I. “The Clock Is Ticking”

In the darkness before dawn on Thursday, October 1, 2015, an American
merchant captain named Michael Davidson sailed a 790-foot U.S.-flagged
cargo ship, El Faro, into the eye wall of a Category 3 hurricane on the
exposed windward side of the Bahama Islands. El Faro means “the
lighthouse” in Spanish. The hurricane, named Joaquin, was one of the
heaviest ever to hit the Bahamas. It overwhelmed and sank the ship.
Davidson and the 32 others aboard drowned. They had been headed from
Jacksonville, Florida, on a weekly run to San Juan, Puerto Rico,
carrying 391 containers and 294 trailers and cars. The ship was 430
miles southeast of Miami in deep water when it went down. Davidson was
53 and known as a stickler for safety. He came from Windham, Maine, and
left behind a wife and two college-age daughters. Neither his remains nor
those of his shipmates were ever recovered. Disasters at sea do not get
the public attention that aviation accidents do, in part because the sea
swallows the evidence. It has been reported that a major merchant ship
goes down somewhere in the world every two or three days; most are ships
sailing under flags of convenience, with underpaid crews and poor safety
records. The El Faro tragedy attracted immediate attention for several
reasons. El Faro was a U.S.-flagged ship with a respected captain—and
it should have been able to avoid the hurricane. Why didn’t it? Add to
that mystery this simple fact: the sinking of El Faro was the worst U.S.
maritime disaster in three decades.

To the outside world, the first hint of trouble came with a phone call
that Captain Davidson made from El Faro’s navigation bridge to the
owners, a shipping company called TOTE, and specifically to the
safety-and-operations manager, a former captain named John Lawrence, who
was listed on the ship as the official point of contact, or “designated
person ashore.” The time was 6:59 A.M., just after dawn. Lawrence was
dressing for work at his home in Jacksonville, and he just missed
answering. When he got to his cell phone he saw that the call had come
in from a satellite number and that a voice mail had been left. He
listened to the message, which sounded calm, even nonchalant. It was 33
seconds long:

Captain Lawrence? Captain Davidson. Thursday morning, 0700. We have a
navigational incident. I’ll keep it short. A scuttle popped open on
two-deck and we were having some free communication of water go down the
three-hold. Have a pretty good list. I want to just touch—contact you
verbally here. Everybody’s safe, but I want to talk to you.

There was no background noise. To Lawrence, this did not sound like a
message of distress. He began to dial the satellite number to return the
call.

Meanwhile, Davidson, having failed to get through, dialed TOTE’s
emergency call center, a company that provides after-hours services
primarily to physicians. At 7:01, the operator answered. Sounding less
casual than he had in his message to Lawrence, Davidson said, “This is
a marine emergency. Yes, this is a marine emergency.”

The operator said, “O.K., sir.”

“Are you connecting me through to a Q.I.?” “Q.I.” stands for
“qualified individual.” He used the term to mean a designated person
ashore.

The operator answered, “That’s what I’m getting ready to do. We’re
seeing who is on call, and I’m going to get you right to them. Give me
one second, sir. I’m going to put you on a quick hold. So one moment,
please.” She paused. “O.K., sir. I just need your name, please.”

“Yes, ma’am. My name is Michael Davidson. Michael C. Davidson.”

She paused. “Your rank?”

“Ship’s master.”

“O.K. Thank you.” She paused. “Ship’s name?”

“El Faro.”

“Spell that. E-l . . .”

Davidson said, “Oh, man! The clock is ticking! Can I please speak to a
Q.I.?” His voice crackled with tension. “El Faro. Echo Lima Space
Foxtrot Alpha Romeo Oscar. El Faro!”

“O.K., in case I lose you, what is your phone number, please?”

He gave her two numbers. She said, “Got it, sir. Again, I’m going to
get you reached right now. One moment, please.”

While he waited, Davidson used a handheld radio to call the ship’s chief
mate, who was on a lower deck checking on a cargo hold that was flooding
massively. Another operator at the call center came on the line. She
said, “Just really briefly, what is the problem you’re having?” Her
request appears to have been a procedural requirement at the call
center. Davidson had already been waiting for five minutes and at one
point had impatiently muttered, “Oh, God!” Now he answered in a
resigned monotone. “I have a marine emergency and I would like to speak
to a Q.I. We had a hull breach—a scuttle blew open during a storm. We
have water down in three-hold with a heavy list. We’ve lost the main
propulsion unit. The engineers cannot get it going. Can I speak to a
Q.I., please?”

The operator said, “Yes, thank you so much.” She paused. “One moment
. . .”

She patched him through to Lawrence. On the phone at last with his peer,
Davidson sounded calm again. He said, “Yeah, I’m real good. We have,
uh, secured the source of water coming into the vessel. A scuttle was
blown open by the water perhaps, no one knows, can’t tell. It’s since
been closed. However, three-hold’s got a considerable amount of water in
it. We have a very—very healthy port list. The engineers cannot get
lube-oil pressure on the plant, therefore we’ve got no main engine. And
let me give you a latitude and longitude. I just wanted to give you a
heads-up before I push that—push that button.”

Lawrence was in his kitchen, scribbling notes. He was surprised at the
mention of the button—an electronic distress signal—because the
ship’s predicament, though concerning, did not sound so dire initially.

Lawrence knew about a hurricane brewing somewhere off the Bahamas, but
it did not cross his mind that Davidson might have sailed right into it.
Davidson said, “The swell is out of the northeast. A solid 10 to 12
feet. Spray. High winds. Very poor visibility. That’s the best I can
give you right now.”

He did not know the wind speeds because the ship’s anemometer was in
disrepair and had been for weeks; it is now believed that the winds were
sustained at 115 m.p.h., with higher gusts. As for the waves, Davidson
appears to have underreported them, perhaps as a matter of professional
style. El Faro was in fact struggling to endure steep breaking waves 30
to 40 feet high, and was occasionally encountering waves still higher.
These monsters were smashing over the ship, knocking containers
overboard, and boiling across a lower second deck that by design was
watertight below but open to the sea. That second deck was the location
of the scuttle that had been opened. Three-hold was a cavernous two-deck
space below it, just aft of midship.

Lawrence asked for a measure of the list. Davidson said, “Betcha it’s
all of 15—15 degrees.” Fifteen degrees is steep. Lawrence said he
would inform the Coast Guard. Davidson said, “Yup, what—what I wanted
to do. I wanna push that button.”

Lawrence thought he should get out of the way by getting off the phone.
He said, “You do your thing, captain.”

