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| Scott Moorman |
The tale of the last voyage of the "Sarah Jo" is a short, simple one, but at the same time it is one of the strangest sea mysteries I know.
On February 11, 1979, 27-year-old Scott Moorman, a native Californian who had moved to Maui, set out on the 17-foot Boston Whaler for a day-long fishing trip. He was accompanied by four friends--Ralph Malaiakini, Pat Woessner, Benny Kalama, and Peter Hanchett. The weather was good when they set out, but two hours later, the sky darkened, gale-force winds blew in, and the sea became dangerously turbulent. And the "Sarah Jo" vanished.
The Coast Guard spent nearly a week searching the area for the boat. Friends and family of the missing men continued the hunt for another month. Not one trace of the boat or her passengers could be found.
It seemed to be the end of the story.
Fast-forward nearly a decade, to September 9, 1988. A Marine biologist named John Naughton Jr. was researching green turtles on the Marshall Islands, about 2,300 miles southwest from where Moorman and his friends disappeared. On a bleak, uninhabited atoll called Taongi, Naughton found something very unexpected: the battered remains of the "Sarah Jo." By an amazing coincidence, Naughton, a member of the National Marine Fisheries Service, had helped in the original search for the boat. Nearby was a pile of stones topped by a crude driftwood cross and a human jawbone. Under the stones was more of the skeleton. Dental records were able to identify these bones as all that was left of Scott Moorman. A search of the atoll found no further clues.
There was no way of knowing when Moorman was buried in this shallow grave, but Naughton and his crew believed it was a relatively recent burial. Also, a government survey of the atoll done six years earlier would surely have found the boat and the grave. The boat--and Moorman--must have arrived on the atoll sometime after 1982. Where were they before that time?
Adding to the eeriness of the scene was something found buried with Moorman: a stack of unbound, partially burned blank papers 3" by 3" and about 3/4" thick. Between each of the papers was a small square piece of tin foil. The meaning of this strangely ritualistic touch remains uncertain.
This partial "solution" to the disappearance only raised even more puzzling questions. How did Moorman and his small motorboat manage to travel 2,300 miles? How did he die, and when? The pathologists could not say. Who buried him? What became of Moorman's four companions? As Moorman's sister said, "All this is like the Twilight Zone."
Speculate away. Your guess is as good as anyone's.
