by Rachel Slade
As for regulation of a dangerous yet vital industry, all eyes eventually turned to the fifth branch of the armed forces, the coast guard. Over its two-hundred-plus-year history, the US Coast Guard fell under the auspices of various departments—the Treasury, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Transportation, and most recently, the Department of Homeland Security.
Conflicting masters have led to conflicting allegiances. Since 1942 the US Coast Guard has been responsible for creating and enforcing laws to ensure that America’s fleet—fishing vessels, ferries, pleasure boats, tankers, and container ships—remains safe and that its mariners are trained to deal with shipboard emergencies.
But under George W. Bush following 9/11, the coast guard shifted focus yet again from vessel inspection and lifesaving to defense. Armed to the teeth, prepped for battle against innumerable enemies, the US Coast Guard now fights America’s eternal war against drugs, terrorism, and illegal immigrants on the wide open seas.
When the coast guard became America’s waterborne policing unit, spending much of its energy on drug interdiction rather than safety, the American Bureau of Shipping stepped in to take over the job of monitoring the commercial fleet. As a result of its growing responsibilities, ABS has grown exponentially to become a rich, politically powerful entity.
SITTING IN HIS WASHINGTON, DC, OFFICE ON OCTOBER 1, 2015, CAPTAIN JASON Neubauer of the US Coast Guard thought his service had much to be proud of. As chief of the Office of Investigations and Casualty Analysis, Neubauer was charged with probing major marine accidents to unearth their root causes, then suggest changes, if any, to the coast guard’s myriad regulations in an effort to prevent future casualties. He was one part of the mechanism that ensures the safety of America’s fleet.
Teutonic by way of California—tall and intimidating from a distance in his sharp navy blue uniform, at the other end of a handshake, warm and empathetic—Neubauer had eschewed his father’s navy for the coast guard. His family gave him a hard time for joining the “puddle pirates,” the derogatory term the navy uses for its coast-hugging cousins. But as Neubauer climbed the ranks to reach captain, a notch below rear admiral, at the age of forty-three, the teasing stopped.
The US Coast Guard’s DC headquarters maintains a thick file of marine accidents, more than fifty-four hundred each year of varying magnitudes—from a tugboat engine explosion that killed the chief engineer aboard; to a giant oil drilling rig that broke free from its towlines in thirty-five-foot seas, beached on an island in the Gulf of Alaska, and threatened to dump 150,000 gallons of diesel onto the coastline; to the sinking of the three-masted HMS Bounty, caught in Hurricane Sandy, that took the life of Robin Walbridge, the ship’s captain, and a crew member.
Among the cases in the coast guard’s file, Neubauer knew of just three major American ship casualties in peacetime; none of those losses involved cargo ships like El Faro. One was the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sunk in a storm on Lake Superior in 1975. The second was the SS Poet, a bulk carrier which mysteriously vanished in the Atlantic in 1980.
The third casualty was the SS Marine Electric—a World War II–era bulk carrier loaded with coal that went down in 1983 when she sailed through a storm off the coast of Virginia, killing thirty-one of the thirty-four crew aboard. The ensuing Marine Board investigation was a massive undertaking and the final report detailed serious flaws in the ship inspection process.
The Marine Board found that the Marine Electric’s hatches and decks were so profoundly compromised by age, bad repair jobs, and neglect that they proved helpless against the Atlantic storm’s pounding waves, yet the shipping company had faked inspection paperwork year after year to keep her sailing.
That 154-page Marine Board report became a seminal work, setting shipping regulations and standards for the next thirty-two years. Among industry changes that emerged from the report, the coast guard required that all ships begin carrying immersion suits for its crew when sailing in the North Atlantic during the winter. The coast guard’s rescue swimmer program also emerged from the tragedy.