Davidson said, “O.K. I just wanted to give you that courtesy so you
wouldn’t be blindsided by it, and have the opportunity. Everybody’s safe
right now. We’re in survival mode now.”

II. Beyond Reach

Those were the last words heard from El Faro. One minute after the phone
call ended, the ship sent out a distress alert by satellite. Thirty
seconds later, El Faro sent the Coast Guard a security alert message, a
signal that contained the ship’s coordinates as well as drift speed and
direction. The ship also sent a similar message to TOTE, which arrived
by e-mail on Lawrence’s phone.

At 7:38 A.M., a Coast Guard petty officer in Miami rang Lawrence in his
Jacksonville kitchen. After some preliminaries he said, “O.K. Do you
have contact or direct communication with the vessel?” Lawrence said,
“I did. They called me. I was just actually trying to call them back,
and I couldn’t. The satellite is dropping the call. I can give you the
phone number.” He gave him the number, though it did not matter. It is
now known that, sometime in the 39 minutes since Davidson left his
message, El Faro had already sunk, and its crew was in the water beyond
reach of rescue, at the center of an impenetrable storm.

By midmorning, people began to fear the worst. Having checked the latest
dispatches from the National Hurricane Center, the Miami
rescue-coordination center went into full-blown emergency action. It
asked that Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters divert from their
meteorological mission and look for the ship. Conditions in flight were
so rough that the pilots were unable to descend below 10,000 feet.

By the third day, the storm had reversed course, as meteorologists had
anticipated it eventually would, and was moving to the northeast,
clobbering islands as it went but leaving room in its wake for a massive
search to begin. Seven military aircraft covered 30,581 square miles of
ocean that day and found two debris fields, including three life rings,
one of which bore the stenciled name El Faro. On the fourth and fifth
days, searchers found two empty life rafts and El Faro’s starboard
lifeboat, which was floating vertically with only its bow above the
surface. When it was recovered, it was found to have been mortally
damaged, crushed on both the left and right sides. After an orange
immersion suit was spotted in the water, a Coast Guard helicopter
lowered a rescue swimmer down to investigate. The swimmer found human
remains inside, in such an advanced state of decomposition that he
couldn’t identify the gender. Before the body could be recovered, the
helicopter was called off to investigate a report of a second immersion
suit with a possible survivor. The crew was unable to find it, and when
they returned for the corpse they could not relocate it, because a
marker beacon they had left behind had failed.

On the morning of the fifth day, the Coast Guard announced officially
what was already known: it was likely that El Faro had sunk. The search
for survivors continued for another two days—ultimately covering more
than 180,000 square miles—and turned up a couple of oil slicks, three
empty immersion suits, three more life rings, and a 20-mile stretch of
floating dolls from a container that had burst open.

Even before the search for survivors ended, two separate but
collaborative investigations got under way, one by the Coast Guard and
the other by the National Transportation Safety Board (N.T.S.B.), a
small federal agency with no regulatory powers but authority that stems
from its independence and prowess.

How could a catastrophe like this have happened? El Faro was 41 years
old when it died—well past normal retirement age—but it was not a
decrepit rust bucket. In port it was regularly visited by the American
Bureau of Shipping, a private “classification society” whose services
were engaged and paid for by the ship’s owners, and to which the Coast
Guard, for want of manpower and expertise, has partially delegated
inspection authority. The ship’s paperwork was in order. Admittedly, El
Faro had sailed into an intense hurricane that no ship, no matter how
seaworthy, should have tangled with—a move that would have to be
explained.

It was unlikely that there would be a single cause or culprit, because
there rarely is. Most significant aviation and shipping disasters, as
well as industrial catastrophes, are eventually determined to be
“system accidents”—the result of a cascade of small errors,
failures, and coincidences. Absent any one of them, and the disaster
would not have occurred—a truth that is not knowable in real time,
only in retrospect. Much could be discovered through the Coast Guard’s
public hearings and analysis of the reams of documentation that pertain
to any U.S.-flagged ship. It was also essential to go out and find the
wreck, survey it, and bring up the ship’s digital voyage data recorder.
That task was arduous, but the ship was found resting upright on a sandy
plain 15,400 feet beneath the surface, and the recorder—a circuit
board barely 2.5 inches long—was eventually retrieved. It contained
the final 26 hours of conversations among nine doomed people on the
bridge. The audio quality was poor, but a technical team was able to
extract most of the spoken words and produce a 496-page transcript, by
far the longest in the N.T.S.B.’s history. The transcript is a
remarkable document—an unadorned record of nothing more than the
sounds on the bridge. The people involved are identified in the
transcript only by their shipboard ranks, but the names of the officers
are part of the public record, and in the time since the tragedy other
names have been revealed. It is now possible to know with reasonable
certainty what occurred.

III. A Safety-First Man

The story begins with the captain, Michael Davidson. He grew up near the
waterfront in Portland, Maine, and at age 16 got his first maritime job,
on a local harbor ferry. He graduated from the Maine Maritime Academy, a
state college overlooking the port of Castine, on Penobscot Bay, in
1988. He then began sailing on oil tankers between Alaska and West Coast
ports. He stuck with the Alaskan route for the next 15 years, rising
from third mate to the rank of chief mate. The Gulf of Alaska is
notoriously rough, and Davidson sailed through countless storms, some of
hurricane strength. He was by no means a cowboy. He was a by-the-book
mariner with a reputation for being unusually competent and organized.
By training and temperament he was a safety-first man. Eventually he
switched to dry-cargo ships on the East Coast, and went to work for one
of the big American shipping companies, Crowley Maritime.

He was a man at peace with himself. But then, in 2012, an incident
rocked his career. Crowley Maritime asked him to take his ship down the
Chesapeake from one port to another, and Davidson refused because a
surveyor had found that the steering gear was unreliable and in need of
immediate repair. For the sake of the ship, Davidson instead engaged two
tugs to tow it to the destination. This cost money. It is said among
merchant mariners that, yes, a captain has the authority to refuse
orders he deems to be unsafe—but probably only once. Davidson went off
on vacation, and when he returned was informed by Crowley that he no
longer had a job. He signed on with TOTE as a lowly third mate, and had
to work his way to the top again. Eventually he was given the San Juan
run and El Faro to command. Had Davidson been affected by the punishment
he had received? Safety was still first for him, but he may no longer
have been the secure man he once was.

Another issue lurked in the background. El Faro and its sister ship, El
Yunque, were soon to be sent to Alaska and replaced on the San Juan run
by two new, state-of-the-art vessels. Earlier in the year, Davidson had
sought a position as captain of the first of them but had come up short.

