CABLE — Those who love Jacob Drake refuse to believe he is really gone. Until someone gives them proof, anyway, and tells them all hope is lost.

Drake, 21, and a 2013 graduate of Triad High School in western Ohio's Champaign County, is among 10 sailors officially declared missing since the USS John S. McCain collided Monday with an oil tanker three times the size of the guided-missile destroyer. The collision took place off the coast of Singapore in the busy Strait of Malacca in the South China Sea.

The early-morning collision ripped a massive hole in the McCain’s left rear hull, allowing the sea to quickly flood adjacent compartments, including sleeping berths and machinery and communications rooms. Five sailors were injured in addition to the 10 missing.

Drake’s family was huddled together Tuesday at their home in rural Cable, an unincorporated village in Wayne Township about 50 miles west of Columbus, awaiting further word from the Navy. All they had been told was that he was among the missing, even after the Navy reported that some remains had been found Tuesday when divers searched a flooded compartment.

Drake’s fiancee, 20-year-old Megan Partlow, said his family simply wasn’t ready to talk.

Partlow, who lives in nearby Marysville, has been planning their wedding for next summer. She said she is overwhelmed and not sure what to do now.

“I just want him to be safe,” she said.

According to family members, the Navy has told them that the missing sailors also include Logan Palmer of central Illinois and Ken Smith, 22, who spent his childhood in Novi, Michigan, and moved as a teen to Norfolk, Virginia, with his father.

Navy Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the Pacific Fleet, held a news briefing Tuesday from Singapore’s Changi naval base, where the McCain sailed under its own power after the collision. Swift said it would be “premature to say how many and what the status of recovery of those bodies is.” He also said that Malaysian officials had recovered one body, but it had yet to be identified and it was unknown whether it was a crew member.

Swift, though, added his own message for the families.

"We will continue the search and rescue operations until the probability of discovering sailors is exhausted," he said. Later Tuesday, the White House issued a statement acknowledging the deaths of some sailors, though it didn't say how many.

Swift promised a full investigation. This was the second major collision in two months involving the Pacific-based 7th Fleet. The Navy has said it is taking a step back to re-evaluate and investigate, among other things, the fleet’s training, performance and readiness.

In June, seven sailors were killed when the USS Fitzgerald collided with a container ship off the coast of Japan. Two other incidents, neither as serious, happened earlier this year.

"While each of these four incidents is unique, they cannot be viewed in isolation," Swift said.

He said the Navy would search "to find out if there is a common cause ... and if so, how do we solve that."

Little of that was on the minds of those in Drake's hometown who were simply hoping Tuesday for his safe return, as well as that of the other missing sailors, none of whom the Navy has officially publicly named.

Partlow said she last heard from Drake in a text Sunday.

She told The New York Post that the worry about Drake, who enlisted right after high school, has been constant.

“He always promised to come home safe but when it comes down to it, he would do anything to save his fellow brothers even if that means risking his life,” she told the Post.

The two have dated since high school, a relative said, and Partlow has visited him overseas. Relatives said they all hope for a miracle.

Count Boston Gregg among that group. He grew up in the Triad district and was a commencement speaker the year he and Drake graduated.

Word spread quickly after the collision that Drake was sailing on the McCain. But Gregg is not ready to count his old classmate out.

“Just to prove a teacher wrong, Jake once fit himself into a locker,” said Gregg, 22, and a recent graduate of Otterbein University in Westerville. He said he hasn't seen Drake since graduation, but theirs is a tight-knit rural community and no one, especially thanks to social media, ever really loses tabs on one another or loses a link to home.

“Everybody I know is praying for him and pulling for him,” Gregg said.

Gregg knows Partlow well, too. They acted in school plays together and sang in the choir. He reached out to her family Tuesday, and let them know his heart breaks for them as the not-knowing consumes everyone.

“They are a great duo,” Gregg said of Drake and Partlow. “He and Megan loved to goof around. You’re never not laughing when you’re with them.”

Jacob's sister, Veronica Drake, is among those planning a community prayer vigil in honor of her brother and all the missing sailors. It is set for 8:30 p.m. Thursday at the ballfields in the Champaign County village of North Lewisburg.

Gregg said a number of the 80 or so kids in their graduating class at Triad joined the military, and everyone knew during their senior year that was to be Drake's path.

"We didn't worry about him," he said. "Jake ... the man, the myth, the legend. That kid is tough."

The Associated Press and the Washington Post contributed to this report.

hzachariah@dispatch.com

@hollyzachariah