The Sol E Mar Tragedy off Martha’s Vineyard

On March 22, 1990, local fishermen Hokey Hokanson and his teenage son, Billy, set sail for Cape Cod in the Sol e Mar. When disaster struck three days later, Billy transmitted a brief, heavily garbled radio distress call. A hoax call immediately followedBilly’s cry for help, and believing that the two were connected, the U.S. Coast Guard did not launch rescue units for several days. The Hokansons’ deaths prompted a new anti-hoax law and changed United States Coast Guard search and rescue procedures. Historian Captain W. Russ Webster, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.), and journalist Elizabeth B. Webster chronicle the fascinating story of the Sol e Mar and its crew and explain the psychology of hoax callers and Coast Guard technological advancements since the tragedy –