A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Note to readers in Montana. If you’re wondering why this topic, Flathead Memo is followed by people on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and members of my family have gone to sea.
Had not the college killings in Oregon and the deadly attack on a hospital in Afghanistan dominated the news for the first days of October, the extraordinary disappearance of the U.S. flagged cargo ship, El Faro, now presumed sunk, would have pushed everything off the front page.
Large American built, crewed, and flagged merchant vessels seldom go missing. El Faro’s disappearance already has produced online mention of two famous disasters more than 30 years ago: the sinking of the Marine Electric in 1983, and the disappearance of the Poet in 1980. Both were old ships in disrepair. Now commenters on maritime websites such as gCaptain are wondering whether El Faro was an old rust bucket that should have been in a breaking yard instead of on the high seas.
As the search for survivors continues, two questions that will dominate the inquiry already are being asked: (a) how seaworthy was El Faro, and (b) why did it sail into the eye of a Category III hurricane?
When launched in 1975 as the Puerto Rico, El Faro was a 700-foot freighter, steam powered and fast, capable of sustaining 20 knots. At some point she was lengthened to 790 feet. As the Northern Lights, she spent 20 years sailing the Jones Act route between Puget Sound and Anchorage. After undergoing an extensive refit in 2006, she was renamed El Faro and transferred to the Jones Act route between Jacksonville and Puerto Rico.
At the Old Salt Blog, Rick Spilman notes that El Faro had vulnerabilities that could have led to its demise:
Roll-on roll-off ships, or ro/ros, can be extremely efficient vessels. According to IMO, in 2004, more than 1.3 billion passengers, 188 million cars, 856,000 buses and 28.7 million trailers were carried on 5.9 million crossings globally and non-passenger carrying ro/ros. On the other hand, ro/ros have an inherent weakness which might have doomed El Faro.
Ro/ros have wide trailer decks. They are essentially parking lots at sea. The wide and open decks are necessary for efficiently driving vehicles on and off the ships. The problem is that even moderate flooding of the trailer deck can dramatically destabilize a ro/ro. The sloshing of the water on the trailer deck, referred to as the free surface effect can cause the ship to capsize rapidly and without warning.
In 1987, when a bow door was left open on the passenger ro/ro ferry Herald of Free Enterprize, water on the vehicle deck caused the ship to capsize in 90 seconds, not long after leaving the dock. 193 passengers and crew were lost. In 1994, the passenger ro/ro Estonia capsized and sank with more than 900 lives lost when the bow door was torn off by heavy seas. In 2004, the ro/ro car carrier Baltic Ace capsized and sank in 15 minutes following a collision with a container ship in the North Sea. Five crew were killed and six are missing and presumed dead. In 2006, a fire broke out on the Egyptian ro/ro passenger ferry al-Salam Boccaccio 98. Water from fighting the fire collected on the trailer deck and caused the ship to capsize and sink with the loss of over 1,000 lives.
El Faro left Jacksonville, FL, on Tuesday, 29 September, bound for Puerto Rico, approximately 1,300 great circle miles southeast. An American crew of 28 was onboard. Also onboard, five Polish nationals, apparently to conduct repairs on a boiler while the ship was underway (some reports say their job was “calibrating” the engine). The weather disturbance that became Hurricane Joaquin was then just a tropical storm with 40 mph winds (NHC advisory).
Much larger image. On this map, El Faro is ≈ 70 miles NE of Crooked Island. The latest USCG briefings put her last known position at 35 miles NE of Crooked Island.
By 1700 EDT on 30 September, Joaquin was a Category I hurricane (NHC advisory) moving southwest at 8 mph, heading for the central Bahamas. Six hours later, the National Hurricane Center reported Joaquin had intensified to Category III (NHC advisory).
Joaquin’s unusual path.
El Faro was steaming into a deadly storm — and her crew knew it:
Danielle Randolph, an El Faro crew member, emailed her mother last week: “There is a hurricane out here and we are heading right in to it. Category 3. Last we checked winds are super bad and seas are not great. Love to everyone.”
At 0720 on Thursday morning, 1 October, 70 35 miles northeast of Crooked Island in the Bahamas, near the eye of Hurricane Joaquin, El Faro sent a single burst satellite transmission reporting it had lost propulsion, was taking on water, and listing 15 degrees. That was the last time anyone heard from her.
Yesterday, a massive sea and air search discovered a huge debris field near El Faro’s last reported position. Today the U.S. Coast Guard reported finding a battered and empty lifeboat, empty survival suits, a dead person in a survival suit, life jackets, and empty life rafts, and said the ship had sunk in 2,500 fathoms of water. The search was no longer for the ship but for survivors.
Hard questions now must be asked. Why was she sailing a route that left her pinned against the Bahamas by a powerful hurricane? Why didn’t she reverse course Wednesday evening, or sooner, and run from the still slow moving storm? Did economic pressures cause the captain and the ship’s owners to subordinate safety to profit?
Seventy years ago, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, summing up the lessons learned from the 18 December 1944 typhoon (often called Halsey’s Typhoon), ended his letter to the fleet with this wisdom:
In conclusion, both seniors and juniors alike must realize that in bad weather, as in most other situations, safety and fatal hazard are not separated by any sharp boundary line, but shade gradually from one into the other. There is no little red light which is going to flash on and inform commanding officers or higher commanders that from then on there is extreme danger from the weather, and that measures for ships’ safety must now take precedence over further efforts to keep up with the formation or to execute the assigned task. This time will always be a matter of personal judgment. Naturally no commander is going to cut thin the margin between staying afloat and foundering, but he may nevertheless unwittingly pass the danger point even though no ship is yet in extremis. Ships that keep on going as long as the severity of wind and sea has not yet come close to capsizing them or breaking them in two, may nevertheless become helpless to avoid these catastrophes later if things get worse. By then they may be unable to steer any heading but in the trough of the sea, or may have their steering control, lighting, communications, and main propulsion disabled, or may be helpless to secure things on deck or to jettison topside weights. The time for taking all measures for a ship’s safety is while still able to do so. Nothing is more dangerous than for a seaman to be grudging in taking precautions lest they turn out to have been unnecessary. Safety at sea for a thousand years has depended on exactly the opposite philosophy.
One wonders whether El Faro’s captain or owners ever read, or even knew of, Nimitz’s letter.