Having earned the highest marks on his latest annual performance review,
he was holding out hope that he might yet command the second new ship.
He was carefully courteous to the TOTE office personnel, including John
Lawrence, whom he called before he pushed the distress button as he was
about to drown.

In Jacksonville, the loading for the final run started at one P.M. on
Monday, September 28, and continued on Tuesday until shortly after
sundown. The weather was balmy, with light winds and mostly overcast
skies. Far out in the Atlantic, a tropical depression had been defying
forecasts for several days, intensifying rather than simmering down and
stubbornly progressing toward the Bahamas on an unusual southwesterly
heading rather than turning around and hooking harmlessly back to the
northeast, as the meteorological models kept expecting it to do. A day
before El Faro’s departure, the tropical depression had become a
tropical storm named Joaquin.

Davidson had been monitoring the forecasts and knew of the difficulty
the forecasters were having. He had two routes available to him. The
first was a straight shot that would take him past the Bahamas through
the open ocean for two and a half days and 1,265 miles on an unwavering
southeast heading of 130 degrees, directly to San Juan. That was the
normal way to go. The question was the hurricane. The second route ran
south through the Florida Straits, then east along Cuba through a sinewy
narrows called the Old Bahama Channel. This route would have placed a
string of wave-breaking islands between the ship and the storm. The
problem was that it added 184 miles and more than six hours to the trip.
The schedule would be thrown out of whack.

Davidson opted for the straight shot. El Faro was a fast
ship—superficially rusty but solid and powerful, the equivalent of a
1970s muscle car—and the timing of the forecast indicated that he
could slip past the Bahamas before Joaquin moved in.

El Faro cast off at 8:07 on Tuesday evening. Six hours later Joaquin
became a Category 1 hurricane, with sustained winds greater than 74
miles per hour. The eye lay 245 miles east-northeast of San Salvador,
the outermost island of the Bahamian chain, and was slowly moving in
that direction. Think of the storm as the right-hand stroke of a V,
heading toward the point at the bottom. El Faro, the left-hand stroke of
the V, was 550 miles to the northwest and also heading toward the
point—though Davidson believed they would pass the bottom point well
before the storm arrived.

IV. “A Good Little Plan”

That was the situation at 5:57 A.M. on Wednesday, September 30, the
morning after departure, when the voice recorder first opens on the
bridge. The chief mate, Steven Schultz, 54, was standing watch. Davidson
was conferring with him at the chart table. An unlicensed seaman, Frank
Hamm III, 49, was at the helm, monitoring the autopilot. He was the hand
who always served with Schultz when Schultz was on watch. The ship was
rolling in swells approaching from the left. Schultz said, “Got the
swell,” and Davidson answered, “Oh yeah. Probably going to get
worse.” They were discussing satellite images that showed Joaquin
solidifying and growing. Davidson said, “Look. Remember how we saw this
one the other day festering, and we talked about these are the worst?”

“Hard to predict.”

“Look at the total transformation.”

Schultz mentioned the possibility of heading farther out to sea, passing
over the north side of Joaquin, and Davidson pointed out that the storm
was expected to reverse course and move north. “That takes your option
out to top it.”

Schultz suggested an alternative—widening slightly to the right to
move south of the direct track line to San Juan, giving the storm a bit
more space. He even mentioned the Old Bahama Channel. But then he said,
“I would wait. Get more information.”

For the initial 24 hours out of Jacksonville, El Faro had television
reception and therefore access to the Weather Channel. Broadcasters were
closely covering Joaquin, but with emphasis on its potential landfall in
three or four days on the Atlantic seaboard. For marine weather, the
ship’s crew had multiple options but used primarily two. The first was
an Inmarsat C satellite receiver that automatically fed National
Hurricane Center reports to a printer on the bridge nearly as soon as
they were disseminated. These so-called sat-C reports arrived in text
form and required the plotting of Joaquin’s forecasted positions on a
chart, whether paper or electronic. In the case of this storm, the
forecasted positions were known to be unreliable, not because of human
incompetence but because the Hurricane Center’s mathematical predictive
tools were having an unusually difficult time getting a handle on
Joaquin. The resulting uncertainty was expressed emphatically in the
forecasts, and Davidson was aware of it.

The second source for weather information was even more problematic. It
was a subscription service called the Bon Voyage System (B.V.S.) that
processed global weather data to produce its own forecast, primarily in
the form of colorful weather maps which could be animated and over which
a ship’s course could be laid. By the time the data was processed, it
was up to six hours old, which in the context of Joaquin was obsolete.
StormGeo, the proprietor of B.V.S., said during the N.T.S.B.
investigation that “weather routing bulletins were sent to the ship,
but not routing guidance, which was not ordered as part of the service
contract.” (The Coast Guard report also noted that “El Faro crew did
not take advantage of B.V.S.’s tropical update feature,” which would
have provided hourly updates.) The B.V.S. map included a time stamp that
showed when the processing had been completed, but gave no indication of
the age of the raw data on which the forecast was based. Davidson knew
that all the forecasts were uncertain, and that they sometimes
disagreed. But how aware was he that when he looked at the B.V.S. maps
he was looking into the past?

He went down to his stateroom after his conversation with Schultz, and
when he returned to the bridge he said, “All right, I just sent up the
latest weather. Let us clear everything off the chart table with the
exception of the charts.” Schultz opened the B.V.S. program. As it
happened, according to the N.T.S.B. report, because of a software
glitch, the map that appeared was the very same map that had come in
with the previous download, six hours earlier. The raw data on which it
was based was at least 12 hours old.

Davidson and Schultz decided that the storm would be a little too close
for comfort when the time came to cross its bow. Working with a
G.P.S.-based plotter, they made a slight right turn with a new heading
of 140 degrees, creating a gentle dogleg that would pass 10 miles
outside San Salvador Island and put them 50 miles from the hurricane’s
eye. The winds were forecast to be only 40 knots. Davidson said, “I
think that’s a good little plan, chief mate. At least I think we got a
little distance from the center.”

It was 6:40 in the morning, and the sun was coming up. Davidson yawned.
He said, “Oh, look at that red sky over there. Red in the morning,
sailors take warning. That is bright.”

Davidson instructed Schultz to make sure that the crew checked the
security and lashings on the cargo, and left the bridge for a while. A
fresh helmsman and the third mate showed up to relieve Hamm and Schultz
and stand the next four-hour watch. The third mate was Jeremie Riehm. He
was 46 but looked younger. Schultz briefed him on the weather and the
diversion; he explained that the options were limited but that if worse
came to worst they could turn behind the outer islands and escape
through one of several deepwater gaps to reach the Old Bahama Channel.
After Schultz left the bridge, Riehm continued to study the weather. He
said to the helmsman, “We’re gonna get slammed tonight.”

