Jeffrey Mathias, a Kingston resident and a member of the church, was on board the El Faro.
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It has emerged that the Poles were not officially members of the El Faro crew, but were acting as supporting crew-members. A notification that the vessel was in distress was received by the US Coast Guard that day, but no further contact was made.
(Will Dickey/The Florida Times-Union via AP).
“May God bless the men and women of the El Faro”, it said.
Federal investigators have called off the search for a large cargo ship that may now lie at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
The US Coast Guard said Wednesday it will suspend its search for survivors of “El Faro”, a cargo ship believed to have sunk during Hurricane Joaquin with 33 crew aboard. It was inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard in March and by the American Bureau of Shipping in February. Mariners – commercial or otherwise – are all part of an extended family, he explained.
Forces have been searching for the 28 American and five Polish crew members onboard the vessel for the past six days.
“They did all they could in this search effort… our crews and aircrafts flew repeatedly into that storm”, Coast Guard Captain Mark Fedor said on Wednesday.
Even before the announcement, hopes of finding anyone alive were fading. In fact, her boyfriend, Dylan Meklin, was aboard the ship, according to CNN affiliate WMTW and the Portland Press Herald. And there’s no questioning the outcome of that.
The investigation will also look at when and why the engine failed, and if there were problems before the ship left port, she said. “I hope the families can take a few measure of peace from that”.
She said the probe promised to be hard given that the ship sank in an unknown location, possibly in 15,000-feet deep waters. A survival suit is created to keep the occupant afloat while protecting the person from hypothermia.
Among the questions that have been raised: What caused the ship to lose power? The ship was considered rugged and had been retrofitted as recently as 2006 but at 40 years old had been at sea double a standard service life.
The voyage data recorder collects all audio from the bridge-the room where the captain drives the ship-as well as basic navigational elements like course and speed. Generally the recorders retain information from the 12 hours before they enter the water.
The investigation team with the National Transportation Safety Board plans to stay in Jacksonville for as long as possible.
The investigation is focusing on the last communications between El Faro’s captain, Michael Davidson, and the firm that owned the ship, TOTE maritime Puerto Rico, with the aim of determining why the vessel entered the hurricane’s zone of influence.
NTSB officials have said a probe may take months to complete.
Hope was fading among family members that survivors might be found.
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“Murphy said that one of the academy’s graduates was aboard the ship”. “And not do it with a storm coming that can potentially become a hurricane”.
