An imperfect storm
Confluence of conditions doomed El Faro freighter caught in 2015 hurricane
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Danielle Randolph squinted through rain-splattered windows as the sea freighter lunged upward sharply, then fell into the trough of a 30-foot-tall wave. The skies were black. The second mate stood on the navigation bridge high above El Faro’s main deck, which spread out before her like an aircraft carrier stacked high with red, white and blue cargo containers.
News blurted through the bridge’s radio speaker: Forecasters had named the storm Hurricane Joaquin as it built into a Category 3, with winds of 130 mph.
It was 1:15 a.m. on Oct. 1, 2015, and the Atlantic was boiling over. El Faro, sailing near San Salvador Island in the Bahamas, was being knocked about by the strongest October storm to hit these waters since 1866.
El Faro was one of two ships owned by TOTE Maritime Inc. that navigated in constant rotation between Jacksonville, Fla., and San Juan, Puerto Rico. This run was to be El Faro’s last before a major retrofit. Inspectors had found parts of the vessel’s boilers that had “deteriorated severely” and service was scheduled in the next month. The Coast Guard was in the process of adding the 40-year-old ship to its “target list” of U.S. cargo vessels that needed a higher level of scrutiny.
To add to the danger, El Faro was equipped only with open-top lifeboats like those on the Titanic or Lusitania.
Randolph had a cordial relationship with the captain of El Faro. She respected him, but told her mother and friends she didn’t like his dismissive attitude. The storm had been growing, so Randolph suggested they consider taking a longer, slower route south through the Old Bahama Channel. But the captain had the final word on voyage planning, and he refused to deviate.
She’d noticed the captain was sound asleep when she’d called. It rang a few times before he answered. The ship was taking a beating, she’d said, but was holding course. The captain asked about the latest weather reports. He would return to the bridge in a few hours.
“He said to run it,” Randolph shouted.
“Figured the captain would be up here,” the helmsman said. Microphones on the bridge picked up their conversations, which were sent to a voyage data recorder, the ship’s “black box.”
“It would help if I knew which direction the swell was coming from,” Randolph said to the helmsman. “I could alter course a little more. I can’t see.” They heard a massive thump from below, in the bowels of the ship. .
Randolph could not know how hard the wind was blowing. El Faro’s anemometer, or wind gauge, had been broken for years. Randolph scanned the radar for a fellow vessel in the area, but every other ship had diverted. El Faro was alone.
At 3:34 a.m. the captain emerged from his stateroom. Randolph greeted him, grateful for the chance to go down to her room for a quick rest.
El Faro’s captain was a meticulous master who struck a commanding presence. Yet Michael Davidson’s detached, hands-off style led Randolph and some others to describe the 53-year-old master as a “stateroom captain.”
On the bridge, he greeted Randolph’s replacement, chief mate Steve Shultz, and a new helmsman, Frank Hamm, who had graduated from Woodlawn High School in 1984. He had moved to Florida but had family and friends in Maryland.
Earlier in his career Davidson had navigated freighters in the Alaska trade, known in the industry as one of the most bruising theaters of sailing. But his leadership had been questioned by TOTE’s upper management, and after initially leaning toward offering Davidson the job heading one of its new ships the company decided to go in a different direction.
Before leaving port in Jacksonville, Davidson expressed disappointment that he hadn’t been chosen to command the modern ship that was to replace El Faro. The captain had been disappointed, but he was a professional. Perhaps he thought he could show them that they’d made a mistake by making El Faro’s cargo run on time, even with a major storm in his way.
The course alarm, which blared every time the ship deviated from its programmed route, was now ringing every few seconds as the seas flung the vessel around. The captain ordered it turned off, along with the auto-piloting system, nicknamed the “Iron Mike.” They would have to steer the ship manually, to use their human senses to feel the swell and winds.
Containers the size of Mack trucks were breaking free from their chain lashings. Now, thrown off balance, El Faro tilted precariously to the right, or starboard, as it plunged into the pounding waves.
