Thomas Hebert

The Thomas Hebert was an ocean-going tugboat which sank in 140 ft of water off the New Jersey coast with the loss of five lives at 3am on Sunday 7 March 1993. It had left Virginia for Maine on 5 March 1993, towing a barge carrying 8 500 tons of coal. Built in 1975 in a shipyard in Orange, Texas, the tug measured 94 x 27 ft, displaced 99 tons and carried a crew of 7. It was last owned by S.C. Loveland Co. of Pennsville, New Jersey. The sunken vessel was found intact, still attached to the floating barge which it had been towing by a steel cable. The cable shows traces of metal from the hull of another vessel, suggesting that a submarine snagged the tow cable, pulling the tug under, in an incident similar to that of USS Houston sinking the tugboat Barcona in 1989.