Saranac Laker Dan Reilly said he and his wife Aggie Pelletieri witnessed the evacuation of the Wilderness Discoverer, a 178-foot tour boat at near-capacity, from the deck of the Sapphire Princess, as their ship sent a life boat to retrieve people from the disabled, stranded and drifting boat near the Gilbert Peninsula.

There were no injuries recorded in this evacuation, but Reilly saw a National Park Service helicopter airlift one rescued passenger for a medical emergency.

The water was too deep to anchor in the bay, Reilly said. The ship had lost power so passengers couldn’t stay warm or cook, and the crew couldn’t make radio contact with the Coast Guard, he added.

“On an(y) given day communicating in Glacier Bay is difficult due to limited signal availability in the area,” Juneau, Alaska-based Coast Guard Lt. Catherine Cavender wrote in an email.

A rescuer returns to a helicopter over Glacier Bay, Alaska. (Provided photo — Dan Reilly)

She did not confirm the electrical damage to the ship, since the fire is still under investigation.

Reilly said they saw the boat sitting in the water and figured they were whale watching. As they passed by, he said the crew of UnCruise Adventures’ Wilderness Discoverer contacted Princess Cruises’ Sapphire Princess. Reilly was not sure how.

“The ship has no radio contact with Coast Guard. The Sapphire Princess communicates to the Coast Guard on behalf of the drifting ship,” Reilly wrote in an email. “They were going through our ship to communicate with the Coast Guard.”

Cavender said the Sapphire Princess was “instrumental” in connecting the crew onboard the Wilderness Discoverer with the Coast Guard to coordinate a response.

“As well as communications with the vessel’s office who helped to facilitate additional plans for the passengers who disembarked from the Wilderness Discoverer,” Cavender wrote.

The Wilderness Discoverer is approached by a U.S. Park Ranger boat. (Photo provided — Dan Reilly)

Sapphire Princess Captain Todd McBain came over the ship’s speakers and told them they were turning around to aid the stranded ship. The 952-foot cruise liner looped around Composite Island. It was a narrow passageway, Reilly said, with dirt, rocks and trees rising up on either side. But the water was deep.

He said the liner’s crew were told by the Coast Guard to stand by near the crippled ship and to not leave until they arrived.

The Sapphire Princess sent out one of its lifeboats that fit the 51 passengers and 16 crew, and carried them back to the larger ship, where they were fed and given cabins to stay in.

According to an UnCruise press release, 11 crew members remained onboard the Wilderness Discoverer to wait for the tug boat Taku Wind, to tow the vessel to Ketchikan.

“There’s a certain feeling of … what do you say? Some kind of camaraderie,” Reilly said. “There’s a certain rule of the ocean.”

He said people aboard the Sapphire Princess felt they were participating in a good thing and there was a lot of interest among people on their boat. He did say Pelletieri overheard some people grousing that they didn’t get to see the glaciers, but he said this was an exception to the majority.

Reilly recognized some of the evacuated passengers in the halls of the ship.

“There are a lot of people on the boat. But you could tell these people were the ones, because they were the only ones who had luggage,” Reilly said.

These passengers told him they had been adrift without power for around an hour-and-a-half before the Sapphire Princess arrived.

“The quick launch of our assets and the teamwork among the Sapphire Princess helped in the timeliness of this rescue,” Coast Guard Lt. Maximilian Carfagno said in a statement.

This lasted nearly all day, Reilly said, starting shortly before 7:30 a.m. and with the Sapphire Princess departing at around 3:15 p.m. after being relieved of her duties by the Coast Guard. The Sapphire Princess was continuing north, so evacuated passengers boarded another boat, the Baranof Wind, which took them south to port.

Reilly said as they were loading the Baranof Wind when a passenger had a medical emergency. He was not sure what it was. A National Park Service helicopter that had been circling the ships airlifted the patient to a hospital, which he caught on camera. Cavender said that medical evacuations are private due to HIPPA laws, but she did confirm that a passenger was airlifted.

Reilly documented what he was seeing because he’s interested in it, and took photos he plans to show to his Coast Guard buddies.

“It’s the sort of thing that interests me … people working together to do a rescue,” Reilly said.

As he stood on the top deck, taking notes and photos, Reilly said it dawned on him — “This is a good news story!” So he called around to Alaskan newspapers, giving Juneau Empire Managing Editor Mark Sabbatini the inside scoop before notifying the Enterprise in New York.

As passengers, he said they all get safety training when they get on board and understand what could happen, but they didn’t really think about it.

He said these ship crews always train for these types of situations, but they probably don’t often get to see them in action.

“Like the people that were in the Sapphire Princess lifeboat. They knew they could use that to rescue someone from another ship, but they had probably never done it before,” he said.

According to UnCruise Adventures, the fire in the engine room started at around 7:23 a.m.

UnCruise Owner and CEO Dan Blanchard said the crew extinguished the fire and thanked them for their “professionalism and composure” during the emergency.

“The cause of the engine room fire is yet to be determined and an investigation is currently underway to determine the cause,” a UnCruise press release reads.

UnCruise and the Coast Guard reported on Monday that there were “currently no discernible environmental impacts within the affected area.”

Reilly said he saw an oil boom deployed at the base of the ship and suspected the fire might have been caused by a fuel leak. He’s in the fuel business, so he recognized the floating white line in the water as a boom to soak up any potential oil.

Reilly said he and Pelletieri were back on the open waters on Tuesday morning, heading back to land.

“Currently the Wilderness Discoverer is under tow and en route for further damage assessments in Ketchikan where Coast Guard Investigators will attend the vessel,” Cavender wrote.