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CNN Live Today
Two Sailors Disappear from USS Nassau
Aired May 26, 2003 - 10:03 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go now to the ocean's edge in North Carolina and mysteries that linger at sea. As giddy homecomings await on the beach, heartbreak echoes from the USS Nassau. Two sailors who survived war duty have disappeared, one falling overboard, the other simply vanishing.
CNN's Frank Buckley is aboard the ship with more.
What can you tell us -- Frank?
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, we're in the very humid well deck right now, as these Marines prepare to leave and go ashore. But we can tell you that with regard to the missing sailor, the first one, Shaun Dale, a hospital corpsman aboard this ship, the USS Nassau, he is still listed as missing. And right now, they are still conducting a compartment-by-compartment search throughout the ship for this particular first class, looking to find out if he may have somehow been incapacitated on this ship or perhaps he's hiding on the ship, or for whatever reason has not been able to communicate that he is still on the ship.
Yesterday, he went missing after he did not appear for a routine morning muster at 10:00 in the morning. A search was conducted, an aerial search. The ship turned around and went back to the position that it was in, and at this point Shaun Dale is still missing.
The second sailor that we're talking about is Dwayne Williams. He went overboard and was seen going overboard on Friday, but he was not recovered and he is presumed dead.
As we were saying, the Marines are about to go ashore, and we'd like to show you where we are. This is the well deck. All of the Marines, some 1,100 Marines on this ship, are going to go ashore. They're going to carry equipment like this. This is a 155 Howitzer. All of it will be loaded onto landing craft that are right down here, like this one here. You can see the Humvees and the Marines on that one. This entire area will actually be flooded with three to four feet of water. These LCU's will actually float out into the Atlantic Ocean and then make the transit onto Onslow Beach; the Marines later to be reunited with their families at Camp Lejeune.
So, a very happy day for them, a very sad day for everyone here with regard to the two sailors who are missing -- Carol.
COSTELLO: I had a few questions about that. It's such a huge ship. It's hard for most of us to imagine that someone could simply just fall off. I know that there is netting in front of the ships. Was it there that day, the day that those sailors disappeared or the days that those sailors disappeared?
BUCKLEY: There is netting around the ship, but there is also what are bomb racks -- that is, these are areas that in the event of an emergency bombs can -- they are like chutes. He apparently -- Dwayne Williams -- fell from that area. So, that's how it happened.
COSTELLO: Frank Buckley, many thanks.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired May 26, 2003 - 10:03 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go now to the ocean's edge in North Carolina and mysteries that linger at sea. As giddy homecomings await on the beach, heartbreak echoes from the USS Nassau. Two sailors who survived war duty have disappeared, one falling overboard, the other simply vanishing.
CNN's Frank Buckley is aboard the ship with more.
What can you tell us -- Frank?
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, we're in the very humid well deck right now, as these Marines prepare to leave and go ashore. But we can tell you that with regard to the missing sailor, the first one, Shaun Dale, a hospital corpsman aboard this ship, the USS Nassau, he is still listed as missing. And right now, they are still conducting a compartment-by-compartment search throughout the ship for this particular first class, looking to find out if he may have somehow been incapacitated on this ship or perhaps he's hiding on the ship, or for whatever reason has not been able to communicate that he is still on the ship.
Yesterday, he went missing after he did not appear for a routine morning muster at 10:00 in the morning. A search was conducted, an aerial search. The ship turned around and went back to the position that it was in, and at this point Shaun Dale is still missing.
The second sailor that we're talking about is Dwayne Williams. He went overboard and was seen going overboard on Friday, but he was not recovered and he is presumed dead.
As we were saying, the Marines are about to go ashore, and we'd like to show you where we are. This is the well deck. All of the Marines, some 1,100 Marines on this ship, are going to go ashore. They're going to carry equipment like this. This is a 155 Howitzer. All of it will be loaded onto landing craft that are right down here, like this one here. You can see the Humvees and the Marines on that one. This entire area will actually be flooded with three to four feet of water. These LCU's will actually float out into the Atlantic Ocean and then make the transit onto Onslow Beach; the Marines later to be reunited with their families at Camp Lejeune.
So, a very happy day for them, a very sad day for everyone here with regard to the two sailors who are missing -- Carol.
COSTELLO: I had a few questions about that. It's such a huge ship. It's hard for most of us to imagine that someone could simply just fall off. I know that there is netting in front of the ships. Was it there that day, the day that those sailors disappeared or the days that those sailors disappeared?
BUCKLEY: There is netting around the ship, but there is also what are bomb racks -- that is, these are areas that in the event of an emergency bombs can -- they are like chutes. He apparently -- Dwayne Williams -- fell from that area. So, that's how it happened.
COSTELLO: Frank Buckley, many thanks.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
