SOS strobe light leads rescuers to divers who vanished in Atlantic off North Carolina

A search that continued through the night has successfully located four divers who vanished 50 miles off North Carolina, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The divers had been “alone and adrift” 16 hours when they were spotted 46 miles southeast of the Cape Fear River, at around 12:45 a.m. Monday, Aug. 14, officials said in a news release.

An SOS-strobe light used by one of divers caught the attention of a passing Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules aircraft, officials said.

A life raft was launched from the aircraft for the divers, then the Coast Guard contacted the U.S. Navy Destroyer USS Porter, which was conducting a training exercise in the area, officials said.

“The Porter crew arrived on scene and rescued all four divers safely from the life raft,” officials said.

The four were identified as: Ben Wiggins, 64, Luke Lodge, 26, Daniel Williams, 46, and his son, Evan Williams, 15. Coast Guard officials did not report the divers suffered injuries.

Daniel Williams, who lives in Moore County, says the group “got caught in the current” and it pushed them farther and farther away from the boat, according to The Pilot. Wiggins and Lodge had begun to show symptoms of hypothermia when a passing aircraft saw his SOS strobe light in the dark, Williams said.

“I dozed off, and I got hit by a wave hard and something told me, and I really felt like it was the hand of God telling me, I had to look way over to my left,” he told The Pilot. “And I see a tail light blinking on a plane.”

The four had been unaccounted for since noon Sunday, whey they failed to return after “diving from the pleasure craft Big Bill’s, approximately 63 miles east of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,” officials said.

Searchers focused on an area 50 miles south of Cape Fear, near the state line between North and South Carolina. Coast Guard boats and aircraft searched through the night, officials said.

Investigators did not report a home port for Big Bill’s and did not say what site the group was diving on that morning.

Shipwrecks are a popular destination for divers off the Carolinas. The region is known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” due to the hundreds of wrecks off the coast.

This story was originally published August 14, 2023 at 5:38 AM with the headline "SOS strobe light leads rescuers to divers who vanished in Atlantic off North Carolina."