Unsure why his boat was listing, the captain searched for a solution. The steep angling of the ship was making it hard to stand up straight. If he knew the hurricane-force wind’s direction — difficult to detect at night in a hurricane with a broken wind gauge — the helmsman could position the freighter so that the wind hit its left, port side, correcting the vessel’s pitch. Flooding in the cavern-like interior holds could be battled with pumps to redirect the water into other areas for balance.
None of that mattered without power, though. The captain called down to the engine room to check that the ship’s boilers, its only source of power, were still operational. Without propulsion in a Category 3 storm, El Faro would be lost.
“How you guys doing down there?” he asked. The engineer replied that they were “blowin’ tubes,” or trying to remove obstructions from the engine as it chugged. There was another problem: the intake tube that sucked oil like a straw from a large tank into the engines was starting to lose contact with the oil due to the ship’s tilt. Without oil, the engines would stop running altogether.
Standing with the captain on the bridge, chief mate Shultz noted the barometer readings were headed downward, which could indicate they were closer to Joaquin’s eye. That ran counter to the storm track models Davidson had used — those showed the storm farther away. He still planned to outrun it.
With the ship tilting and oil pressure decreasing, the captain decided to use the wind to force the ship upright. If he could do that, he could get oil pressure back, and increase power.
Davidson turned quickly to the ship’s computer. He needed to check the Bon Voyage System, or BVS, an online subscription weather forecasting tool, to get the latest hard data on Joaquin.
The captain grew confused. Though the forecasting tool told him the storm was still farther north, clearly they were right in it. Davidson didn’t know that there was a problem with the BVS system emails he was receiving: One update he’d received had storm tracking information that was 21 hours old.
“Our biggest enemy here right now is we can’t see,” he said. He believed they were nearing the back side of the storm, but had no way of knowing for sure. By overruling his crew’s suggested alternate routes, he had made a horrible mistake.
An engineer from below deck appeared on the bridge. Something wasn’t right. “I’ve never seen it list like this,” the engineer reported. El Faro’s steep list was not just from sliding shipping containers, the engineer reasoned — something else was to blame.
The phone rang with a call from the engine room. The ship was losing oil pressure, and needed to be righted.
“I’m tryin’ to get her steadied up,” the captain replied.
Water surged over the stern, and the sound of the ocean pounding the ship was deafening. Another ring of the telephone. Davidson answered, “Bridge, captain.”
A moment passed and he turned to his chief mate: “We got a prrroooblem.”
Water had started flooding one of the ship’s warehousesized holds used to store cars and other large containers. He ordered Shultz, a 54-yearold former Navy captain and seasoned mariner, below deck immediately to start pumping out the hold.
The captain took the ship’s helm from Hamm. With water flooding into El Faro’s insides, he knew why he’d been unable to right the ship. He turned the steering wheel hard, trying to use the wind again — anything to decrease the ship’s angle.
At 6 a.m., Randolph came back to the bridge from her stateroom. She’d changed out of her work clothes, and hadn’t changed back before coming up.
She moved over to the dead radar screen — it had gone dark, maybe from water coming through a gap in one of the bridge’s windows — to try and get the ship’s current position. After a few minutes, the radar fluttered and suddenly blinked back to life. “All right, good,” the captain said. He ordered Randolph to sync the latest BVS weather models with their current position, still not realizing the data was hours old, and useless.
All at once, a terrifying silence gripped them. The rumble and vibration of ship’s engines ceased. El Faro was adrift.
“I think we just lost the plant,” Davidson said.
Somehow, he needed to balance the ship — an almost impossible feat without propulsion.
Just after 7 a.m., Davidson picked up the ship’s emergency satellite phone. He dialed the cellphone number of TOTE’s designated person ashore, the only human in charge of knowing what was going on with the fleet.
The call went to voicemail.
Davidson rattled out a brief message, then called the company’s answering service. A woman picked up with a pleasant hello.
