Naval Weapons Station Charleston is a base of the United States Navy located on the west bank of the Cooper River in Goose Creek, South Carolina, thirty miles south of Charleston. At 10:30 p.m. on December 22, 1991, Naval Weapons Station Corporal Al Belanger pulled over a speeding car along a highway leading to the local marina. Inside the vehicle were three men. When the corporal asked for the driver’s license and registration, the driver, as well as the other occupants, stared straight ahead without saying a word or moving a muscle.
When Corporal Belanger repeated his instructions, the man in the back seat said something in a foreign language, which the corporal believed was Spanish. The driver then handed the corporal a passport. After a check of the passport produced nothing unusual, Corporal Belanger allowed the men to proceed, having given them only a verbal warning to watch their speed. Again, none of the three men uttered a word.
The driver and front seat passenger were later identified as thirty-seven-year-old Yves-Emmanuel Pain and twenty-four-year-old Laurent Hernas. The two men, both French nationals, have not been seen or heard from since the brief, and odd, encounter with Corporal Belanger.
The Coast Guard had been searching for Pain and Hernas for over a month after the duo had been reported missing at sea. The men were French sailors who had been hired to deliver a sailboat purchased by a business in Guadeloupe, an overseas region of France in the Leeward Islands of the West Indies. In October 1991, the sailors began a 2,500-mile trek from Annapolis, Maryland, to the Caribbean island.
Yves Emmanuel-Pain And Laurent Hernas
The vessel Pain and Hernas were transporting was a $200,000 state-of-the-art Antigua catamaran. No expense had been spared as the boat was equipped with high tech radar, a satellite tracking unit, and electronic navigational equipment.
The men planned to sail along America’s eastern seaboard, past the Chesapeake Bay before traversing east, deeper into the Atlantic Ocean. They were then to sail around the Bahamas and Cuba en route to Guadeloupe.
When the ship failed to arrive as scheduled and no one had heard from the sailors, the Coast Guard was notified. They were unable to find either, but they did find several people who had recalled seeing the vessel in American waters.
The Chartered Course
The catamaran was spotted several miles in the Intracoastal Waterway, an inland passage running from New England to Florida along the eastern coast of the Atlantic Ocean states. The vessel was confirmed to have stopped at a bridge ninety miles north of Charleston, South Carolina, five weeks before Corporal Belanger stopped the car in Goose Creek. Several people at the bridge remembered seeing three men, two of them being the missing sailors. The third unidentified man did not have authorization to be aboard, and the catamaran had no reason to be in the Intracoastal Waterway.
All of the witnesses said the third man did not appear threatening. At no point did Pain and Hernas give any indication they were in trouble.
The Yacht Is Sighted
Since the trio were pulled over in Goose Creek, South Carolina, on the evening of December 22, 1991, no trace of Yves-Emmanuel Pain and Laurent Hernas has been found. The third man in the back seat of the car has never been identified.
Some believe Pain and Hernas were involved with the third man in stealing the boat. Due to the catamaran’s sophisticated design, it was virtually unsinkable and undetectable by radar. Such a vessel would be ideal for trafficking drugs and/or weapons.
Because Pain and Hernas had never had any hint of involvement in illicit activities, others believe the unidentified man, perhaps aided by accomplices, hijacked the ship and, not knowing how to operate it, forced the Frenchmen to sail to an unknown location where they were murdered.
Some have speculated the French nationals could have instead sailed too far into Cuban waters and are being held in a Cuban prison, but no evidence has been found to suggest the possibility.
I could not find the name of, or a picture of, the catamaran the men were transporting.
If you have any information on the whereabouts of Yves-Emmanuel Pain and Laurent Hernas, please contact the Unites States Coast Guard.
Sailors Still Missing
SOURCES:
- Miami Herald
- The Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina)
- United States Coast Guard
If they were spotted on the boat 5 weeks prior to being pulled over then you have to question where they were for that 5 weeks. It would not have taken 5 weeks to go approximately 120 miles by boat. Most likely the man in the back was a hijacker, and have a weapon on the two men, not visible to the officer who pulled them over. The men had probably been threatened not to say a word, and still hoped to survive.