El Faro, above, sank on Oct. 1, 2015, during Hurricane Joaquin. An NTSB diagram, below, shows the ship’s route and key VDR data points.
Bridge audio captured by El Faro’s voyage data recorder (VDR), made available by the National Transportation Safety Board, offers new details about the tragedy.
The VDR transcript released in December provides a harrowing account of the ship’s last 26 hours, particularly its final 120 minutes when Capt. Michael Davidson and crew tried to correct a heavy list, identify the source of flooding and restart the main engine.
The transcript answers some lingering questions about the voyage but also raises new ones. For instance, it is now known that Davidson ordered crew to abandon ship about 10 minutes before the VDR stopped recording, but it is not known if anyone made it off the vessel.
Crew described flooding from an open scuttle on the second deck, but there is also mention of a ruptured fire main that might have worsened the flooding. The crew discussed the ship’s 15-degree starboard list and potential impacts on engine oil levels, but it’s still not clear what caused the plant to fail.
Capt. Joseph Murphy, who retired in December from Massachusetts Maritime Academy, remains convinced the drifting ship capsized very suddenly while taking a pounding from Hurricane Joaquin. But based on the transcript, he sees no single catastrophic failure that doomed the 790-foot El Faro. Rather, he believes the accident was a “classic cascade event.”
“One thing goes, then the next thing goes, then the next thing goes,” Murphy said in a recent interview. “If at any point along the way they were able to break that chain, the ship might have survived.”
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Mariner's role still unknown as autonomous shipping gains speed
Mariners’ role still unknown as autonomous shipping gains speed
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