The view from the bridge was of an endless ocean with no land in sight.
Stacked high with containers, the massive ship rolled with a slow rhythm
through swells coming in from the east. The sky was mostly clear. The
wind was warm and slowly increasing. Davidson returned to the bridge. He
engaged in some lighthearted banter, but his mind was on the storm. He
said, “I mean, when we went through Erika this last . . . that’s the
first real storm I’ve been on with this ship. Ship’s solid.”

Riehm said, “The ship is solid. It’s just all the associated bits and
pieces. The hull itself is fine. The plant no problem. It’s all the shit
that shakes and breaks loose.”

Davidson said, “Just gotta keep the speed up so we get goin’ down. And
who knows? Maybe this low will just stall. Stall a little bit. Just a
little bit. Just enough for us to duck underneath.”

But the opposite happened. At 10:35 A.M. a sat-C report arrived, and
Riehm took it to the chart table to plot positions. The helmsman said,
“It’s moving away fast.” Riehm didn’t understand that he was joking.
He answered, “Uh, no. It’s not moving away, not yet. I’ll show you that
whole time-step forecast if you want. I mean, we’re going that way, and
it’s going to go that way, and we’re on a collision course with it,
nearly—nearly.” In other words, that earlier turn was not going to
provide the expected margin. It is not known what, if anything, Riehm
did with the information.

V. Category 3

Shortly before noon, the second mate, Danielle Randolph, arrived with a
relief helmsman to stand the next watch. The helmsman was Larry Davis,
63. Randolph was from Rockland, Maine, and like Davidson and three
others aboard was a graduate of the Maine Maritime Academy. She was 34.
Riehm briefed her on the navigation plan. Speaking of the captain, she
said, “He’s telling everyone down there, ‘Ohhh, it’s not a bad storm.
It’s not so bad. It’s not even that windy out. Seen worse.’ ”

Now alone on the bridge with Davis, Randolph returned to the subject of
Davidson. She mimicked him. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing!” She backed
off the mockery and said, “If it’s nothing, then why the hell are we
going on a different track line? Think he’s just trying to play it down
because he realizes we shouldn’t have come this way. Saving face.”

Davis said, “We’re getting sea swells now.”

The swells slowed the ship. Davidson was in his stateroom. He had
paperwork to do—a mandatory noon report to the TOTE office. He gave an
E.T.A. for San Juan of eight A.M. on Friday, 44 hours ahead. Then he
came to the bridge and said, “Damn, we’re getting killed with this
speed.”

Randolph answered him a little rebelliously: “Oh, yeah, I think now
it’s not a matter of speed. It’s ‘When we get there, we get there,’ as
long as we arrive in one piece.”

Davidson was not so willing to sacrifice the schedule. He said, “Yeah,
well, we’re only doing 18.9 right now. I mean, we’ll pick up a little
bit. Gotta get through this storm.”

Taking Randolph’s lead, Davis said, “Yeah, through it.” A gulf seemed
to be opening between Davidson and the crew on the bridge. He may not
have noticed it.

After he left, a man named Jeffrey Mathias showed up on the bridge.
Mathias, 42, was one of El Faro’s chief engineers, but on this trip was
serving as a supernumerary to oversee five Polish shipyard workers who
had been aboard for weeks and were modifying the ship for Alaska
service. When Randolph saw him, she said “Hi!” with a rising
inflection. He said, “Look at you! All freshened up, huh?” She offered
him a gourmet coffee, from freshly ground beans, and he said “Wow!”
She laughed. She said, “We do not joke around up here when it comes to
coffee!”

“I guess not. Damn.”

“Did you wanna see the storm? Did you wanna see the pretty pictures
with the pretty, pretty colors?”

Meanwhile, Davidson was back in his stateroom writing another e-mail to
the home office. It was addressed to John Lawrence, the designated
person ashore, and cc’d to several other managers. The first part of the
e-mail was advisory in nature: it reported the deviation under way,
described the plan for moving south of the hurricane, and delivered a
revised E.T.A. for San Juan. This was exactly what TOTE expected. But
then the e-mail went further. Concerned about Joaquin’s forecasted
position over the coming weekend, Davidson wrote:

Question I would like to transit the Old Bahama Channel on our
return northbound leg to Jacksonville, Florida. This route adds an
additional 160 nm to the route for a total of 1,261 nm. We will need to
make around 21 knots for our scheduled 10/05 10:45 arrival time at
Jacksonville pilot station. This precaution will take the uncertainty
out of Joaquin’s forecasted track, and as you can see she really
develops into a formidable weather pattern on 10/03 to 05 2015. I’m
confident that Joaquin will track in a northerly direction once reaching
the Gulf Stream current. I will await your reply before transiting Old
Bahama Channel on our return leg to Jacksonville, Florida. Should you
have any questions or concerns kindly contact this vessel. Best regards.

This e-mail emerged during the investigation after the sinking. At the
time, TOTE was busy blaming Davidson by insisting that all routing and
weather decisions were his alone to make, but here Davidson appeared to
be asking permission for the Old Bahama Channel run. To make matters
worse, it was answered by one of the cc’d managers, the director of ship
management, Jim Fisker-Andersen, who was in San Francisco at the time.
Fisker-Andersen wrote, “Captain Mike, diversion request heads up
through Old Bahama Channel understood and authorized. Thank you for the
heads up. Kind regards.”

Authorized? Was that what went on at TOTE? At the very least, the use of
that word indicated a superior attitude by an armchair mariner toward a
captain tangling with a hurricane at sea. Worse, it raised the
possibility that Davidson had taken the straight-line course for San
Juan because he had been ordered to do so. TOTE officials denied this
vehemently. Fisker-Andersen told investigators that he wished he had
used another word. The use of this one certainly added fuel to the
wrongful-death litigation that ensued. (All 33 wrongful-death cases have
since been settled at significant expense to the company.) But no
evidence emerged in the investigations of direct interference in
navigational decisions by any managers at TOTE. Davidson’s wife,
Theresa, told the N.T.S.B. that her husband would have refused unsafe
orders, whatever the consequences.

When Davidson finished sending the e-mail he returned to the bridge and
instructed Randolph to start keeping hourly logs of the weather. Wind
direction and force, barometer. The wind would have to be estimated
because of the faulty anemometer. Both Davidson and Randolph apparently
believed they would be dealing with a Category 1 hurricane, and at some
distance from the eye. Neither they nor the National Hurricane Center
suspected that the storm would increase to a Category 3 and accelerate
that very night.

