by Rachel Slade
El Faro’s VDR, for example, was inspected by an external specialist on behalf of ABS. He overlooked the fact that the battery that powered El Faro’s VDR’s location pinger would expire in a few months and gave it a pass. By October 2015, it was dead.
Corporations may always fight for deregulation (euphemistically known as small government). And taxpayers will always pick up the bill. It’s incredible to think that all the money the government and TOTE “saved” by cutting corners over the years was spent many times over following the accident—first to finance the massive search-and-rescue effort and then to cover the cost of the three VDR recovery missions, which alone totaled more than $3 million. Not to mention the countless hours the US Coast Guard and the NTSB devoted to investigating the sinking. And, most importantly, the deaths of thirty-three men and women—people who were only doing their jobs—and the immeasurable suffering of those who loved them.
It’s the same twisted math that prevents us from investing in renewable infrastructure while committing billions of tax dollars to subsidize America’s petroleum industry.
WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, I WAS TAUGHT THAT HISTORY WAS LINEAR. THAT we were on a great, sweeping march toward some grand and glorious future. I learned that our language, culture, and science continually build on the depth and breadth of acquired knowledge—our marvelous birthright.
The story of El Faro contradicts that linear narrative. In 2015, an American cargo ship ended up at the bottom of the sea, taking thirty-three people with her. It was the deadliest American maritime disaster since World War II. With all our sophisticated technology, how could an accident of this magnitude happen?
The tragic loss of El Faro and her crew serves as a dire warning against complacency.
Humankind may chart a noble course but progress, like every voyage, requires strong situational awareness and a vigilant helmsman.
Crew List
In memoriam of the El Faro 33
Louis Champa Jr. (Daytona Beach, Florida), Qualified Member of the Engine Department, 51
Roosevelt Clark (Jacksonville, Florida), Utility Person, 38
Sylvester Crawford Jr. (Lawrenceville, Georgia), 40
Michael Davidson (Windham, Maine), Captain, 53
Larry “Brookie” Davis (Jacksonville, Florida), Able Seaman, 63
Keith Griffin (Fort Myers, Florida), First Assistant Engineer, 33
Frank Hamm (Jacksonville, Florida), Able Seaman, 49
Joe Hargrove (Orange Park, Florida), Oiler, 65
Carey Hatch (Jacksonville, Florida), Able Seaman, 49
Michael Holland (North Wilton, Maine), Third Assistant Engineer, 25
Jack Jackson (Jacksonville, Florida), Able Seaman, 60
Jackie Jones, (Jr. Jacksonville, Florida), Able Seaman, 38
Lonnie Jordan (Jacksonville, Florida), Messman, 35
Piotr Krause (Poland), Riding Crew, 27
Mitchell Kuflik (Brooklyn, New York), Third Assistant Engineer, 26
Roan Lightfoot (Jacksonville Beach, Florida), Bosun, 54
Jeffrey Mathias (Kingston, Massachusetts), Riding Crew Supervisor, 42
Dylan Meklin (Rockland, Maine), Third Assistant Engineer, 23
Marcin Nita (Poland), Riding Crew, 34
Jan Podgorski (Poland), Riding Crew, 43
James Porter (Jacksonville, Florida), Utility Person, 40
Richard Pusatere (Virginia Beach, Virginia), Chief Engineer, 34
Theodore Quammie (Jacksonville, Florida), Steward, 46
Danielle Randolph (Rockland, Maine), Second Mate, 32
Jeremie Riehm (Camden, Delaware), Third Mate, 51
LaShawn Rivera (Jacksonville, Florida), Chief Cook, 54
Howard Schoenly (Cape Coral, Florida), Second Assistant Engineer, 51
Steven Shultz (Roan Mountain, Tennessee), Chief Mate, 54
German Solar-Cortes (Orlando, Florida), Oiler, 51
Anthony Thomas (Jacksonville, Florida), Oiler, 47
Andrzej Truszkowski (Poland), Riding Crew, 51
Mariette Wright (St. Augustine, Florida/Brockton, MA), Utility Person, 51
Rafal Zdobych (Poland), Riding Crew, 42
Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written without the help of countless people—from those who recorded the history of shipping over the centuries, to friends, mariners, and families directly affected by the loss of El Faro. Many of these people were named in the book, but some were not.
