SS El Faro

The Vessel

SS El Faro was an American-flagged roll-on/roll-off container ship, 224 metres long, 31,515 gross tons, built at Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1975 as the Puerto Rico. She was refitted through successive owners and renamed in 2006 when acquired by TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico, which operated her on the Jacksonville-San Juan and Jacksonville-Anchorage routes. She was one of the oldest container ships still in American-flag service and had been scheduled for replacement by the TOTE Maritime Marlin-class in 2016, which would have retired her that spring.

She was a conventional steam-turbine ship with two boilers driving a single shaft, an architecture superseded commercially by diesel propulsion in the 1980s but retained in American-flag service because of Jones Act protection and because TOTE's Jacksonville-San Juan operation had a 40-year-old system of spares and crews geared specifically to steam. Her last Coast Guard dry-dock inspection before her final voyage had been conducted in February 2015. Her operating certificate was current.

Her master, Captain Michael Davidson, 53, a Maine Maritime Academy graduate, had been in command of her since 2010. He had twenty years of deep-sea experience and a reputation for prudent navigation. His officers for the voyage of 29 September 2015 included Chief Mate Steven Shultz (54), a 34-year merchant marine veteran; Second Mate Danielle Randolph (34); Third Mate Jeremie Riehm (46). The crew of 33 totalled 32 Americans and one Polish deck cadet, Mariusz Krysztofik.

The Voyage

She left Jacksonville at 20:10 on 29 September 2015 bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico, with 391 containers on deck, 294 cars and trailers on her vehicle deck, and fuel and cargo valued at approximately $42 million. The National Hurricane Center had issued its first advisory on Tropical Storm Joaquin at 11:00 that morning, describing a system southwest of Bermuda that was expected to weaken and recurve east. The advisory was upgraded through the afternoon as the system unexpectedly developed into a Category 1 hurricane.

Captain Davidson consulted the available forecasts through the evening. The options on his bridge console were the BVS routeing service (a TOTE-subscribed commercial weather product) and the NOAA/NHC public bulletins. The BVS forecast as of his 20:00 departure showed Joaquin tracking north-northeast, an assessment based on a weather model that proved to be eighteen hours behind the actual storm. The NHC public bulletin showed Joaquin's intensity increasing and trajectory uncertain. Davidson elected, on the basis of the BVS routeing, to sail his normal Atlantic track through the Old Bahama Channel, which he believed would place El Faro west of Joaquin's predicted track by 50 miles.

Through the next 24 hours Joaquin intensified more rapidly than any operational model had predicted. It turned south, not north. By dawn on 1 October 2015, El Faro was steaming into the western eyewall of a Category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds of 120 knots and seas of 15 metres. She was taking water into her #3 cargo hold through unsecured fire ports, and her two steam boilers were working at the edge of their capacity against a port-side list that had developed through the night. She was still 36 nautical miles off Crooked Island.

The Disaster

Captain Davidson authorised an emergency call to TOTE's Jacksonville operations centre at 07:06 on 1 October 2015. He reported the ship's position, his storm situation, a 15-degree port list, and a flood in her #3 hold. He requested immediate Coast Guard assistance. TOTE's duty officer, unable to reach the designated person on call, logged the call at 07:08 and did not immediately initiate a distress response. El Faro's Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) activated at 07:29. Her signal was received by Coast Guard Sector Jacksonville at 07:30 and identified at 07:36 as belonging to El Faro.

Between 07:30 and 07:39 the ship's bridge recording captured its final moments. Captain Davidson ordered the crew to prepare to abandon ship; he ordered the second mate to make the ship's loudspeaker announcement. Random fragments of the following nine minutes were recorded: Randolph's voice urging Davidson to stay on the bridge, Krysztofik's voice in Polish praying, the captain's voice giving a final rudder order, the second mate's voice saying "I can't." At 07:39 the VDR stopped recording. The ship had capsized and sunk.

All 33 aboard died. No survivors were found in the week-long Coast Guard search. A single unidentified body was recovered on 4 October in a survival suit; no other bodies were recovered, and forensic analysis was inconclusive. The full complement went to the bottom with the ship.

The Legacy

The Voyage Data Recorder of El Faro was recovered by the U.S. Navy in August 2016 from a depth of 4,572 metres, making it the deepest data recorder recovery in maritime history at the time. The device had been crushed by the pressure but its memory core was undamaged. The 26-hour transcript it contained, covering every conversation on the bridge between the outset of the storm and the final silence, has been called by the NTSB "the most important document in modern commercial bridge-resource management".

The National Transportation Safety Board's 2017 final report assigned responsibility in three tiers. Captain Davidson, for a routeing decision based on a stale BVS forecast and for failing to adjust when fresher NHC data became available. TOTE Maritime, for a corporate culture that prioritised schedule over weather caution, for outdated bridge technology (notably the 20-year-old BVS product), and for inadequate training on the limits of that product. The United States Coast Guard, for allowing an aged steam ship to operate under a grandfathered stability certification that did not reflect the actual loading patterns she worked under.

The subsequent Coast Guard Merchant Mariner Credential Review Board revoked Davidson's credential posthumously, a largely symbolic act that his family contested. The TOTE settlement with the families of the 33 dead totalled $250 million. The El Faro sinking is the single most influential maritime incident in the United States since the Exxon Valdez; the resulting regulatory review produced the 2019 Coast Guard Final Action Review on Tropical Cyclone Response, revised bridge-watch officer training for all American-flag deep-sea operations, and the mandatory adoption of real-time NHC hurricane data feeds on all American-flag bridges.

El Faro rests upright on the abyssal plain of the Bahama Canyon, her containers scattered across the seabed. The VDR is preserved at the NTSB office in Washington. The 26-hour transcript is now read aloud in full, by mariner trainees from third-mate candidates to master mariner recertification courses, at U.S. maritime academies every year. The voice of a sinking ship became the training document of the American merchant marine. The voices of the 33 will be heard by every merchant officer in the United States for as long as the industry trains sailors.