On the evening of September 29, 2015, the American cargo ship SS El Faro sailed from Jacksonville, Florida, on her regular run to San Juan, Puerto Rico, with 33 people aboard — 28 American mariners and five Polish contract repair workers. Ahead of her, east of the Bahamas, Tropical Storm Joaquin was strengthening into a hurricane. Over the following day the storm intensified, and El Faro’s master, Captain Michael Davidson, held a course that took the 40-year-old ship ever closer to its centre, working from weather information that lagged hours behind the National Hurricane Center’s forecasts.
In the early hours of October 1, in hurricane winds and heavy seas some 40 nautical miles northeast of Crooked Island, El Faro took on a heavy list. Seawater entered a cargo hold through an open scuttle, vehicles that had broken loose damaged piping, and flooding spread. The list, combined with a low level of lubricating oil in the main engine’s sump, starved the engine of oil pressure, and at about 6 a.m. the ship lost propulsion and lay beam-on to the storm. Downflooding through unsecured openings followed. Davidson reported the emergency to his company and ordered the crew to abandon ship only minutes before El Faro sank, at about 7:40 a.m. All 33 aboard were lost.
The wreck was located on October 31, 2015, lying in some 15,000 feet of water. The ship’s voyage data recorder — her black box — was recovered in August 2016 and gave investigators more than 26 hours of bridge recordings from the final voyage.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of the sinking was the captain’s insufficient action to avoid Hurricane Joaquin, his failure to use the most current weather information, and his late decision to muster the crew. Contributing were ineffective bridge resource management aboard the ship — Davidson had not acted on his officers’ suggestions to alter course — and TOTE’s inadequate oversight and safety management system. The flooding through the undetected open scuttle, the loss of propulsion from low oil pressure in a listed ship, and downflooding through unsecured ventilation closures completed the chain.
The Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation, reporting in September 2017, likewise placed the master’s decision to navigate too close to the hurricane at the centre of the casualty, and found that TOTE had not identified heavy weather as a risk in its safety management system; it also called for an urgent overhaul of the Coast Guard’s own oversight of older US-flag ships. Between them, the two inquiries issued dozens of safety recommendations — among them enclosed lifeboats in place of El Faro’s open boats, float-free and longer-lasting voyage recorders, and current weather information on the bridge.
Download the NTSB Report (29 MB file)
Download the Coast Guard Marine Board Report (16 MB file)