The first survivors were pulled from New York Harbor by another boat before police arrived, but the rescue did not end the uncertainty for those who had been aboard. Some passengers had been clinging to the overturned vessel near Liberty Island, while others were still searching the dark water for two people who were missing.
The 22-foot powerboat had capsized at about 10:25 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 8, near Liberty Island, home of the Statue of Liberty, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Fourteen people were aboard. Twelve survived, while a 27-year-old woman and her 5-month-old daughter were later found in the water by police divers and taken to a Brooklyn hospital, where they were pronounced dead.
For the people who escaped, the moments that followed were defined less by the familiar skyline around them than by a sudden struggle to get out of the overturned boat and find help.
Sara Raez, who was among the passengers, told the New York Post that the group had been returning from a trip around the Statue of Liberty when the bow began going into the water.
“The water got into the boat,” Raez said. “The boat went up, and when it went down — it was, in seconds, it flipped over.”
Passengers found themselves beneath the overturned vessel, Raez said. After they escaped, some remained on top of the boat and tried to attract the attention of another vessel. Eventually, a nearby sightseeing boat came toward them.
“Then we saw another boat, and we all started screaming, ‘Help, help, help,’” Raez said, according to the Post.
The vessel that answered was Sea the City II, operated by a sightseeing company whose owner, Adam Schwartz, told The Associated Press that its captain and two crew members immediately assisted the people in the water and contacted the Coast Guard. The 12 survivors were taken aboard before authorities coordinated their transfer to shore.
The rescue was the first critical break in a rapidly unfolding emergency. The New York Police Department sent its Harbor Unit, scuba team and aviation unit to the scene. Police divers subsequently located the woman and infant, who had not been among those rescued by the nearby vessel.
The deaths brought the human cost of the accident into sharper focus. The woman was identified by relatives and news reports as Sara Sanchez, 27, of College Point, Queens, and the baby as Antonella Garcia. The baby’s father, Andres Garcia, was also aboard and survived. The couple had another child, a 6-year-old son, according to relatives cited by the New York Post.
The group had gathered for a birthday celebration before boarding the boat, according to Raez and other relatives. What was intended as a nighttime sightseeing trip ended hours later in an emergency in one of the busiest waterways in the United States.
Attention has since shifted from rescue to questions about how the boat came to be carrying so many people and whether it was legally authorized to operate as a passenger charter.
The Coast Guard said the boat may have been operating as an illegal charter and is working with the NYPD to determine whether it had the required credentials, safety equipment and inspection certificates. The agency defines an illegal charter as a passenger-for-hire operation that lacks those requirements.
The boat's operator, 46-year-old Manuel Hernandez, was arrested and charged with 13 counts of reckless endangerment, according to police and the Coast Guard. The charges are allegations, and the investigation into the cause of the capsizing remains underway.
The number of people aboard has become an important part of that investigation. Authorities and relatives have described 14 people on the 22-foot vessel, while published specifications for the boat indicate a capacity of about 10 passengers. The Coast Guard has not concluded publicly that overloading caused the capsizing.
For rescuers, the episode also illustrated how quickly help can depend on vessels already operating nearby. The first assistance came not from a police or Coast Guard boat but from another civilian vessel whose crew happened to be in the harbor.
Capt. Doreen McCarthy, commander of Coast Guard Sector New York, expressed condolences to the victims' families and credited the responding agencies and the civilian crew.
“We are extremely grateful for the heroic, swift actions of our partner agencies and Good Samaritan vessel who assisted in rescuing survivors from the water,” McCarthy said.
New York Harbor is both a working maritime corridor and a destination for recreational and sightseeing trips. The Coast Guard Sector New York is responsible for waterways extending through the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Hudson River and surrounding waters, making marine safety and emergency response a continuing part of its mission.
But on Saturday night, for those aboard the small boat, the harbor became a place where the difference between safety and catastrophe was measured in seconds.
Raez said the survivors spent the night moving between the rescue scene and the hospital, still trying to learn what had happened to Sanchez and her baby.
“We would just keep screaming, ‘Please help us find them,’” she told the Post.
The investigation will determine why the boat overturned and whether safety rules were broken. For the survivors, however, the night remains defined by the abrupt transition from a family celebration on the water to a struggle for survival beneath an overturned boat, with the Statue of Liberty nearby and rescuers searching the harbor.
