Moxam
Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
ONE MONTH after Hurricane Ivan's visit, two young fishermen are still missing, their boat savagely snapped from its moorings and cast onto the high seas.
Extensive searches in Jamaican waters and in the vicinity of the Caymanas and Cuba have not yielded any sighting of the missing boat.
Hursley Moxam and Rohan 'Junior' Rexburn, were aboard the Ocean Queen, an 80-ft boat, anchored off the coast of Black River during the approach of Hurricane Ivan, on September 10. Nearby, Hursley's father, Clarence 'Moses' Moxam, and two crew members were also battling to keep a second boat, Miss Rita, under control but to no avail.
After three days on the turbulent seas, Moses and his crew were sighted and lifted off the deck of the Miss Rita by a Jamaica Defence Force rescue team, off Cayman Brac. Now he worries daily about his 26-year-old son, anxious for word or even the slightest hint that he might be alive.
FAMILIAR EXPERIENCE
For Moses, this is an experience with which he and his family in Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth, are all too familiar.
On July 2, 1963, when he was only 12, Moses lost his father, Oliver Moxam, who perished along with 39 other men aboard the Snowboy.
The boat, en route from Kingston to the Pedro Cays, reportedly capsized and rapidly sank to the ocean floor, leaving many south coast families and the entire nation in mourning.
That settled it for young Moses. With his mother, Doris, left to fend for him and his 10 siblings, he decided that he had to find a way to help the family, and the only option was in the sea in the wake of his father.
"I didn't have a choice. My mother had no one to turn to and I had to help her and the other children," he reminisced.
For young fishermen life is full of hard knocks, and Moses grew up quickly. Nine years later, he was in charge of his own boat, operating from a Honduran cay, when he and a young cousin, Crosby, were caught in a hurricane.
"That morning when we woke up to go to sea there was no sight of the hurricane. The forecasters said it had moved away, so all the fishermen went out," he recalled.
Then the sky suddenly got black and they knew they were in deep trouble. Things only got worse when the boat developed engine trouble.
Having lost engine power, the two young fishermen were unable to resist the now boisterous waves and winds. Their canoe was sent crashing against the reefs and broke in two.
STILL EMOTIONAL
In desperation, Moses and Crosby did their best to secure themselves in the stern section of the boat and hope for the best. Fatigue eventually set in and they drifted off to sleep.
When Moses woke up, he was alone. Somehow, Crosby had slipped off the shattered remnant of their boat never to be seen again.
"I felt like I was going crazy when I found out that he was not there with me," Moses recalled, his voice still emotional more than 30 years later.
Later that day he spotted a "Man-O-War" bird, which gave him hope that land may not be too far off. At sundown he reached a sandbar.
From there he caught sight of coconut trees swaying in the breeze on a nearby cay. Eventually he made it across to the cay, which had been abandoned. But there was some sustenance to be found for the starving seafarer.
"I drank about 18 coconuts and sucked three bird eggs. Then I found a drum half full of water left by Jamaican fishermen who had been there previously, so I was okay for the time being," he explained.
After four days on the cay he was rescued by the crew of the Honduran boat, Miss Lisa, skippered by "Captain Rofee".
On board, he had his many wounds treated and bound up, before being transferred to another boat, The Hornet, owned by another Jamaican, Byron Hill, the man who, ironically, had owned The Snowboy, on which his father, Oliver Moxam, perished a decade earlier.
POLITICAL INSTABILITY
Fast forward to 1979, and Moses is again in trouble at sea.
By then, he had been living and fishing in Nicaragua for sometime, having met a local girl and started a family. But with the political instability caused by the bloody overthrow of President Anastasio Somoza Debayle by the advancing Sandinistas, he headed out to sea once again with his young family, the oldest of the three children being only three and a half.
His intended destination, he revealed, was a nearby island. But once again the elements intervened and his boat was cast adrift.
After battling the elements for hours as he sought to keep control of the boat, Moses fell exhausted into the bottom of the vessel. His two-year-old son, Hursley, anxious for his father, fetched a cup of water and poured it on his face, pleading, "Please Daddy, don't die!"
The family survived and eventually made it to Costa Rica where they stayed for one year before returning to Jamaica.
Today, Moses waits anxiously for word of that son, Hursley, who is facing his own battles at sea.
NOT GIVING UP
Another son, Kern, recently returned from Cuba where he carried out his own search for his brother, with assistance from Cuban fishermen.
"We went far out and visited all the Cuban Cays and did not find them," Kern told The Sunday Gleaner disconsolately.
But he is not giving up hope of finding his brother and his crewmate.
"The Cubans suggested that the currents would have taken the boat into the Gulf of Mexico, so that's where I'm heading next," he reported.
It's a hope shared by Moses.
"I know he's alive. He's a good skipper and he will be doing everything to survive," asserted the colourful seaman who, more than most, knows about surviving at sea.
