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When fire that began in the engine room engulfed the tug, its six-member crew fled to the tip of the bow and shortly afterward jumped overboard to avoid billows of flame and smoke.

In a matter of minutes, Coast Guard Fireman Adam Cravey jumped from his rescue vessel and pulled two of the victims to safety before having to be rescued himself, suffering from hypothermia.

"It felt like forever," Cravey said. Within three minutes, Cravey and the six crew members were safely aboard the Coast Guard vessel.

All day, dense fog dimmed Point Judith's lighthouse beacon as roaring, gale-force winds and crashing waves muffled the foghorn.

Five miles offshore, in zero visibility, six tugboat crew members scrambled to extinguish a mysterious fire in their ship's engine room.

The ship's captain, Gregory Aitken, was awakened by a distressed crew at 2 p.m. With three fire extinguishers, the crew made a futile attempt to douse the flames that were quickly filling their cabin with thick smoke.

Aitken said he and his five crew members donned their survival dry suits and made a desperate call to the Coast Guard.

Inside the Coast Guard Station at Point Judith, the atmosphere quickly became as chaotic and tumultuous as the weather that pounded at the window panes.

Petty Officers Raymond Holcombe and Stephen Lutjen immediately dispatched their 41-foot rescue boat from Galilee. They also summoned 44-foot and 82-foot boats from Newport's Castle Hill Station, as private fishing vessels also headed to the scene.

Aitken and his crew scurried to the front of their boat.

"We huddled at the bow," he said. "It's the only place we could breathe."

But minutes after the Coast Guard 41-footer motored out past the breakwater at Galilee and into the thick fog, the stirring seas became too rough, tossing the boat back and forth.

Holcombe said the Coast Guard crew turned back, docked their boat and headed back out into the ocean with their more stable 44-footer.

Flames engulfed tugboat: The flames engulfed the 115-foot tugboat Scandia as Aitken and his crew huddled on its bow. Around 2:50 p.m., just under an hour after the fire began, the Coast Guard 44-footer appeared through the fog.

On board were Fireman Cravey and Seaman Walt Trimble. As the boat pulled alongside the billowing Scandia, Trimble said, things started to go wrong.

"We heard pops and explosions," he said.

"Definitely not sounds you should hear from a boat," Cravey said.

Cravey said the flames from the tug -- which Aitken said had about 83,000 gallons of diesel fuel on it -- were growing more intense.

With time running out, Cravey climbed into a wet suit. Coast Guard personnel yelled to the cornered tugboat crew to abandon the floating inferno.

Aitken and the five others jumped from the deck and into frigid Block Island Sound. Cravey did likewise, wearing his wet suit and a harness tethered to the Coast Guard boat.

Cravey said he swam toward the Scandia, through the fog and smoke, toward the crew. He helped two of the crew toward his vessel, but then began to feel very cold.

Hypothermia was setting in.

Trimble said the water Cravey braved was 30 to 32 degrees. After three minutes in the water, Cravey said, he felt a lump in his throat and his muscles tighten -- effects of hypothermia.

He headed back to his boat with the help of Coast Guard personnel, who had to lift him from the water.

"I couldn't climb onto the boat," Cravey said of his weakened condition.

The Scandia's crew, wearing more protective survival suits, swam to the 44-footer and climbed aboard around 4:15 p.m.

Back on shore, the Coast Guard called for an ambulance to meet them at their boathouse.

The Narragansett Fire Department went to the boathouse and, when the 44-footer returned to shore, took Cravey to South County Hospital.

Cravey was released from the hospital within an hour and returned to his station.

Cravey entered the station around 5 p.m., wearing a blue Coast Guard uniform and clutching a plastic bag with his wet clothing, dropping it in the station's hallway.

As two of the Scandia's crew headed back out to sea in an attempt to stabilize the barge, the other four crew members took hot showers at the Point Judith station and drank hot coffee to soothe their frazzled nerves.

Cravey, however, did not let the ordeal daunt him. He seated himself behind the communications console, leaned back in his chair and took a long slow breath.

"Damn, I'm going to sleep well tonight," he said.