SOS strobe light leads rescuers to divers who vanished in Atlantic off North Carolina

A search that continued through the night has successfully located four divers who vanished 50 miles off North Carolina, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The divers have been identified as Ben Wiggins, 64, Luke Lodge, 26, Daniel Williams, 46, and Evan Williams, 16.

They were found around 12:45 a.m. Monday, Aug. 14, when a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules aircraft spotted an SOS-strobe light in the ocean 46 miles southeast of the Cape Fear River, officials said in a news release.

A life raft was launched from the aircraft for the divers, then the Coast Guard contacted the U.S. Navy Destroyer USS Porter, which was conducting a training exercise in the area, officials said.

“The Porter crew arrived on scene and rescued all four divers safely from the life raft,” officials said.

The four were transferred to a Coast Guard boat and brought to shore around 6 a.m. Monday. None of the divers were injured, officials said.

Details of their ordeal have not been released, but the four had been unaccounted for since noon Sunday, whey they failed to resurface after “diving from the pleasure craft Big Bill’s, approximately 63 miles east of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,” officials said.

Searchers focused on an area 50 miles south of Cape Fear, near the state line between North and South Carolina.

Coast Guard boats and aircraft searched for the divers through the night.

Investigators did not report a home port for Big Bill’s, and did not identify what site the men were diving on when they vanished.

Shipwrecks are a popular destination for divers off the Carolinas. The region is known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” due to the hundreds of wrecks off the coast.

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