CUTTER WHITE ALDER

By Vinny Del Giudice

On Dec. 7, 1968, a Taiwanese freighter sliced into Coast Guard buoy tender White Alder on a mile-wide section of the Mississippi River near White Castle, Louisiana, killing 17 of 20 Coast Guardsmen aboard. 

White Alder, part of the Coast Guard's "Black Hull" fleet of workhorse tenders, barges and tugs, was proceeding down-bound after retrieving buoys. Freighter Helena was upbound and under pilot. The 133-foot cutter sank in about a minute and was swallowed by the Mississippi's muddy bottom. There it remains.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable cause of the wreck was the White Adler's "abrupt change of course across the bow of the Helena for unknown reasons." Neither vessel sounded a danger signal, the board said.

At the scene of the disaster, Sheriff Bo Williams of Iberville Parish said survivors were clinging to a buoy and picked up by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers boat, the Associated Press reported. "They were freezing," Williams said, with temperatures in the low 40s and a sharp wind.

For hours, a Coast Guard helicopter hovered about 10 feet over the river surface, its searchlight trained on the muddy water, AP said.

"Divers recovered the bodies of three of the dead but river sediment buried the cutter so quickly that continued recovery and salvage operations proved impractical," according to the website of the U.S. Coast Guard Enlisted Memorial.

White Alder's designation was WLM/WAGL-541. It was a built as a Navy lighter, according to Wikipedia, with the Coast Guard acquiring a total of eight in 1947 and 1948. The hull design incorporated a shallow draft. Each was named with the prefix “White” for a plant, shrub or tree. An alder is a type of birch tree.