PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- Two sailors were swept from the deck of a nuclear-powered Navy submarine in heavy seas despite safety lines, leaving one man dead and the other missing, Navy officials said.
The Coast Guard suspended an active search for the second man Monday night because of bad weather, officials said.
'It's still foggy and raining out there,' Richard Cunningham, commanding officer of the Coast Guard station in Newcastle, said today. 'We can't see.'
The USS Ulysses S. Grant was leaving Portsmouth Harbor shortly before 8 a.m. Monday to begin sea trials when the two men fell overboard, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard spokeswoman Ruth Dow said.
Coast Guard rescuers pulled Lt. David Jimenez of Groton, Conn., from the water shortly after the accident. Jimenez was taken to Portsmouth Regional Hospital where he died shortly after noon, Dow said.
Three Coast Guard boats and a helicopter seached the waters near the Isles of Shoals until Monday night for the other man, whose name was not released.
Cunningham said the missing man's chances for survival were slim.
'The survival time in the water is not high at all,' he said. 'If we find some indication -- clothing or a life jacket or something like that -- we most certainly would go to that area.'
A spokesman at the submarine's home port in Groton, Conn., said bad weather contributed to the accident.
'They were rigging the deck for sea. Both men had lifejackets and were tethered to the ship,' said George Fairfield, New London Submarine Base spokesman.
Dow said the submarine was undergoing a routine overhaul at the Kittery, Maine, shipyard.