Perhaps most important, the Marine Electric report raised serious questions about the ABS’s role in ship inspections: “Basically, ABS surveys and visits are oriented toward protecting the best interest of marine insurance underwriters, and not for the enforcement of Federal safety statutes and regulations,” it said. “Since the cost of these surveys and visits is borne by the owners, or other interested parties, the attending surveyor is subject to the influence of such persons.”
Ultimately, the Marine Board report warned the coast guard not to cede something as critical as ship inspection work to third parties. “For the purpose of enforcement of Federal Statutes and Regulations, [inspections] should be conducted by an impartial governmental agency having expertise in that field, with no other interests and/or obligations other than assuring compliance with applicable requirements. By virtue of its relationship to the vessel owners, the ABS cannot be considered impartial.”
The report also questioned the depth of training US Coast Guard inspectors had received and recommended that the organization devote more resources to its inspections program. Mike Odom’s career path from coast guard rescue swimmer to traveling inspector was directly influenced by the aftermath of the Marine Electric case.
Another fact emerged from the tragedy: the officers and crew aboard the Marine Electric had been well aware of the ship’s horrible conditions but feared for their jobs “due to the lack of seagoing employment . . . they were content to sail the vessel.” Even as far back as 1980, lack of job security in the US Merchant Marine colored mariners’ judgment.
The Marine Electric investigation led to the scrapping of more than seventy elderly US-flagged vessels, and a much more robust system of checks and balances to ensure America’s aging fleet remained seaworthy.
Sitting in his office that October morning, Neubauer firmly believed that better technology and rigorous inspections programs had made American shipping safer. He felt sure that the industry had greatly benefited from advances in weather forecasting, bolstered by satellite photography, dropsondes, and supercomputer-based modeling; satellite communication and GPS; and AIS tracking to precisely locate vessels. The coast guard’s marine safety program had set strict deep draft vessel standards, most of which had been entrusted to ABS. All this was supported by the best maritime rescue force on the planet—the coast guard, assisted by the navy and the air force—powered by the world’s most sophisticated helicopters, planes, and cutters.
But at 10:00 that morning, Neubauer saw a notice about a search-and-rescue operation east of the Bahamas flash across his computer screen. He’d been tracking Hurricane Joaquin for the better part of a week and wasn’t surprised that a vessel had been caught up in its clutches. He called District 7 to find out more. That’s when he learned that the officers were trying in vain to reestablish communication with a 790-foot American vessel with thirty-three crew members aboard.
The fact that it was a large American container ship rattled Neubauer to his core. US-flagged ships may ground or collide with things, but they don’t sail into hurricanes and vanish.
Was it possible, he privately wondered, that El Faro and her crew had slipped through the cracks?
First, he called the National Command Center to get the most up-to-date info. They didn’t consider the ship lost, they told him, not yet, and were optimistic that it would pull through. Maybe the vessel’s antennas broke off in the storm, they reminded him. That happens.
Then the captain walked down the hall to consult with Rear Admiral Paul Thomas. If El Faro sank, it would trigger a massive investigation, and he wanted his superiors to brace themselves for what might ensue. He and the admiral discussed the magnitude of a case like this—it would take years to gather evidence, interview all parties, analyze the data, and produce a report. They might uncover malfeasance, or the investigation could result in a complete overhaul of the coast guard’s inspection p
rogram. It could be a generation-defining event.
Following protocol, Neubauer also called the head of Marine Safety at the National Transportation Safety Board located across the Anacostia River in central DC. The NTSB’s marine safety division often worked in parallel with the coast guard to untangle the cause of accidents. That agency would produce a separate report and its own series of recommendations.
And then, like so many others—the families of those sailing on El Faro, the people working for TOTE, the men and women in District 7, the reporters deployed to Jacksonville, and mariners around the world—Neubauer waited, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst.
By end of day on October 2, they’d found no survivors and no ship.
In search of someone to lead the investigation, Neubauer began calling other coast guard captains whose experience made them good candidates. No one with the right qualifications could commit the time to something this big.
