Mystery of the Sarah Joe and the Missing Sailors from Hana from February 1979

By: Shane Lambert

Updated: July 2nd, 2023

A mystery has endured for over 40 years for those that knew Ralph Malaiakini, 27, Scott Moorman, 27, Benjamin Kalama, 38, Patrick Woessner, 26, and Peter Hanchett, 31. Those five sailors left a port near Hana, Hawaii on February 11th, 1979 and what exactly happened to them after that remains a mystery. 

The five sailors set sail into the Pacific Ocean from Hana on a vessel known as the Sarah Joe, a 17-foot motor-powered boat. According to the original reporting from Hawaii in 1979, there were messages of distress from the boat the day it disappeared. The sailors indicated that they were having engine trouble early in the evening (Honolulu Star-Bulletin Feb 12, 1979). 

Unfortunately, gale winds picked up, the men couldn't be reached when they indicated that they were in distress, and subsequent rescue attempts failed. This was despite the use of what appeared to be an intelligent search method over water.

In the February 15th, 1979 edition of the Honolulu Advertiser, I read an article that described using a pigeon technique to search the water. Three pigeons were tied to a helicopter and each was assigned a lookout angle. Since each pigeon could see 120-degrees, the three combined meant they could see a full 360-degrees. These pigeons were specifically trained to look for orange anomalies in the water, the color that is common to lifesavers and lifejackets.

The search in the days that followed the disappearance of the men yielded no clues. But the remains of one of the sailors, Scott Moorman, were eventually found on an atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1989 -- some 2000 miles away. They were buried and given a makeshift grave marker.

There's some evidence that whoever buried him might have been native to Asia, possibly Japanese. I would argue that this person was also educated, to some extent, in forensics.

June 28th, 1989
Honolulu Star-Bulletin

Personally, I don't think there is a huge mystery here. We can take the call for help at face value -- the sailors had engine trouble. The storm may have killed some of them directly by sweeping them into the ocean. Most likely, the boat was swept outside of the searched area in the days ahead. 

The finding of Moorman may be the only closure that is ever afforded to this mystery: lost at sea can mean lost for all time. I think Moorman likely died of exposure while in the boat. Then the ship stayed lost on the open ocean until it ran aground.  Moorman, in good faith, was then buried by those that found him. 

In an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, the hit television show from the 1980s and 1990s, this mystery was covered. It is shown that the grave that was found had a mandible on it, commonly called a jawbone. This episode is embedded below as of July 2nd, 2023 (please comment if the video goes defunct).

Why would someone bury unidentified remains with the mandible on top of the grave? One explanation is simply that the person who buried the man understood that the mandible could be used for identification. This bone contains the lower teeth and can be compared to dental records, which is a very common way to identify John Does. Accordingly, you have to think that the person or persons that buried Scott Moorman's remains were acting in a respectful and thoughtful way. He buried the remains but put the mandible in an easy-to-find spot so that anyone that wanted to run forensic tests against dental records would be able to do that without digging up the entire corpse.

In the Unsolved Mysteries episode, it is reported that the atoll was subject to a survey not long before the discovery of the remains. How could it be that this survey missed the Sarah Joe and the grave?

If we assume that Moorman's remains were in the boat when it grounded on the atoll, then the people that removed him changed the weight of the boat when they did that. Accordingly, from wherever it originally rested, the Sarah Joe would then be lighter without Moorman in it. The boat would then be more susceptible to movement from winds and ocean currents, including changing tides. It could be that the surveyors simply missed the grave and that the boat was moving around a little in the area due to the changing tides.

It could simply be missed due to time and chance. In my opinion, there is not a great mystery with this. Wondering where the others are may be a futile mystery to work on given that they might be lost at sea for over forty years now.