The wind was increasing, the sea was covered with whitecaps, and the
swells from the east were rising. Davis said, “Knew it was going to
start sooner or later.”

Around four P.M., the sky started clouding over. Schultz, the chief
mate, and Hamm, his helmsman, came onto the bridge to take the next
watch. Randolph briefed Schultz, then went down to her cabin to write a
note to her mother. It was later sent along with a batch of others via
the ship’s official e-mail.

At 4:46 P.M., Randolph and Davis returned to allow Schultz and Hamm to
go to dinner. The sat-C printer delivered the latest weather, and
Randolph took it to the chart table and began to plot it out. This was
information from the National Hurricane Center only a few minutes old,
and although it continued to contain forecasting errors, it got the
current location of the eye about right. She said, “So at two in the
morning . . .”

Davis said, “What?”

“ . . . it should be right here.” She indicated a position just
outside of San Salvador Island. “Let’s see where we will be.” She did
some calculations and began to chuckle. “We’re going to be right there
with it. Looks like the storm is coming right for us.” She laughed in
disbelief. “Ahhh, you gotta be kidding me.”

Davis said, “We’re going to get our ass ripped.”

Randolph was a Mainer. Salt of the earth. She said, “We’re going to go
right through the fucking eye.”

VI. Staying the Course

Schultz and Hamm returned from dinner. Randolph and Davis left. Davidson
showed up around sundown. The sky was heavy with clouds. To Schultz he
said, “I just sent you the latest weather.” It was the B.V.S. product
depicting a forecast based on old data, with additional errors cranked
in due to forecasting models. It was not exactly a fiction, but it was a
poor tool for attempting a close pass across the bow of a hurricane.
They decided to turn the ship 10 degrees to the right, widening away
from the storm for a second time. The new course would take El Faro to a
point in the yellow outer fringes on the B.V.S. graphic, clear of the
eye and the inner pink. It would also take them to the leeward or west
side of San Salvador Island, which for a while would offer some measure
of protection from the hurricane’s waves. Having plotted the new course
directly on the B.V.S., they made the turn at 7:03 P.M.

With its engine running at maximum speed, El Faro was riding comfortably
through large swells coming in from the northeast. Davidson was pleased.
For the next 45 minutes, he and Schultz calculated G.P.S. waypoints and
courses, and laid out a tidy plan for the rest of the trip, including a
strong left turn in the open waters beyond San Salvador Island, and a
straight shot across the bow of the hurricane directly for San Juan.
They were not entirely complacent. Schultz mentioned the availability of
a southerly escape route through a deepwater passage by Crooked Island,
and Davidson suggested the alternative of sheltering behind San Salvador
if need be. But neither man made a plan for such contingencies.

Third Mate Jeremie Riehm appeared on the bridge for his
eight-P.M.-to-midnight watch. He was joined by his helmsman. Schultz
indicated the B.V.S. and said, “See the weather? We have the latest.”
But the latest was old news. The map showed Joaquin as a Category 1
hurricane crossing their course well after their passage. It predicted
an encounter with 50-knot winds.

In reality, at that very moment Joaquin was morphing into a Category 3
hurricane, about three days ahead of schedule.

Schultz gave Riehm a quick briefing. Riehm had been listening to a
Weather Underground broadcast on the Weather Channel. He said, “I just
hope it’s not worse than what this is saying, because that Weather
Underground, it’s a lot. They’re saying it’s more like 85-, not 50-knot,
wind.”

Hamm handed steering over to Riehm’s helmsman. He was not due on the
bridge again until four A.M. Riehm kept sounding a caution. “But what
they’re sayin’ . . . They’re saying this is much more powerful than
what this is saying right now.” He meant the B.V.S. forecast. No one
reacted.

Schultz and Davidson went below. For the next 20 minutes there was no
conversation on the bridge. The ship was heaving and rolling moderately,
and vibrating as usual with engine power. The lights had been dimmed,
but all was black outside. The ship was sailing on autopilot. Riehm
said, “This thing might hit us pretty hard in the morning.” From his
position the helmsman said, “Oh yeah?” Riehm invited him over to look
at the B.V.S. They talked about it for a while. Riehm expressed his
concerns about the Weather Channel broadcast. He said, “Let’s see how
this thing goes. We can’t outrun it, you know. It’s more powerful than
we thought. This is supposed to hook right here. It’s supposed to make
this stop. Getting any closer, it’s gonna turn to the north. What if it
doesn’t?” the helmsman asked. “What if we get close? We get jammed in
those islands there, and it starts comin’ at us?” Riehm responded,
“That’s what I’m thinking. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being a Chicken
Little. I don’t know.”

Later Riehm said, “I have a feeling like something bad is going to
happen. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe it’ll just be all nice.”

At 10:54 P.M. the sat-C printer delivered the latest from the National
Hurricane Center. The intensity of the storm was now officially
registered. Joaquin had exploded into a Category 3 with maximum
sustained winds of 115 m.p.h., and gusts to 138. Its current position
was accurate to within 17 miles. It was moving south-southwest at six
m.p.h. By eight in the morning, it was expected to be sustaining winds
of 126, with gusts to 155.

Riehm got on the ship’s internal telephone—the house phone—and rang
Davidson. The recording microphones picked up only the bridge side of
the conversation, but Davidson’s responses can be surmised. Riehm wanted
him to come to the bridge. He said, “Hey, Captain, sorry to wake
you. . . . Naw, nothing, and, uh, the latest weather just came in, and
thought you might want to take a look at it. So yeah if you have a
chance . . . Just looking at the forecast and looking at our track
line, which way it’s going, and, uhhh, thought you might wanna take a
look at it.” Davidson seems to have asked him to explain. Riehm gave
him the numbers and said, “So I assume it stays on that same—moves in
that same direction for, say, the next five hours. And, so, it’s
advancing toward our track line and puts us real close to it.” Davidson
replied for nearly a minute, during which time Riehm said, “O.K.
. . . yeah, yeah . . . O.K. . . . O.K.”

After he got off the phone Riehm plotted the storm’s predicted position
and looked at the escape route, which would involve a strong right turn
to the south into the passage past Crooked Island and on to the Old
Bahama Channel beyond. He called Davidson back. He said, “So at 0400
we’ll be 22 miles from the center, with max 100 and gusts to 120 and
strengthening.” Those speeds were in knots. He said, “So . . . the
option that we do have—from what I can see—is at 0200 we could head
south, and that would open it up some.” Davidson dismissed the plan
with a thank-you and did not come to the bridge. Evidence suggests that
he was still showing a preference for the animated B.V.S. graphics,
which indicated the storm progressing more slowly.

