transferred to the nearby fishing vessel Miss Suzanne; all three survived without injury.
The limit of the reconstruction
The boat sank the next morning about 75 nautical miles southeast of Cape May. The NTSB’s final brief attributed the loss to uncontrolled engine-room flooding from an undetermined source. It did not identify a particular failed fitting or hull defect.
The rescue chronology is therefore better established than the initiating failure. A detailed account of pumping, communications and assistance does not by itself solve the question of where the water entered.
Sources and research limits
NTSB MAB-13/11, Sinking of Fishing Vessel Viking II, four-page final brief. No separate wreck examination was obtained.