Captain: 'I Wasn’t Coming Home Without Him'

Anthony “Little Anthony” Sosinski woke up Wednesday morning at 6 a.m. to a panic: His fishing boat Anna Mary was 60 miles south of Montauk Point and his partner and friend since second grade John “Johnny Load” Aldridge was nowhere to be found.

The Anna Mary had set out from Montauk at 8:30 p.m. and Aldridge had taken the first watch as they steamed on autopilot toward their lobster traps.

 “I went out onto the deck and started piecing things together,” Sosinski said, “We’d started filling up these lobster tanks with water, and when I came out in the morning I found that the coolers had been moved around and that one of the handles was snapped off.”

Apparently, Sosinski said, Aldridge had been pulling on the cooler by the handle when it broke off and sent him careening off the boat's open stern. When Sosinski first called the Coast Guard, the officers asked if he’d found any sign of a suicide note, but “I knew it wasn’t nothing but an accident,” he said.

The Coast Guard put Sosinski in charge of setting up a 12-boat search flotilla 12 miles long, each a half-mile apart, sweeping up and down the coast to search for the lost seaman. Boats from Massachussets, Connecticut and Rhode Island participated in the search, and even Jimmy Buffet headed out to help.

“The Coast Guard said that they’d never seen this kind of turn out of support for one person,” Sosinski said, “The community support was amazing.” Though the search took hours, Sosinski said, “One way or the other, I wasn’t coming home without him.”

 Sosinski actually passed by Aldridge in the water at one point, but his partner couldn’t wave. Without a life jacket, Aldridge had to put together his own floatation device out of his boots, and was clinging to the makeshift contraption for dear life.

Immediately after falling overboard, Aldridge told Sosinski during a phone call from the Cape Cod hospital this morning, Aldridge swam toward a nearby lobster trap and using his pocket knife managed to cut the buoy free and wrap it around one arm. He then swam another half mile to reach another buoy for the other arm. For further buoyancy, Aldridge kept his Dunlop fishing boots wedged under each armpit.

During his 12 and a half hours of floating, Aldridge ran into a wide variety of sea life. At one point, seeing himself circled by fins, Aldridge pulled out his knife to defend himself only to determine that his companions were curious sunfish, not sharks. Though passing seagulls began to peck at Aldridge’s face, apparently the biggest worry was the small shrimp and crustaceans living in the buoys’ lines, which began to crawl up Aldridge’s arms and reportedly tried to climb into his mouth and ears.

Aldridge, who has no children, kept thinking back to his nephew— only 4 years old— and determined he would not and could not die, his captain said. His hope was also bolstered by the sight of his friends searching for him. When the Coast Guard eventually found him, 38 miles out off Cape Cod, he said he could have made it another two days. The Coast Guard praised his will to live as the cause for his survival.

Aldridge’s core temperature had fallen to 94 degrees and he was suffering from muscle deterioration from dehydration when he was rescued. “It’s nothing short of a miracle,” Sosinski said, “we couldn’t see him in the water. He was wearing a blue shirt against the blue water.”

“But the shirt was the Anna Mary shirt from the Blessing of the Fleet ceremony,” Sosinski said, “It’s enough to make you believe in the will of God.”