The swell was growing; the ship was moving more heavily now. At one
point Riehm said, “We don’t have any options. We got nowhere to go.”

The helmsman said, “Jesus, man, don’t tell me anymore. I don’t even
wanna hear it.”

Riehm laughed. “Oh.”

Stuttering like Porky Pig, the helmsman said, “Th-th-th-th-th-these are
ba-ba-ba-ba-big waaaves! Jesus—it’s a hurricane!”

VII. The Wrong Way

Just before midnight, Randolph arrived with Davis to stand watch. They
were entering the partial shelter offered by San Salvador Island, about
20 miles to the east, and the ship was moving more easily now. Riehm
explained the situation. As always, Randolph tried to keep things light.
She said, “This is the second time we changed our route, and it just
keeps coming for us.”

The ship was gently pitching up and down, not rolling side to side. The
radar picked up San Salvador Island on the left and Rum Cay on the
right. At 1:18 A.M., the ship took its first big roll. Davis said,
“Whoa!” Randolph said, “Oh! O.K.!” Davis said, “Biggest one since
I’ve been up here.” Randolph said, “We’re right between the islands.
Sooo, wondering why we’re rolling.” The answer was that the hurricane
was not where the B.V.S. showed it would be, and as a result the ship
was emerging early from the shelter that San Salvador Island had
provided.

Pitching more violently, the ship was starting to pound. Davis
recommended slowing down. They were approaching the waypoint where
Davidson’s route plan called for the significant turn to the left,
taking the ship, as the captain believed, across the path of the
hurricane in its yellow zone, a safe distance from the eye. Randolph did
not want to do it. She called Davidson on the house phone and told him
that the hurricane was now a Category 3. He knew that already. She
proposed the escape route to the south and a smooth sail on to San Juan.
He rejected her suggestion. Despite the uncertainties in the forecast,
he was so convinced of his strategy that he was able to sleep. He had
not yet even downloaded the latest B.V.S. package, e-mailed to his
computer at 11 P.M. the previous night. He finally downloaded the
package at 4:45 in the morning, when the data it was based on was 11
hours old.

When Randolph got off the phone with him, she said to Davis, “He said
to run it.” She meant the course as planned. She said, “Hold on to
your ass!,” and laughed.

El Faro entered a squall. Lightning flickered outside. Davis saw a
series of mysterious bright flashes up at the bow—probably electrical
connections shorting out in spray. Over the next hour, the conditions
deteriorated, and the ship began to labor, unable to exceed about 16
knots. By now, the stresses on the ship were enormous. Objects exposed
to the wind were banging, breaking, and flying away. On Deck 2, one deck
below the main deck where the containers were stacked, water began
washing in through openings on the sides, swirling around the wheels of
the cargo trailers secured there and washing out just as fast. This was
not uncommon for El Faro, and no reason for concern because the deck
itself was designed to be watertight and sealed off from the engine room
and the cargo holds below.

The ship kept smashing ahead. At 1:55 Randolph said, “Wooo! That was a
good [wave]. Definitely lost some speed.” Davis said, “Damn sure
don’t want to lose the plant.” He meant the ship’s engine. “Do a lot
of things, but you don’t wanna do that.”

The captain wanted full speed in order to cross the storm a good
distance from the eye. In the Northern Hemisphere, the circulation
around hurricanes runs counterclockwise. The winds right now were
northerly and coming at the ship from the left side. If the B.V.S. map
was correct, the eye lay ahead and well to the left. According to that
model, the winds would become northwesterly (directly astern) as El Faro
passed abeam the eye, and would shift to southwesterly and then
southerly (on the right side) as the ship steamed into improving weather
beyond it. But this never happened—meaning that the ship was heading
toward the storm, not away from it.

Up on the bridge at 2:42, Randolph had to sit to keep from falling down.
She said, “Weeee! Look at that spray!” Then the first of the really
big waves reared just ahead. Randolph said, “Oh, shit! Oh, my God!
Ahhh!” She strained audibly as the wave hit.

Solid water—green water—was coming over the bow. At 2:54, El Faro
took such a roll that Randolph said, “She’s righting herself,” as the
ship came back. The ship kept getting knocked off heading. A steering
alarm would sound, and the autopilot would slowly regain control. The
helmsman said, “Just hold on, baby. We ain’t got but an hour to go.”
He meant to the end of their watch.

At 3:20 a wave clobbered the stern. Randolph said, “She just got popped
in the ass.” The steering alarm sounded. Randolph spoke to it. “Yes,
yes, I know. We’re trying.” The ship veered briefly out of control. The
helmsman said, “Hear that wind out there?”

Randolph said, “Yeah.”

He said, “We’re getting into it now.”

She said, “Hello, Joaquin.”

VIII. Rule of Thumb

Joaquin was wild. It was finding its way inside, whipping through the
bridge. At 3:45, Chief Mate Schultz arrived for the next watch. He said,
“So you can’t see a thing?” Davis answered, “Yeah. If anybody’s out
there, they gotta be a damn fool.” The ship was drifting south of the
track line. Schultz ordered a heading correction to the left. “It’s
hard to tell which way the wind’s blowing, huh? We’re heeling to
starboard. Must be blowin’ port to starboard.” Hamm showed up for his
turn at the helm. Randolph and Davis went below. Schultz said, “Don’t
like this.” A huge wave reared up. Hamm said, “Hold on!” The ship
slewed when it was hit, and the steering alarm sounded. Schultz got a
report that a trailer on the second deck was leaning, and that some of
the cords feeding the refrigerated units had been cut. The waves were
coming about every 13 seconds, and the autopilot was having a hard time
keeping up. The steering alarm sounded frequently. Hamm said, “How much
longer of this?,” and Schultz answered, “Hours.”

“What’s the gusts out there?”

“I don’t have any idea. We don’t have any instrument that can measure
it.”

“Captain ain’t been up yet?”

“Haven’t seen him. The second mate said she called him.”

Not long afterward, Davidson entered the bridge. He said, “There’s
nothing bad about this ride. . . . I was sleepin’ like a baby.”

Schultz said, “Not me.”

Davidson said, “What? Who’s not sleeping good? Well, this is every day
in Alaska. This is what it’s like.”

Hamm said, “Those seas are for real.”

Schultz said, “That’s what I said when I walked up here. I said this is
every day in Alaska.”

Speaking of the wind, Schultz said, “Can’t tell the direction. Our
forecast had it coming around to starboard.”