Paul Haley, a former chief mate of El Morro, told me hundreds of stories about the seaman’s life. A native Mainer, Haley first signed up with the US Merchant Marine in the 1970s and spent the final sixteen years of his career at TOTE. His tales gave me insight into the plight of the American mariner while slowly revealing an industry in crisis. During Hurricane Joaquin, Haley was in constant contact with Second Mate Charlie Baird tracking El Faro. Since she was lost, he, like so many mariners around the world, carries a heaviness in his heart.
Every morning, the first email I read was the GCaptain newsletter, created by the innovative Captain John Konrad. An insightful compendium of global maritime news, GCaptain is necessary reading for people reporting on the industry. The online forum accompanying his news site provides a place for mariners to speak frankly about the problems of working at sea. It is a unifying force in a fractured field.
I cannot thank the US Coast Guard’s team of media specialists enough for their assistance. Spokeswoman Alana Miller at DC headquarters was committed to transparency; she strived to make information about the Marine Board investigation accessible and made sure all of the Jacksonville hearings were available via LiveStream so that family and friends could follow along. Her colleagues in Florida—Lieutenant Rachel Post and Lieutenant Commander Ryan Kelley—as well as Chief Warrant Officer Paul Roszkowski in Los Angeles at the Motion Picture and Television Liaison Office were equally generous with their time, support, and dedication to accurate reporting.
Peter Knudson, the public affairs officer at the National Transportation Safety Board, not only spent an entire day listening to me interview half a dozen NTSB investigators, he also saved me from the labyrinth of the federal government morass known as L’Enfant Plaza.
Maritime lawyer Chris Hug helped me navigate the complexities of admiralty law, and when he didn’t have an answer for me, he always found someone who did, connecting me with Boston’s small, tight-knit maritime attorney community, a remnant of a once-robust industry.
Deborah Moulton put her trust in me and encouraged Charlie Baird to open up about his experiences aboard El Faro. They both offered invaluable insights into the shipping world, and that made all the difference.
Mary Bryson welcomed me into her Jacksonville home while I was attending the hearings and accompanying her husband, Eric, on piloting excursions. I will never forget her kindness and her discriminating taste in cats.
It was a pleasure working with retired Navy and Army officer Michael Carr, a knowledgeable and sensitive truth-seeker who relentlessly analyzed the Marine Board hearings and shared his thoughtful conclusions with a wide range of journalists, mariners, and members of the military.
Author Robert Frump, who wrote the definitive story of the Marine Electric tragedy, generously offered his encouragement and insights. Bob is a true investigative journalist and his book, Until the Sea Shall Free Them, is required reading for anyone interested in the ongoing struggle between capitalism, regulation, and those who make their living on American ships.
To better understand life at sea, I took a Grimaldi car carrier/container ship from Italy to Baltimore in July 2017 with Captain Francesco Rago of the Italian merchant marine. A careful mariner and natural leader, Francesco revealed to this writer the subtle art of mastering a ship.
Mel Allen, editor of Yankee magazine, was an early believer in my ability to tell this story. I first pitched him the El Faro tragedy from the perspective of the Maine-based families of the lost mariners and Mel agreed to take a chance on me. Without his ini
tial support, this book would not exist.
Boston magazine editor Chris Vogel gave me wide berth to investigate the El Faro story while I was working at the magazine. In the few years we worked together, I learned a tremendous amount about story structure from Chris.
I never really understood the adage “a friend in need” until I approached Hillary Rayport and Anupreeta Das, two incredibly smart women who willingly subjected themselves to a long slog through an unedited, deeply flawed rough draft of this book.
Many thanks to my agent, David Patterson, of Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, who took on this first-time author and found me the indomitable Denise Oswald, my fiercely dedicated editor at Ecco/HarperCollins. She was a tireless advocate of this project from the moment we met.