On the fifth of October, just before eleven o’clock in the morning, the US Coast Guard officially designated El Faro a major marine casualty. The ship was lost, no survivors. Thus began a multimillion-dollar effort to find out what happened to the vessel and the thirty-three people who had vanished with it.
Compelled by the mystery of El Faro and personally offended that a tragedy of this magnitude could happen in the modern era, Neubauer volunteered himself to lead the Marine Board’s investigation. The admiral agreed.
Chapter 24
The Truth is out There
23.23°N, -73.55°W
In a small office at the NTSB in Washington, DC, sat Captain Neubauer’s physical antipode. Compact, hair thinning, with an indeterminate midwestern accent, Tom Roth-Roffy would have blended right in to Washington, DC, circa 1955. The only thing missing from his otherwise classic government employee look was a pair of Robert McNamara glasses.
Tom was the quintessential hardworking, incorruptible federal investigator. He was raised in Panama, where his father was a navy officer, which no doubt fostered in young Tom a complicated relationship with authority. Cut off from mainstream American culture, he grew up in a republic created by an imperial-minded US for the sole purpose of digging, and then overseeing, the canal that would ultimately unite America’s coasts.
Tom’s upbringing didn’t make him cynical. It made him a firm believer in truth. His role model might have been the tireless Joe Friday, someone who holds undying faith in the meritocracy. And the indisputable nature of facts.
Tom was trained as a marine engineer and once served on ships laying cable around Puerto Rico, but most of his decades-long career has been spent solving complex mysteries for the US government. Surrounded by traces of the dead captured in black boxes, twisted hulls, oil spills, and mountains of data, Tom and his team track the human errors and engineering mistakes that lead to devastating losses. When describing his life, he uses headline cases—Deepwater Horizon or Exxon Valdez—to mark time the way most people use births, deaths, weddings, and anniversaries.
Tom was given the job of leading the NTSB’s investigation of the El Faro mystery.
Five days after the disappearance of the ship, Tom joined Neubauer aboard a plane from DC to Jacksonville. The US Coast Guard and the NTSB would be working together to gather information about El Faro, but they would issue separate reports.
Many on the respective teams—naval architects, engineers, former mariners, marine inspectors—were on that plane, too. They’d worked together on previous cases, creating an instant rapport now. Both groups set up shop at the Jacksonville Marriott and spent their evenings huddled in conference rooms, comparing notes. They didn’t want to burden the dozens of witnesses with more than one interview, or double efforts, so agreed to conduct most interviews jointly and coordinate information gathering.
El Faro’s crew’s wives, parents, and children who had come down during the tense weeklong search were also staying at the hotel when the investigative teams arrived. There were awkward moments when the investigators crossed paths with those dealing with shock and loss. Emotions were raw, and the proximity to family members made Neubauer even more committed to his work, he says.
Two days later, Rear Admiral Scott Buschman, commander, Coast Guard 7th District, announced the official end of the search and rescue effort: “I have come to a very difficult decision to suspend the search for the crew of El Faro at sunset tonight. My deepest condolences go to the families, loved ones, and friends of El Faro crew. US Coast Guard, US Navy, US Air Force, and the TOTE Maritime tug crews searched day and night, sometimes in perilous conditions with the hope of finding survivors in this tragic loss.”
Some of the families were furious that the search was over. Others understood that all that could be done had been done.
Strong and resilient, like so many parents of New England mariners before them, Deb Roberts and Laurie Bobillot were among the first relatives of the lost crew to accept that El Faro had been lost. During the agonizing week in Jacksonville while the coast guard combed the ocean for the survivors—and then any evidence of the gigantic ship—they became the public face of grief.
They worked with the Red Cross to set up a Facebook page with regular updates for anyone connected to El Faro. They gave TV interviews to ensure that the human side of the tragedy wasn’t lost in its telling. Pictures of Michael and Danielle—smiling in their crisp Maine Maritime Academy uniforms, Danielle’s hair tucked beneath her hat—appeared everywhere.