“It will,” Davidson said. “Eventually.” He left to get his glasses.
When he returned he said, “It’s probably better off we can’t see
anything, chief mate.” He lingered for a while watching the storm,
which continued to intensify.

Referring to the barometric pressure, Schultz said, “We’re at 970
now.”

“Now?”

“Nine fifty. Think it’s going to go down before it goes up.”

Davidson said, “That’s the eye.”

“Right.”

“We won’t be going through the eye.”

So that was that. But here’s a rule of thumb for the Northern
Hemisphere: whether you are traveling by ship, airplane, car, or horse,
if you have a wind from the left you are moving toward lower atmospheric
pressure—and that means moving toward worsening weather.

Davidson left the bridge to check on the galley. Immediately afterward
the sat-C printer spat out the latest missive from the National
Hurricane Center. It contained a reasonably accurate report on the eye’s
current position. Schultz retrieved the page but did not have time to
plot the coordinates. The house phone rang. It is not clear who the
caller was, but the conversation was about problems with cargo on the
second deck—the one the seas were sweeping through. The ship was
listing to starboard, which was mentioned as a factor. Schultz did not
seem too concerned, and said he would inform the captain. No sooner had
he hung up than the phone rang again. This time it was the chief
engineer down in the engine room. The conversation was brief. Schultz
said he would get through to the captain right away. He rang the captain
in the galley. “Captain—chief mate. The chief engineer just
called. . . . Something about the list and oil levels.”

The time was 4:41 A.M. The hurricane was raging. Davidson returned in
less than a minute. Schultz was trying to measure the list by looking at
the ship’s inclinometer. He said, “Can’t even see the bubble.”
Davidson got on the phone to the engine room. After he got off he said,
“Gonna steer right up into it. Wants to take the list off. So let’s put
it in hand steering.” He intended to feel his way upwind until the
aerodynamic pressures were sufficiently reduced that the ship would come
closer to level. Beyond the windows all was blackness and driving spray.
He did not know the wind’s direction except that it was coming from the
left.

Hamm started a slow turn into the wind. Davidson had been on the phone
again with the engine room. When he got off, he said, “Just the list.
The sumps are actin’ up. To be expected.” Schultz said, “Yeah, the oil
sumps, I understand.” The sumps had pumps that supplied lubrication to
the main engine, the plant.

They had turned 35 degrees to the left. Hamm was now doggedly steering
to the northeast through enormous unseen seas. The wind was still on the
left. Schultz said, “Hangin’ in there?” And, “Still on course. You’re
doin’ great.”

The sea conditions were by now atrocious. They were no longer normal for
Alaska. Schultz apparently volunteered to open a new B.V.S. package.
Davidson said, “By all means, take a peek, bring up the weather again.
You said the barometer’s coming back up?” Schultz said, “Yes,” and
then corrected himself. “Six-zero, it’s still 9–6-0.” Again this was
simple: so long as they had winds from the left, the barometer would not
rise. Schultz may or may not have tried to open the B.V.S. package—the
record is unclear. It was too late for such details, anyway. Though the
officers did not know it, they were about to enter the eye wall of the
hurricane, where the storm would be at its worst.

The ship was pointed almost directly into the wind, but Davidson had no
way of knowing it. On a clean upwind heading any list caused by the
winds should have come to an end; the list, however, continued and, if
anything, was steeper than before, suggesting that something besides
wind was causing it—such as flooding.

Mathias was now on the bridge. He had been checking conditions on the
second deck. He said, “Cargo’s a mess.”

Davidson said, “I don’t even want to think about it.” Hamm was having
a hard time keeping his place at the helm. Davidson said, “Stand up.
Hold on to that handle. Just relax, everything’s gonna be just fine.
Good to go, buddy. You’re good to go.”

“Yeah, O.K.”

Davidson said, “It sounds so much worse up here. When you go down
below, it’s just a lullaby.” The recording was difficult to make out,
but Schultz then appears to have reported the list at 18 degrees. Think
of the angle of a wheelchair ramp and then multiply times four.

IX. Flooding in Three-Hold

It is unlikely that Davidson ever fully understood that he had sailed
into the eye wall of Joaquin, but he must have realized by now that he
had come much too close. As is usually the case, the catastrophe was
unfolding because of a combination of factors that had aligned, which
included: Davidson’s caution with the home office; his decision to take
a straight-line course; the subtle pressures to stick to the schedule;
the systematic failure of the forecasts; the persuasiveness of the
B.V.S. graphics; the lack of a functioning anemometer; the failure by
some to challenge Davidson’s thinking more vigorously; the initial
attribution of the ship’s list entirely to the winds; and finally a
certain mental inertia that had overcome all of them. This is the stuff
of tragedy that can never be completely explained.

At 5:43 A.M., the seriousness of their predicament suddenly became
clear. Up on the bridge the house phone rang. Davidson answered.
“Bridge—captain.” He listened for 15 seconds. He said, “We got a
prrrroooblem . . .” He hung up and turned to Schultz. “Watch your
step. Go down to three-hold. Go down to three-hold and start the pumping
right now. Water.”

Three-hold was a vast space below the second deck, just forward of the
engine room. It was loaded with cars. The deck above it was awash in
water—designed to be. The gaps in the hull that let water into the
second deck just as easily let it out. The problem was a series of
scuttles—heavy watertight hatches—that allowed access from the
second deck to the cargo holds below. The crew had secured them the day
before, in preparation for the storm. But if one had been overlooked or
had failed, the flooding would be severe.

The house phone rang. Davidson answered. It was an engineer calling in
with a report. The bilge pump was not keeping up—water was continuing
to rise. The source of the water was unknown.

El Faro had a closed system of two interconnected ballast tanks—one on
the left, one on the right—that were used to balance the ship during
cargo-loading operations by means of water transfers. Davidson ordered
the engine room to start transferring water from the starboard tank to
the port tank in order to lessen the list, thereby distributing the
flood waters more evenly.

Five minutes later the chief engineer rang with the news that the source
did indeed appear to be an open scuttle on the starboard side. Access
would be difficult unless the flood waters could be lowered. Davidson
said, “O.K., what I’m going to do, I’m going to turn the ship and get
the wind on the starboard side, get everything on the starboard side,
give us a port list, and see if we’ll have a better look at it.” It was
an audacious plan. In a badly wounded ship, he was going to use the
hurricane itself as a tool for damage control. He said to Hamm, “Put
your rudder left 20.” Hamm said, “Left 20.” El Faro began to turn.
The winds had further intensified. The seas were mountainous.

