No trace of the men was ever found. The next morning, sailors on a merchant freighter reported seeing a body floating in the bay, but the body slipped beneath the waves before it could be recovered. Their fate remains a mystery. Their remains were never found, and there is also no evidence they survived. Surveillance never detected them in their hometowns or at any family gatherings. Escapes and disturbances at Alcatraz were rare. The inmate population was so small and so tightly controlled that trouble was minimized. Some inmates actually preferred the close supervision and the one man-one cell arrangements because it meant that they were less vulnerable to attacks by other inmates at Alcatraz than they were at other prisons.