Nothing captivates the American imagination like a shipwreck. Even after we lost our direct connection to the ocean, sea stories remain high in American lore. We still feast on the Titanic and continue to poke around its ancient remains. We consume the Deadliest Catch, a show shamelessly dedicated to tragedy at sea. Every year or so a blockbuster film depicts courageous sailors battling enormous waves. The ocean is a mystery, its forces unknowable. It draws us in.
Once the harrowing search for El Faro began, it dominated the news cycle. The media descended on the scene—vans from local news outlets, the AP, and national news outlets were parked outside the Marriott. Joaquin was the big story that week. The storm had caused historic flooding in South Carolina. Most Americans couldn’t tell you what the merchant marine was, but during that week, the names of the seamen aboard the ship, and snippets of their lives and the people they’d left behind, continually ran online, on TV, and in newspapers across the country.
The incident instantly became politicized. Just a few days after El Faro was lost, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida called a meeting with Tom Roth-Roffy and Jason Neubauer at El Yunque, docked in Jacksonville. The senator demanded answers. Why couldn’t they find El Faro? he asked. His questions seemed reasonable. How, he wanted to know, in the twenty-first century, when every idiot has a smart phone with GPS, can we lose a huge cargo ship?
Tom was accustomed to working with government operatives, investigators, and other officials, but not politicians. He told me that in his long career, he’d never witnessed a show of power like that.
Tom’s earnestness seems anachronistic in this era of political bombast, but it would make him the perfect foil for the corporate tripe spewed by TOTE’s executives and lawyers. In the case of El Faro, this small, unassuming man became something of a folk hero. That would ultimately lead to his undoing.
The NTSB and coast guard began compiling lists of people they wanted to talk to and documents they wanted to see. Without survivors, the lists were extensive; the inquiry was broad. They set up a conference room for interviews and began bringing people in—TOTE executives and employees, family members, former and current TOTE mariners, the coast guard’s search-and-rescue teams, pilots, marine inspectors, and naval architects. One by one, they told their tiny piece of the story. A story began to form about an outdated vessel and a shipping company in transition, but none of that would in itself sink a ship.
The most compelling leads were the brief conversations Davidson had had with Captain Lawrence’s voice mail and the emergen
cy operator. Something about a blown scuttle, a list, lost propulsion, dewatering. His words were put under a microscope, analyzed and reanalyzed, but that inquisition only led to more questions. Why was the ship there in the first place? And why did she sink?
It was clear: the investigators needed to get El Faro’s black box—the voyage data recorder, or VDR for short. The VDR had been bolted to the roof of El Faro’s wheelhouse, at the highest point of the ship. The newest VDRs are designed to break free and float in the event of an accident, but this one wasn’t.
That meant that the VDR was somewhere deep in the ocean off the coast of the Bahamas. The coast guard had an approximate location based on the ship’s last known position, the debris field, and the navy’s hydrophones, but that didn’t mean they could pinpoint it on a map. It was somewhere in a two-hundred-square-mile area, about forty miles east of San Salvador.
If they were going to find the ship, the investigators had to move quickly. El Faro’s VDR had been equipped with a pinger—a weak battery-powered beacon with a life span of about thirty days after activation. They had to get to the beacon before the battery died. Otherwise, finding the VDR could turn into a huge ordeal.
The NTSB had a member agreement with the navy to request help in locating wreckage or data recorders. The navy, for example, assisted in finding aircraft wreckage after TWA flight 800, a Boeing 747, exploded shortly after takeoff from New York’s JFK airport in 1996.
Search money was quickly approved by Congress with major support from Senator Jay Rockefeller, a champion of the American shipping industry.
On October 19, USNS Apache—a Powhatan class of tug—deployed out of Little Creek, Virginia, equipped with a suite of underwater detection equipment and a team of technical experts to run it. The crew’s mission: search nearly two hundred square miles of the sandy ocean bottom fifteen thousand feet below for a cargo ship.