Finally, Sean Slade left me alone when I needed solitude and engaged when I needed his incomparable wisdom.
A Note on Sources
In researching this book, I was fortunate to have access to a wealth of information made public by the NTSB and US Coast Guard during their investigation of the El Faro tragedy. After the disappearance of the ship, the NTSB and US Coast Guard jointly interviewed dozens of family members of the lost mariners, TOTE executives and employees, coast guard officers involved in the search and rescue effort, and maritime industry experts—conversations which were then transcribed and made public. The Marine Board of Investigation re-interviewed many of these witnesses, as well as additional experts and mariners, during the three two-week public hearings held in Jacksonville in 2016 and 2017, many of which I attended. When I couldn’t be there in person, I followed the hearings via Livestream. All of these hearings were transcribed by the US Coast Guard and made public.
Later in 2017, the NTSB issued several chairman’s reports summarizing the facts of the case as they understood them. These included research on meteorology, survivability, engineering, electronic data, naval architecture, and human factors. The NTSB also painstakingly transcribed the twenty-six hours of recordings on the VDR and uploaded that five-hundred-page document on its website. (The audio was not made public.) These reports, plus supporting documentation, proved invaluable to me. Both the NTSB and the coast guard issued final reports of their findings and recommendations at the end of 2017, available to the public.
In addition, I personally interviewed dozens of key witnesses, family members, TOTE mariners, members of the coast guard and NTSB, and maritime experts involved in the case, traveling from Maine to Washington, DC, to New Orleans to Florida.
I’ve met some ships, too. Over two frigid but memorable days in the spring of 2017, I interviewed former NTSB Investigator Tom Roth-Roffy on SUNY Maritime College’s training ship Empire State (a steamship built in 1961) in Fort Schuyler, New York. Maine Maritime Academy was kind enough to allow me to tour their training ship State of Maine (a diesel ship launched in 1989), docked in Castine, Maine. I traveled with Commanders Mike Venturella and Mike Odom of the US Coast Guard to Philadelphia to tour SS Wright (formerly SS Mormacsun) a cargo steamship built in 1968, now owned by the American government and operated by Crowley Maritime. The car carrier/cargo ship Grande Congo, a diesel vessel built in 2010 for Grimaldi Group, was my home for twelve days in the summer of 2017.
Maritime history is well documented and several excellent books have been published on the subject. I am grateful for the impressive scholarship found in the following works: The Way of the Ship: America’s Maritime History Reeinvisioned, 1600–2000, by Alex Roland, W. Jeffrey Bolster, and Alexander Keyssar; The Sea & Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine; The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783–1860 by Samuel Eliot Morison; The Forgotten Heroes: The Heroic Story of the United States Merchant Marine by Brian Herbert; Until the Sea Shall Free Them: Life, Death and Survival in the Merchant Marine by Robert Frump; America and the Sea: A Maritime History by Benjamin W. Labaree, William M. Fowler Jr., John B. Hattendorf, Jeffrey J. Safford, Edward W. Sloan, and Andrew W. German; and an obscure out of print volume published in 1958, The Maritime Story: A Study in Labor-Management Relations by Joseph P. Goldberg. And for anyone who still harbors a romantic view of the age of sail, Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr. will disabuse you of that notion.
Index
The pagination of this digital edition does not match the print edition from which the index was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your ebook reader’s search tools.
