Body of river pilot from Maine found in Ore.

PORTLAND, Ore. – When he disappeared, Kevin Murray was performing a maneuver a fellow river pilot describes as “swinging like Tarzan” – climbing down a rope ladder on the oceangoing freighter he had guided over the Columbia River bar.

The Maine native and Maine Maritime Academy graduate was supposed to grab hold of another rope, then jump to a smaller craft below that would bring him back to shore to await another freighter that needed to be guided.

But something went wrong. Murray, 50, descended toward the waters known as the “graveyard of the Pacific” Monday night, but never made it to the deck.

His body was located late Wednesday on a beach about 60 miles north of the mouth of the Columbia, said Dave Pimentel, chief criminal deputy with the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Department. The U.S. Coast Guard in Astoria confirmed it was Murray.

The leap from big vessels to shuttle craft is the most dangerous part of the work of an elite cadre of 20 Columbia River bar pilots. They guide big ships a few miles across a shallow river bar that has claimed an estimated 2,000 vessels and 700 lives since explorers started keeping track in the early 19th century.

When traffic is busy, pilots can leap as many as six times a day.

“Ships are like bananas. They come in bunches,” said Ellwood Collamore, a bar pilot stationed in Astoria along with Murray.

“You jump off the ladder and, hopefully, you land on the boat,” said colleague Thron Riggs. “But when you make the jump, there’s no guarantee the boats won’t do something unexpected.”

The leap from one vessel to another is supposed to be the end of the job. It can be exhilarating in good weather, Collamore said, although there’s always reason for concern. “Basically, you don’t want to climb down and get pinched between the two,” he said.

The weather Monday night was bad even for the Pacific Northwest in January. Waves reached 15 feet or higher, winds were at 40 knots, and the water temperature was 47 degrees.

Bar pilots have shut down the traffic three times in recent weeks because of bad weather, Riggs said. That can happen 30 to 40 times a winter.

It’s not unusual for them to make the leap but not land, he said. The last fatality was in 1973, but three pilots have gone into the water in recent years and survived. Riggs is one of them.

He said he spent 10 to 15 minutes in the water, enough time for him to lose control of his upper body. “I would have been jelly in a few more minutes,” he said.

Deckhands scooped him up in a hydraulic bucket and dumped him on the deck.

The bar pilots wear “float coats” that Collamore said look like street clothes until they hit the water and carbon dioxide cartridges activate, supplying buoyancy. They also carry water-activated radio transmitters, with frequencies for the U.S. Coast Guard, and strobe lights, also designed to go off in water.

Murray had all the appropriate gear, said lawyer Kathleen Eymann, chairwoman of the Oregon Board of Maritime Pilots, the state licensing agency.

Collamore said reports from deckhands at the scene suggest Murray might have had the transmitter and strobe lights in a fanny pack and lost it. Investigators will try to determine why his transmitter and strobe lights didn’t work.

Murray, who has family in the Boothbay area of Maine, graduated from Maine Maritime Academy in Castine in 1977.

He skippered oil tankers up and down the East and West coasts for years before joining the bar pilots in 2004, Collamore said.

On Thursday, MMA President Leonard Tyler offered condolences from the college community to Murray’s family.

“I remember him as an outstanding young man who certainly went on to distinguish himself in the industry, rising to the rank of captain for a major shipping company before taking the prestigious job in some of the most treacherous waters in the world,” Tyler said.

Murray was one of three MMA graduates guiding ships over the Columbia River bar. Bill Worth, a 1973 graduate, and Deborah Doane Dempsey, the college’s first female graduate in 1976, both work in the region.

Bangor Daily News writer Rich Hewitt contributed to this report.