El Faro’s last hours as ship sails into storm recounted
Transcripts reveal failed struggles to stay afloat as crew headed into hurricane
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Danielle Randolph squinted through rainsplattered 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. “Oh my God,” she said to the helmsman standing nearby, bracing when the ship she called “the rust bucket” shuddered over another wave.
“Can’t pound your way through them waves. Break the ship in half,” the helmsman said.
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. In the coming hours, El Faro and its crew would fight desperately for survival.
Another wave slammed into them The alarm sounded. The ship was now pushed in another direction, off the captain’s chosen course. After a few tense seconds, El Faro righted herself.
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. One Coast Guard inspector had identified a “disturbing” uptick in safety discrepancies during El Faro’s inspections from 2013 to 2014.
To add to the danger, El Faro was equipped with open-top lifeboats similar to those used on the Titanic or Lusitania. Modern ships carry the round, tent-like lifeboats with electronic beacons that dramatically increase survival chances in a shipwreck.
The storm had been growing, so Randolph suggested they consider taking a longer, slower route. But the captain had the final word on voyage planning, and he refused to deviate.
“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.”
“I thought so too. I’m surprised,” Randolph replied.
Randolph could not know exactly how hard the wind was blowing. El Faro’s anemometer, or wind gauge, had been broken for years. To adapt, the sailors usually stepped out on deck to gauge wind speed the old-fashioned way, by checking the flap of the boat’s flags. That was impossible in the dark.
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.” Stateroom captains didn’t get their hands dirty and weren’t seen a lot on deck.
On the bridge, he greeted Randolph’s replacement, chief mate Steve Shultz, and a new helmsman, Frank Hamm. He set out to calm their nerves.
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. They would have to steer the ship manually, to use their human senses to feel the swell and winds, as they piloted blindly into the waves.
Containers the size of Mack trucks were breaking free from their chain lashings. 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 cavernlike interior holds could be battled with pumps to redirect the water into other areas for balance. If the ship lost some of its 20-ton containers, he could use the pumps to help compensate for that, too.
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 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.
With the ship tilting and oil pressure decreasing, the captain decided to use the wind to force the ship more upright. If he could do that, he could get oil pressure back, and increase the ship’s power.
The ship dropped down a three-storytall swell.
The storm they now faced was far more advanced than his weather models showed. By overruling his crew’s suggested alternate routes, he had made a horrible mistake.
The phone rang with a call from the engine room. The ship was losing oil pressure, and needed to be righted now.
“I’m tryin’ to get her steadied up,” the captain replied.
Water surged over the ship’s stern, and the sound of the ocean pounding the old ship was deafening. Another electric 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 warehouse-sized holds. He ordered Shultz, 54,, 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. Shultz radioed from down below, in the flooded cargo chamber. “About knee deep in here,” he said. At 6 a.m., Randolph came back to the bridge from her stateroom.
She moved over to the dead radar screen. After a few minutes, the radar fluttered and suddenly blinked back to life. He ordered Randolph to sync the latest weather models with their position, still not realizing the data was hours old, and useless.
Shultz called from the flooded hold again. He wanted the bridge to move the ship so the water below would shift to the other side.
All at once, a terrifying silence gripped them. The rumble and vibration of ship’s engines ceased. El Faro was adrift.
Somehow, Davidson needed to balance the ship — an almost impossible feat without propulsion.
Down below, the whirring pumps continued to push thousands of gallons a minute from the flooded holds. Up top, everyone had to use their leg muscles to stay standing on the angling ship.
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 call went to voicemail.
Davidson rattled out a brief message, then called the company’s answering service.
TOTE safety officials had identified the answering service as a problem previously, but it had not been fixed.
“The clock is ticking” the captain said, his voice calm despite the chaos. He tried again. “This is a marine emergency, and I am tryin’ to also notify management!” He gave the operator his name and number and hung up.
Electronic alarms echoed throughout the steel freighter. Randolph read out their current position.
The satellite phone rang, it was his boss. “Yeah, I’m real good,” Davidson said. “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 . ... ” 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.”
“Wake everybody up. WAKE ’EM UP!” Davidson shouted. “We’re gonna be good. We’re gonna make it right here.”
Davidson’s voice sounded over the ship’s intercom ordering the crew to muster. He wanted everyone accounted for. The high-frequency bell of the abandon ship alarm rang out.
“Bow is down. Bow is down,” Davidson said over the ship intercom.
The shrill beat of alarms continued as the ship’s tilt worsened.
It would be months before search crews found the wreckage. El Faro had come to rest 15,000 feet down, on the seafloor near the Bahamas. The bridge where Hamm and Davidson struggled for survival 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.