ABS. See American Bureau of Shipping
Act for Registering and Clearing Vessels, Regulating the Coasting Trade, and for Other Purposes, An, 139
Acts of Trade and Navigation, 138
Africa, 34
Air Station Clearwater, FL, 217, 218–19, 220, 226, 241, 248
Air Station Elizabeth City, NC, 248
AIS. See automatic identification system
Alaska, 35, 67, 94, 96, 116, 124, 171, 234, 286, 320, 357
Alaska (ship), 233
Alternate Compliance Program (USCG), 362
American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), 174, 262, 314, 360–62
coast guard reviews of cases, 361–62
conflicts of interest in, 361
founding and purpose of, 255
increased responsibilities and influence of, 259
Marine Electric case and, 260–61, 360
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 92
American Maritime Officers (AMO) union, 39, 256, 290
American Practical Navigator, The (Bowditch), 72
“American Practical Navigator HO Pub. #9, The,” 302
American Revolution, 138
American Shipping Group, 323
AMO. See American Maritime Officers union
Amoo, Kwesi, 101–2
Andrea Gail (ship), 233
Andrews, Josh, 221, 225, 226–27
Andros Island, 206
anemometers, 72–73, 178, 187
Apache (tug), 269–75, 311–13, 317, 331–33
Archimedes (ship), 129
Armstrong, Jimmy, 32
Atlantic Area command center (USCG), 206–8
Atlantic Ocean, high temperature of, 53, 107, 126
Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC), 5
Atlantis (research vessel), 315, 318
authority of captain. See captain, authority of
automatic identification system (AIS), 211, 213
Axelsson, Eric, 120, 131
baffles, 282
Bahamas, 19, 20, 21, 108, 203, 245
Columbus’s voyage to, 44
described, 22–23
Baird, Charlie, 24, 32, 38, 41, 54–55
background of, 55
Davidson texted by, 55, 57–58
El Faro tracked by, 78–79
Baltic Sea, 91
Bank of the United States, 139
Beaufort scale, 126
Beisner, Kimberly, 114
Benjamin Franklin (ship), 12
Bernoulli’s equation, 197
black box of El Faro. See voyage data recorder
black sailors, 124–25, 256
block coefficient, 296
blood money, 256
Bobillot, Laurie, 63, 237, 238–39, 267
Bon Voyage System (BVS), 20–22, 70–71, 101–2, 123, 126, 129–30, 157
described, 20–21
inaccurate information on, 22, 106–7, 108, 166, 181–82, 185–86
lawsuit against company owning, 357
Riehm’s questioning of data on, 147–48, 153, 160, 162
Bounty (ship), 65, 260
Bowditch, Nathaniel, 72
Bryson, Eric, 7–18
author’s piloting trip with, 10–11
family of, 8
GPS system of, 16, 18
nickname of, 8
on-the-job accidents of, 9, 11
bunker fuel, 115–16, 148
buoyancy, 128, 314
Busalacchi, Antonio, 354
Buschman, Scott, 266–67
Bush,
George W., 258–59
Buys Ballot’s Law, 72–73, 102, 360
BVS. See Bon Voyage System
C-130 (described), 245
cables, underwater, 30
cabotage laws, 139
Callahan, Steven, 244
Canary Islands, 44, 49
captain, authority of, 112, 113, 122–24, 129–33
Card, James, 355
cargo, 7, 37
annual losses of, 25
breaking loose of, 165, 182, 196–97
danger of shifting, 25–26
increase in, 37, 171–76
plummeting prices of, 34
CargoMax, 172–73
Caribbean, 49, 51
Carlyle Group, 175
Carnegie, Andrew, 83
Casco Bay Lines, 112, 113
Castine, 62
Category 3 hurricanes, 33, 147, 164, 165, 215
Category 4 hurricanes, 212, 219, 241, 245
Category 5 hurricanes, 51, 53, 351
CCTV cameras, 359
Champa, Louis, 285
Champa, Val, 285
Chancery, Matthew, 203–14
attempts to locate El Faro, 210–14
background of, 203–4
conversation with Lawrence, 209–10, 220, 309
learns of El Faro distress alerts, 206–8
psychological toll of job, 205
Chester Sun (tanker), 84
China, 95, 137
Churchill, Winston, 141
CIA, 85, 95, 278
Civil Rights Act of 1964, 124
Civil War, 83, 87, 254
Coast Guard, US, 266, 268, 354–60
ABS cases reviewed by, 361–62
aircraft warning by, 99
Air Station Clearwater, 217, 218–19, 220, 226, 241, 248
Air Station Elizabeth City, 248
Alternate Compliance Program, 362
Atlantic Area command center, 206–8
budget cuts proposed for, 354–55
conflicting masters and allegiances in, 258–59