On board were 28 crew members from the USA and five from Poland.
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According to the data, El Faro’s last best change to avoid the storm came at 5 p.m. September 30, when it sailed past the “Hole in the Wall”, a gap in the Bahamas archipelago that would have taken it toward Cuba.
“El Faro had lost propulsion, had taken on water and was listing at 15 degrees”, said NTSB Vice Chairman Bella Dinh-Zarr. “The drainage didn’t work well on the ship”.
“U.S. Coast Guard, U.S Navy, U.S. Air Force, and the Tote Maritime tug crews searched day and night, sometimes in perilous conditions with the hope of finding survivors in this tragic loss”. A survival suit was found Sunday with unidentifiable remains inside.
“May God bless the men and women of the El Faro”, it said.
Our focus has been on supporting and caring for the family members, loved ones, and friends of those aboard the El Faro. “It’s rusted everywhere”, Cash said.
She wondered why the company had not commissioned a submarine for a deep sea exploration to confirm whether the ship had sunk with its crew still aboard.
“Why they would have been in a position where the hurricane was is what is inexplicable”, Nelson said. “It seemed like they didn’t want to put any money into the ship”.
The ship’s former quartermaster, Kurt Bruer, was on the ship as recently as August and compared the 40-year-old boat to a 40-year-old vehicle.
The investigation will also look at when and why the engine failed, and if there were problems before the ship left port, she said. “And not do it with a storm coming that can potentially become a hurricane”. “I don’t think they have a choice”, said Mary Shevory of Brockton, Massachusetts.
The ship was 41 years old.
The company says it did not pressure the captain to ignore the storm to deliver cargo on time.
The shipping company said it trusted Davidson to make the right decision. Coast Guard records show it underwent its last inspection in March.
The captain, identified as Michael Davidson of Casco Bay, Maine, had conferred with the El Faro’s sister ship, which was returning to Jacksonville along a similar route, and determined the weather was good enough to go forward, Phil Greene, president and CEO of Tote Services Inc., said Monday.
Officials had broken the news to relatives of the missing earlier in the day.
By preparing to end its search at sunset, the Coast Guard all but confirmed family members’ worst fears – that all hands were lost. He said “it can go from calm, in a matter of five or six hours, to hell”.
Mitchell Kuflik, 26, a Maine Maritime Academy grad from Prospect Heights, was among the 33 people aboard the 790-foot cargo ship that stalled and sank October. 1 in 50-foot waves whipped up by the Category 4 storm.
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Assuming the device can be located, the National Transportation Safety Board will work with the Coast Guard, Navy and other agencies to devise a way to bring it up, likely using a robotic, remote-controlled submersible capable of diving great depths.
