ROUGH NIGHT: Guard Boat Rescues A Bayman, Some say marine patrol should have done it

Charlie Niggles spent Friday night tied to a wave-battered trap in 25-knot winds, his sunken boat beneath him, off the north end of Gardiner's Island.

After five cold, exhausting hours, a Suffolk County Police helicopter finally spotted him, and at 4 a.m. a Coast Guard boat plucked the bayman from his trap. Since then, his family and fellow baymen have expressed anger and disappointment at what they say was the failure of the East Hampton Town Marine Patrol to respond.

None of the town's three patrol boats was launched after Ed Michels, senior harbormaster, was informed that a boater was overdue.

Mr. Niggles had left home to lift his pound trap, which extends from Bostwick's Point at the very north point of Gardiner's Island, late on Friday. Normally he would have waited until Saturday morning, but that was when his son, Steven, was going to graduate from East Hampton High School, an event he did not want to miss (and did not).

"He went to lift the trap at 7 p.m.," Mr. Niggles's wife, Lisa, said yesterday. "My son knew it would take him about two hours. When he didn't come home, he went down to Folkstone, where his father launches his boat. He saw the truck, but his dad was not in.

"I said, 'We'll give it till midnight.' It was blowing about 25 knots and we knew it was worse on the island."

Ms. Niggles said her husband later told her that his skiff had taken three waves over the stern. "Everything shifted, the waves lifted the top of the fish box, and with the weight of the fish" the boat sank, soaking the fisherman's cellphone and the engine battery in the process.

The bow remained above water, which is where Mr. Niggles perched, tying himself to the trap for safety.

"He's a licensed captain, a bayman, I knew something's not right," Ms. Niggles said. "He's not out with buddies drinking a six-pack."

She said her son and her father, Harold Snyder, spent most of the night at the Gann Road headquarters of the town marine patrol. "They showed the two harbormasters on duty maps of where the trap was. [The harbormasters] told them they don't go out until first light," Ms. Niggles said.

She said the officers called their superior, Mr. Michels, and were told to call the Coast Guard.

Mr. Michels said yesterday that he received the call from his office at about 1 a.m. He insisted that "the Coast Guard had the case," and that a longstanding protocol had been followed.

At about the same time, Ms. Niggles called East Hampton Town police. The police relayed the message that a boat was overdue to the Coast Guard, which happened to have a patrol boat returning from a routine boating safety patrol in Sag Harbor. By 2 a.m. the Coast Guard vessel was searching for the missing fisherman.

Joseph Billotto, an officer with the State Department of Environmental Conservation police, was on board and called for a helicopter, which the Suffolk County Police Department launched at 3:20 a.m.

"The Coast Guard called me at 3:30 and said they hadn't found him. I was frantic," Ms. Niggles said. "I talked throughout the whole night with the Coast Guard, to the Montauk station, and to the Coast Guard boat. They said they looked in the trap and didn't see him, but they must have been looking in the wrong one."

Pound traps, which are used to catch finfish, are made of netting hung from wooden stakes that extend into the water from shore like a fence.

While the Coast Guard was looking for Mr. Niggles, Donald Mackay, the captain of the boat that runs between Three Mile Harbor and Gardiner's Island for the island's owners, the Goelets, joined the search. He and members of the island's security staff trained their headlights on Mr. Niggles's trap.

According to a spokeswoman for the Goelets, this helped the helicopter locate him and radio his position to the Coast Guard vessel, which picked him up at about 4 a.m.

"His boat was pretty much sunk and caught in the fish trap. There were heavy seas and he was about 200 yards off Bostwick Point," Officer Billotto said. The fisherman was brought him to the town dock at Gann Road on Three Mile Harbor.

"He's okay, but it could have been a whole different scenario. It was not handled right. Steven and my father pointed out where the trap was. He could have been home three hours earlier, but there was nothing from out of East Hampton. Maybe Michels should have come down to coordinate," Ms. Niggles said.

Mr. Michels said the criticism leveled at him and his department was not justified. He said harbormasters did launch at night. "We respond when we have to. We have the ability. In this situation, the search was turned over to the Coast Guard because they had a boat in the area. I kicked it up to them."

The senior harbormaster said that longstanding search-and-rescue protocol dictated that, when the Coast Guard takes charge of a case, it is up to the guard to call for further help if needed.

"I trained the entire Island on this issue," he said. "Their boat was at Gardiner's Island when the call came in. I was told, 'When this boat is exhausted, we'll use [the town's] Marine One to pick up the search. Save the boat for first light," Mr. Michels said, relating his conversation with Coast Guard officials.

The senior harbormaster also questioned why the police, Coast Guard, or his office had not been contacted before 1 on Saturday morning, when Mr. Niggles was expected at 9 p.m. Friday night. He said he had not been told who was missing.

"I didn't know it was a bayman. That's important because we get five or six overdues every week," meaning recreational boaters who are more likely not to arrive on time.

"If [one] is due at 11 p.m., and he's not back at 1 a.m., I'm not sure that's a Mayday status. If I knew it was a bayman, it would be different. I didn't get that information. I did the best I could with the information I had," Mr. Michels said.

"This is a screw-up of major proportions," said Brad Loewen, speaking, he said, as the East Hampton Town Baymen's Association, not as a Democratic candidate for town board in the November election. "Ed Michels did not do his job, and by not doing his job, he imperiled the life of a fisherman. That's it in a nutshell."

"I'm very angry at that. He is the person responsible for search and rescue in this town. The boss. He should have had the boats leave the dock. Three-quarters of a million-dollars worth of search and rescue boats built for such an operation."

"I can't find fault if there isn't a happy outcome, but not to make the search is unbelievable. Thank God it was June. If it had been May, he would have been dead," Mr. Loewen said.

Ms. Niggles said that, while her husband might have made his way to shore by hand-over-handing his way along the trap's twine, "he had his rain gear on, and figured someone would be sent for him."

"He knew he was alive. It was a lot harder for us."