Flying light flew across sky, stopped, zig zagged, turned red, then flew back up and disapeared.

It was in September of 1980 when I, a merchant seaman from Baltimore, MD and two others being from Houston Texas and Seattle Washington were relaxing after the day on the back of the ships deck when I was the first to notice what looked like a flickering star on the edge of full starry sky. 
The ship was northbound outside of the coast of North Carolina on its way to the New York Harbor.  I said to the others look at that star flickering.  
Then suddenly what looked like a star flew at tremendous speed toward the horizon and suddenly stopped in the middle of the sky.  The object then zig zagged up and down like nothing on earth could do at a great speed.  It then stopped and turned a bright red. The man from Texas said it was taking our picture with infrared light. 
After turning a bright white again it flew toward the starry sky and disappeared.  
A few weeks later a ship I worked on in the summer of 1978 disapeared in the Atlantic Ocean.  It was the S.S. Poet.  The name of the ship at the time of the sighting was the S.S. Inger.
Witness indicates that date is approximate.  PD