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Trying to take the barge in tow would have been like "a Ford Pinto trying to lasso a tractor-trailer truck loaded down with concrete on a slippery road," said Chief Petty Officer Lionel Bryant of the Coast Guard's National Strike Team.

Kenneth Gallup, owner of the 65-foot tug Capt. Tom out of Galilee, said his vessel, with his son Mike as skipper, put out for the distress scene on the heels of a Coast Guard rescue boat.

The elder Gallup, who stayed in port but was in radio contact with the tug, said yesterday his son reported that "it's wild here and we've got to get out."

Gallup said he ordered his son to return in view of the weather and because his tug, which generates only 1,000 horsepower, was incapable of towing the barge in the heavy seas and high winds.

Gallup said he and other local operators would have been only too happy to take the barge in tow because if they could prove they saved it, they would be entitled to a portion of its content value as salvage.

Roger Smith, skipper of the 84-foot dragger Seafarer, which aided the crew of the smoldering tug, said, "I don't think there's any fishing boat around that would have the power" to move the barge.

"The barge would be pulling you, you wouldn't be pulling the barge," he said.

Smith's boat is big for a dragger, but its engine packs only 575 horsepower. By contrast, the engines in some tugs generate 7,000 horsepower.

Dowdell said his two 90-foot vessels, Nautilis and Huntress, were at the scene just behind the Seafarer, before the Coast Guard arrived to offer assistance to the crew of the Scandia.

But because of the high winds, he said, they "got tossed around like tops."

With staff reports from Gerald M. Carbone and Jim Beardsworth.