“We had a hull breach; a scuttle blew open during a storm,” Davidson explained tersely. “We have water down in three hold, with a heavy list. We’ve lost the main propulsion unit, the engineers cannot get it going.” He asked for her to patch him through to a TOTE official immediately.
TOTE safety officials had identified the answering service as a problem previously, but it had not been fixed.
Electronic alarms echoed throughout the steel freighter. Randolph read out their current position. The captain called down to the flooding hold. “Can you tell if it’s decreasing or increasing?” he asked. “I can’t tell captain. Seems as if it’s goin’ down,” the chief mate replied.
The satellite phone rang, it was his boss. “Yeah, I’m real good,” Davidson said matter-of-factly. “Three hold’s got considerable amount of water in it. Uh, we have a very, very healthy port list. The engineers cannot get lube oil pressure on the plant, therefore we’ve got no main engine. And let me give you, um, a latitude and longitude. I just wanted to give you a heads up before I push that, push that button,” he said, referring to the Ship Security Alert System, or SSAS, an emergency beacon. It was 7:07 a.m.
“The crew is safe,” he said into the phone. “Right now we’re tryin’ to save the ship. But it’s not gettin’ any better. No one’s panicking. Our safest bet is to stay with the ship during this particular time. The weather is ferocious out here.” Davidson told his boss it was time to alert the Coast Guard. “I just wanted to give you that courtesy, so you wouldn’t be blindsided by it,” he said. “Everybody’s safe right now, we’re in survival mode.”
Randolph stood at the ready. “All right now, push the SSAS button,” he commanded. “Roger,” she said. “Wake everybody up. WAKE ’EM UP!” Davidson shouted. “We’re gonna be good. We’re gonna make it right here.”
Davidson’s tinny voice sounded over the ship’s intercom ordering the crew to muster. He wanted everyone accounted for.
Then the high-frequency bell of the abandon ship alarm rang out.
“Can I get my vest?” Randolph asked.
“Yup, bring mine up too and bring one for (Frank)” the captain replied. The helmsman, a large man and diabetic, yelled out as Randolph left the bridge: “I need two!”
The ship heaved, the tip of its bow sinking beneath the black water.
“Bow is down. Bow is down,” Davidson said over the ship intercom.
“Get into your rafts,” he yelled. “Everybody. EVERYBODY GET OFF THE SHIP! STAY TOGETHER!” he screamed.
Hamm was unable to move. “Cap, Cap,” he said.
“You gotta get up,” Davidson ordered. “You gotta snap out of it and we gotta get out!” he said, his voice firm, urgent.
“Help me!” Hamm pleaded.
“Ya gotta get to safety!” the captain yelped. Hamm couldn’t move.
The shrill beat of alarms continued as the ship’s tilt worsened.
The captain reached for Hamm. “Don’t panic. Don’t panic,” he said. “Work your way up here. Don’t freeze up! Follow me,” he pleaded with Hamm.
“I can’t! My feet are slipping! I’m goin’ down!”
Davidson looked at his terrified helmsman. “You’re not goin’ down. COME ON!” he yelled.
El Faro’s bridge reared up as the ship sank deeper.
“IT’S TIME TO COME THIS WAY!” Davidson shouted, as El Faro slipped beneath the sea.
It would be months before search crews found the wreckage, 15,000 feet down on the seafloor near the Bahamas. The bridge where Hamm and Davidson struggled had separated from the vessel’s hull, and lay a quarter mile away.
No bodies were ever recovered.
It was the worst maritime disaster for a U.S.flagged vessel since 1983.
The U.S. Coast Guard has held six weeks of investigative hearings over the past year, and the National Transportation Safety Board is conducting its own probe. Both agencies are expected to issue findings later this year.
TOTE defended its safety record, and emphasized that El Faro was permitted to operate by the Coast Guard despite the issues flagged by inspectors. The company also said it had been working on fixing the problems with its emergency answering service, but had not gotten to it before El Faro’s voyage. It now is paying for a more expensive storm forecasting tool for its entire fleet.