{"id":2465302,"date":"2018-05-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/uncategorized\/sinking-ss-el-faro-and-three-new-books\/"},"modified":"2022-05-12T12:49:33","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T18:49:33","slug":"sinking-ss-el-faro-and-three-new-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/culture\/books-media\/sinking-ss-el-faro-and-three-new-books\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Shadow of One of Our Worst Disasters at Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sinking of the SS El Faro<\/em><\/em>, on October 1, 2015, was America\u2019s worst maritime disaster in decades. El Faro<\/em> was 790 feet long and hauling 25 million pounds of cargo from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. About halfway through its voyage, the ship ran into Hurricane Joaquin\u2019s 130 mile per hour winds and 40-foot waves. None of the ship\u2019s 33 crew members survived.<\/p>\n

El Faro<\/em> slowly became a rich subject for writers. The National Transportation Safety Board\u2019s investigation of the sinking turned up thousands of documents, and there were weeks of public hearings trying to figure out what went wrong. Most important, there were 26 hours of audio straight from El Faro<\/em>\u2019s bridge, preserved on a black box and retrieved from the wreckage nearly three miles underwater by a robot submarine.<\/p>\n

When El Faro<\/em>\u2019s two defining traits come together\u2014the tragedy and the archive\u2014they create an incredible true story of nautical disaster, of real human beings facing things the rest of us can\u2019t imagine. So it makes sense that, this spring, New York publishers are releasing three different nonfiction books on the ship. The books\u2019 titles make for a morbid Venn diagram of overlapping words: There\u2019s Boston-based journalist Rachel Slade\u2019s Into the Raging Sea<\/a><\/em>, Miami-based journalist Tristram Korten\u2019s Into the Storm<\/a><\/em>, and New York\u2013based author George Michelsen Foy\u2019s Run the Storm<\/a><\/em>. <\/strong>Thankfully, all three avoid sensationalism and offer serious looks at the sinking, though one does emerge as the most insightful exploration of this unthinkable disaster.<\/p>\n

When people think of them at all, most of us think of cargo ships like El Faro<\/em> as indestructible. They are so big, so federally regulated, so fortified by modern technologies of navigation and weather forecasting. How could this happen in 21st-century America?<\/p>\n

For a lot of reasons, it turns out\u2014most of them small. When El Faro<\/em> left Jacksonville on September 29, captain Michael Davidson knew about the coming storm. He had a good reputation in his industry. (\u201cA by-the-book mariner,\u201d William Langewiesche called him in a recent Vanity Fair <\/em>feature<\/a>.) But Davidson also seemed to be angling for a promotion, and he didn\u2019t want to annoy his bosses at TOTE Maritime Inc. by asking for more time and fuel. The bridge microphones caught him reassuring his crew: \u201cYou can\u2019t run [from] every single weather pattern.\u201d So the ship followed its normal route with only minor deviations, even as it moved closer and closer to the storm.<\/p>\n

That storm kept growing stronger, eventually becoming a Category 4 hurricane. But a software glitch left El Faro<\/em>\u2019s officers with weather data that was hours old; the ship\u2019s anemometer had broken weeks before, which meant they couldn\u2019t tell how fast the winds were blowing. A few people on the bridge tried to convince Davidson to change course, but they didn\u2019t try hard enough, or he didn\u2019t listen hard enough\u2014as in any workplace, it\u2019s difficult to know the histories behind a decision. \u201cI think he\u2019s just trying to play it down because he realizes we shouldn\u2019t have come this way,\u201d said Danielle Randolph, the second mate, when the captain wasn\u2019t on the bridge. \u201cSaving face.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bridge audio abounds with moments like that, simultaneously humanizing and heartbreaking. When Davidson finally decided to ring TOTE\u2019s emergency call center, he got stuck in the sort of loop you\u2019d expect if you were calling about problems with your cable box. (What\u2019s your best callback number? Can you explain the problem again?<\/em>) Even near the end, El Faro<\/em>\u2019s crew seemed more shocked than terrified. When Randolph finally saw the storm on the horizon, all she said was, \u201cThere\u2019s our weather.\u201d<\/p>\n