The hurricane shoved El Faro into a port-side list. Water was now
pouring out of the open scuttle. When it stopped, members of the crew
would get it closed. Randolph showed up on the bridge. Davidson saw her
and said “Hi!” with a rising inflection. He was obviously pleased to
see her there. She must have been the best-liked person on the ship.

Before long, Davidson got word that the scuttle had been secured. He
asked Randolph to tell the engine room. She got on the house phone and
said, “Yeah, the scuttle has been shut.” She got tongue-tied. She
said, “The shuttle has been scut.” She chuckled. But the ship
continued to list badly—now to the left. Water must still be coming in
from somewhere.

Then suddenly at 6:13 A.M. the ever present tremors of the ship’s
propulsion stopped. Davidson said, “I think we just lost the plant.”
Three minutes later, the house phone rang. It was the chief engineer.
The problem was with lubrication-oil pressure at this angle of list. He
said they were trying to bring the engine back online. Meanwhile, the
ship had plenty of standby power for running the pumps and electrics.
Davidson explained the situation to Randolph. A short while later, he
asked her to prepare an emergency message for transmission to the Coast
Guard and the company via the security alert system, but not to send it
yet.

It was morning twilight, and the scene coming into sight was calamitous,
with huge breaking waves, churning foam, and wind-driven rain and spray.
The hull lay below the bridge, listing to the left, drifting without
forward motion, and taking a pounding from the storm. There was a sound
of multiple thuds in rapid succession. Davidson said, “That’s why I
don’t go out there. . . . That’s a piece of handrail, right?”
Randolph decided that this was the time to grind her gourmet coffee. She
said, “Coffee? Cream and sugar?” She added, “Sugar is fine with the
captain, right?” Hamm said, “Give me the Splenda, not the regular
sugar.”

In reply to a question, Davidson said, “Should get better all the time.
Right now we’re on the back side of it. O.K.?”

But they were not on the back side of the storm, and conditions were not
going to improve. They were in the northern eye wall, and getting pushed
to the southwest at twice the storm’s speed. Joaquin, meanwhile, was
intensifying into a Category 4 hurricane.

Davidson called the engine room. The chief engineer explained that he
would not be able to get the lubrication pumps going until El Faro
gained more of an even keel. When he got off the phone, Randolph asked,
“They having trouble getting back online?”

“Yeah, because of the list.”

“Uh-oh.”

Davidson punched in the number for John Lawrence and left the voice
mail. He then called the answering service and encountered the
operator—“Oh, God!”—before getting patched through to Lawrence. By
the time he finished the conversation with Lawrence, full daylight had
come. The chief engineer called, and Randolph told him there was nothing
more that could be done from the bridge about the list. Davidson
instructed her to send out the electronic distress signals, and she did.
Speaking of the outside world, he said in an urgent tone, “Wake
everybody up! Wake ‘em up!”

Schultz had returned to the bridge. He said, “I think that water
level’s rising, captain.”

“O.K., do you know where it’s coming from?”

“At first the chief said something hit the fire main. Got it ruptured
hard.”

The fire main had a large-diameter pipe that led from an opening in the
hull to a powerful pump at the aft bulkhead at the bottom of three-hold.
The pump was protected from the cargo by steel barriers, but the pipe
itself was not. It was equipped with a shutoff valve, as all
through-hull fittings were, but that valve was now lying deep beneath
the black waters of the flooded hold—and the cargo of cars was
floating around and shifting wildly in the storm. Access to the valve
was impossible.

There are problems for which there are no solutions. After 10 minutes of
considering all possible improvisations, the crew collectively ran out
of ideas.

X. “Everybody Get Off!”

El Faro had two lifeboats, but they were outdated—not enclosed and
launched on stern rails as modern lifeboats are, but hung from davits on
El Faro’s port and starboard sides, open to the sky, extremely difficult
if not impossible to launch from a listing ship in hurricane-force
winds, subject to shattering against the ship’s steel hull, and certain
to capsize in breaking waves. El Faro also had five inflatable life
rafts, four of which were packed in canisters near the lifeboats. The
life rafts were easier to launch but more difficult to board, and nearly
as vulnerable in the storm. The only hope was to take to the life rafts.

Davidson radioed to Schultz, who was somewhere on the ship trying to
monitor the flooding. He said, “Hey, mate, chief mate. Just a heads-up.
I’m gonna ring the general alarm. Get your muster while you’re down
there. Muster all, mate.”

Schultz answered, “Roger.”

Davidson called the engine room and got a junior officer. He said, “All
right, captain here. Just want to let you know I am going to ring the
general alarm. You don’t have to abandon ship or anything just yet. All
right, we’re gonna stay with it. Is the chief there? Yeah, all is fine.
When he’s got a minute just let him know I’m looking to talk with him.
But let everyone know I’m gonna ring the general alarm.”

When he got off the phone, Davidson said, “Yup,” as if to himself.
Then he shouted loudly, “Ring it!” A high-frequency bell could be
heard everywhere. Davidson said, “There you go.”

Schultz called him on the radio. Davidson said, “Go ahead, mate.”

Schultz said, “Everybody starboard side.” The starboard side was the
high side, to windward.

Davidson answered, “All understood.”

Hamm was trying to climb the slanted deck of the bridge, but he was
exhausted from steering, and it was too steep for him. He said, “Can’t
come back over!”

Davidson said, “Hold on a sec.~Take it easy there.”

A radio call came in, possibly from Riehm. “Cap’n, you gettin’ ready to
abandon ship?”

“Yeah. What I’d like to make sure everybody has their immersion suits
and, uh, stand by. Get a good head count. Good head count.”

Hamm said, “Captain!”

Randolph and Davidson were apparently on the high side of the bridge.

The radio said, “Mustered, sir.”

Randolph yelled, “All right, I got containers in the water!”

Davidson said, “All right. All right, let’s go ahead and ring it. Ring
the abandon ship.” The bell sounded: seven pulses followed by an
eight-second ring.

Davidson said, “Bow is down. Bow is down.”

A transmission came in, someone yelling over the roar of the storm.
Davidson yelled back. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get into your rafts. Throw all
your rafts to the water.”

“Throw the rafts in the water. Roger.”

Davidson radioed, “Everybody! Everybody get off! Get off the ship! Stay
together!”

Hamm said, “Cap! Cap!” He was having a hard time climbing the deck.

Clinging to the high side, unable to reach Hamm, Davidson kept urging
him to try.

Hamm said, “You gonna leave me?”

Davidson answered firmly, “I’m not leaving you. Let’s go.”

A low rumbling began and did not let up. It was the sound of El Faro
going down. The last words heard on the bridge are Davidson’s. He is
crying out to Hamm: “It’s time to come this way!”