Girl: Seemed ‘like forever’ underwater

The first seconds underwater seemed "like forever" to Ruby Grace. "It was cold and looked kind of blurry, but I could see the light, so that was good."

The 9-year-old from suburban St. Louis swam to the surface and looked around frantically for her father.

Kevin Grace was right beside her. Just before the boat had reared up and tipped, he tried to shove a life preserver over her head and hold on to her. But in the churning river, she slipped from his grip and went under.

He reached down and grabbed her hair.

"It was very scary," Ruby said. "I swam up, but then the boat tried to take us with it."

They were about 30 yards from shore. All around, passengers floated among debris. Grace latched onto a cooler to use as a buoy and to shield Ruby from the current.

But weighted down by sodden sneakers and cargo shorts - pockets bulging with a camera, change, wallet, tourist paraphernalia - Grace struggled.

He watched Ruby pull away.

To think, he had almost exchanged their tickets to the doomed 1:30 p.m. Duck Boat ride.

"We try to pack in as much as possible," said Grace, 50, a school psychologist from suburban St. Louis, who was visiting Philadelphia with Ruby; his colleague Alysia Petchulat; and her 11-year-old son, Cole. So when their "social studies" tour of the Constitution Center, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall ended sooner than expected, he thought about switching to an earlier ride on the amphibious sightseeing craft.

Instead, they grabbed some cheesesteaks, got in line, had their pictures taken by the cheery Duck Boat staff, and chose seats up front, directly behind the captain.

It would prove to be one of the safest places on the boat that a little more than an hour later would be lying on the murky bottom of the Delaware.

"We were looking forward to the water part," Grace said in a telephone interview Thursday. "I thought it's going to be nice and cool in the water."

The driver, Gary Fox, and his assistant, Kyle Burkhardt, set the tone by handing out "those quacker things," Grace said - plastic toys that make obnoxious duck calls when you blow into them.

Dutifully, Fox explained safety procedures, Grace said. "He kind of made a joke out of the life jackets, saying we're not going to need this but the Coast Guard makes us do this. But he told us everything you need to know - here they are, and this is how they work."

After a wilting trip through Society Hill, they reached Penn's Landing. The vessel slipped into the river, starting what was supposed to be a breezy 15-minute loop along the busy waterway.

At one point, Fox asked Burkhardt to take over the boat so he could banter with the passengers. He tried to draw out members of a tour group from Hungary. Two of them - Dora Schwendtner, 16, and Szablcs Prem, 20 - sat across from Grace and his daughter, but the noise on the boat and language difficulties made it difficult to strike up a conversation.

On their way back to shore, Grace smelled something burning.

"We live in St. Louis and with Anheuser Busch, we're used to unusual smells," he laughed. But then he saw smoke coming from a panel to the left of the driver's seat.

Fox cut the engine and snapped orders to Burkhardt, who clambered onto the bow and put down the anchor.

Petchulat, Grace's colleague, said she heard the captain call on a walkie-talkie for another Duck Boat to tow them in. With the smoke now billowing, Fox sealed the edges of the panel with duct tape. "I made a joke about how it was a good thing he had 'duck' tape," Grace said.

After about 10 minutes, Petchulat said, she saw "a look" come over the captain's face. "He picked up the radio and started to say something like 'reroute' or 'brake.' 'We're anchored down and we cannot move.' "

Ruby remembers watching the captain, too. "He called the emergency radio saying May Day, like, and then it got closer," the girl said. "We thought it saw us and was going to turn. I was a little scared."

While the boat bobbed in the water, Grace had jokingly texted a friend. "We're floating on a dead duck on the Delaware. . .." But as he was about to write "river," he heard a commotion.

"We turn and Gary said something about, 'What's that?' There's a barge coming. I turned and looked, and I could see a towboat on the side."

Although it was hard to see out the back window, Grace said, "it looked like a five-foot curl under the barge."

Petchulat heard the captain say, "This isn't good." Immediately, she buckled her son into a life vest.

Suddenly, they found themselves in a crush of passengers scrambling out of the shadow of a monstrous dark prow looming above. In a frenzy of grasping arms, Grace reached up and managed to unhook a life vest for Ruby.

The child felt as if her dad was both trying to grab her and push her out of the boat.

"I didn't want to go out. I was too scared," she said. "Then the big boat hit us."

Grace remembers almost exactly the same sequence of events.

"All in the same motion, I ram the life jacket on her head, push her over, and hold on to her," he said. "Everybody else is doing the same thing. With the impact, everybody rushes forward, metal is screeching."

Ruby remembers a loud crack. "Then the bottom of the boat was sinking, and it just turned, everybody tipped over. I was on the bottom of everyone."

Trapped inside the overturned boat, Petchulat swam through a window. "I kept swimming and swimming," she said. "I kept thinking, 'I've got to be close to the top.'"

At last, she surfaced. "I saw Kevin, Ruby, the captain, and a bunch of other people," she said. "But not Cole."

Cole was not a strong swimmer, not like Ruby. The summer before, she had been on a swim team. But her confidence in the water was shaken by the chaos.

"Then my dad found me," she said. "He wasn't mad at me, he just grabbed my hand."

Grace was worried. "I had seen enough movies to know we need to get away from this boat because if it sinks, it will suck you down with it. What you saw on the Titanic movie was very similar. I'm underwater with all these people, bubbles, bodies."

A man with a bloody ear held out a rubber Croc shoe to Ruby. "He gave it to me to help me float," she said.

But just as Grace feared, as the Duck Boat disappeared, it felt as if grasping hands had taken hold of them and dragged them down.

"We went about three or four feet," Grace said, before kicking free. As the air hit his grateful face, he gasped, whipping his head around looking for Ruby.

Ruby was born on Friday the 13th under a full moon, her mother said. But what a lucky girl.

"She had it together," Grace said, so he set out as fast as he could swimming after her, keeping his face out of the water so he could keep her in sight and flailing with his lead-weighted feet.

Ruby felt calm for the moment. "I just did freestyle," she said. "We were out in the middle. It seemed like a couple of miles."

Petchulat felt something by her feet and moved aside. Cole popped up in his life vest. As they swam together to land, two men flung a firehose to them and pulled them out.

Once Ruby was out, she saw the man with the bloody ear. "I gave him back his Croc," she said.

The police and firefighters took the four to the Seaport Museum. "I started thinking into the thought about what just happened," Ruby said. "My teeth were chattering and I couldn't really remember anything that anyone was saying to me."

Later, in the hospital, she was wrapped in warm blankets and, after a few hours, felt better.

They spent the night in a hotel in Cherry Hill that they'd chosen because Ruby wanted to swim in a pool.

"But she wasn't interested in swimming," Grace said.

Thursday, they caught a flight back to St. Louis.

On the way to the airport, Ruby called home. "Mommy," she said. "I'm scarred for life."