The end, when it came, came quickly. The waves and wind became too much even for a ship the size of El Faro<\/em>. It began to list severely, taking on water until it lost its engines, until the cars in its hold were bobbing around themselves. The ship continued to tilt and started to sink; Davidson gave the order to abandon ship, but in the middle of a hurricane, lifeboats and immersion suits were useless. The air was so saturated with rain and spray that it would have been as impossible to breath above the water as below it.<\/p>\n

All three books capture the tragedy and suspense of El Faro<\/em>. The timing might make this seem like a ghoulish scramble, something the publishing industry has certainly managed before. (A deadly 1998 yacht race in Sydney, Australia, also produced three<\/a> different<\/a> books<\/a>.) But each El Faro<\/em> volume finds a unique angle, even if their titles all sound the same. Slade spends the most time with the crew\u2019s families and their persistent grief. Korten broadens the narrative to include the M\/V Minouche<\/em>, a smaller ship hit by Joaquin, and the Coast Guard\u2019s attempts to rescue the crews of both.<\/p>\n

Foy does the best job. He tells the story briskly and confidently while working in helpful asides: how cargo containers are fastened to a ship deck, how forecasts are determined, how huge ships stay upright (and how they don\u2019t). Run the Storm<\/em> is too dense in a few spots, especially in its footnotes, but it gracefully covers everything you\u2019d want to know about El Faro<\/em>\u2019s sinking and the 33 lives that went with it.<\/p>\n

Still, the most moving parts in all three books come from those recordings. Take the end of the tape, right before the audio cuts out\u2014when Davidson and his helmsman, Frank Hamm, were the only ones left on the dramatically slanted bridge, with the ship\u2019s alarms ringing in the background, with their voices rising into screams. All three authors have the good sense to basically quote it verbatim:<\/p>\n

Hamm: \u201cMy feet are slipping. I\u2019m going down.\u201d
\n\tDavidson: \u201cYou\u2019re not going down.\u201d
\n\tHamm: \u201cI need a ladder.\u201d
\n\tDavidson: \u201cWe don\u2019t have a ladder. I don\u2019t have a line.\u201d
\n\tHamm: \u201cYou\u2019re gonna leave me.\u201d
\n\tDavidson: \u201cI\u2019m not leaving you. Let\u2019s go.\u201d
\n\tHamm: \u201cI need someone to help me.\u201d
\n\tDavidson: \u201cI\u2019m the only one here.\u201d
\n\tHamm: \u201cI can\u2019t. I can\u2019t. I\u2019m a goner.\u201d
\n\tDavidson: \u201cNo, you\u2019re not.\u201d
\n\tHamm: \u201cJust help me.\u201d
\n\tDavidson: \u201cFrank, let\u2019s go. It\u2019s time to come this way.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of Moby-Dick<\/em>, after Ahab and his ship have vanished, Melville describes the ocean enduring: \u201cThen all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled 5,000 years ago.\u201d The sea still rolls, but one thing that\u2019s changed is the technology that records it. This technology isn\u2019t perfect\u2014software still hiccups, anemometers still break\u2014but El Faro<\/em>\u2019s black box has commemorated the crew in a way nothing else could. The lines remain so powerful because they are freighted with the knowledge that the speaker will soon be dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sinking of the SS El Faro in 2015 brought forth ample media coverage and, now, three new books dropping within months of each other. That’s understandable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":2309591,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"uuid":"61bb3deabed524c2417224731a5e186f","footnotes":""},"categories":[2575],"tags":[3128,2804],"byline":[1749],"ad_cat":[],"legacy-category":[],"class_list":["post-2465302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-media","tag-books","tag-weather","byline-craig-fehrman"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"The Long Shadow of One of Our Worst Disasters at Sea","url":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/culture\/books-media\/sinking-ss-el-faro-and-three-new-books\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/culture\/books-media\/sinking-ss-el-faro-and-three-new-books\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/15\/el-faro-three-books_h.jpg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/15\/el-faro-three-books_h.jpg"},"articleSection":"Books & Media","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"eberger"}],"creator":["eberger"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online","logo":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/favicon-194x194-1.png"},"keywords":["books","weather"],"dateCreated":"2018-05-16T00:00:00Z","datePublished":"2018-05-16T00:00:00Z","dateModified":"2022-05-12T18:49:33Z"},"rendered":"