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Before sunrise on March 31, 2023, Coast Guard Station Sabine launched a 45-foot Response Boat-Medium after a report of a capsized tugboat in the Sabine River. The casualty was the 75-foot Sea Cypress at the mouth of the Sabine Pass Channel, tied off to a barge.

Four crewmen were aboard when the tug began to sink at 5:30 a.m. Fog slowed the Coast Guard crew, Petty Officer 2nd Class Chad Rollins, Petty Officer 2nd Class Ashton Jordan and Seaman Katelynn Reyes, even though the scene was about half a mile away.

A Sabine Pilots crew had already tied the 53-foot Port Arthur to the tug's starboard side and taken two of the four tug crewmen aboard. The other two were trapped in the galley in chest-deep water.

The tug's captain used a handheld oxy-acetylene torch to cut a 6-inch opening around a porthole. Rollins tried to enlarge it from outside, then passed in a line and held the captain steady while he continued cutting from inside.

When the torch could not get through a section of 3/8-inch steel, Rollins used a fire ax, a pinch bar and two adjustable wrenches to bend the steel open about 90 degrees. One trapped deckhand had an injured ankle and could not push himself out, so Rollins pulled the deckhand and the captain through the opening.

By 6:38 a.m., Rollins and all four Sea Cypress crewmen were safe aboard the Port Arthur. Rollins received a Meritorious Service Medal at Station Sabine in Sabine Pass, Texas, on Dec. 13, 2023.