Posted on 10/06/2015 6:33:38 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
The owners of a cargo ship that disappeared Thursday with 33 people on board as Hurricane Joaquin raged said the ship's captain had planned to skirt the storm, but was prevented from doing so by a mechanical failure that left the boat adrift in the path of the power storm.
Phil Greene, president and CEO of ship owner Tote Services Inc., told the Associated Press the captain of the El Faro, whose name has not been released, had conferred with her sister ship — which was returning to Jacksonville, Fla. along a similar route — and determined the weather was good enough to go forward.
"Regrettably he suffered a mechanical problem with his main propulsion system, which left him in the path of the storm," Greene said. "We do not know when his engine problems began to occur, nor the reasons for his engine problems."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I was awake in the middle of the night, mourning the terror those poor people went through. I can’t even begin to imagine their terror.
I suppose once the attorneys get involved, we'll learn more...
Sounds like most ships on the sea.
Sounds like most ships on the sea.
And they become even more so when they fall under the control of the second owners. Oil tankers especially are floating disaster areas, enormous in size, single screw and loaded for bear.
With the hurricane wind blowing, those sailors wouldn’t have lasted long. That type of wind prevents you from lifting your head up, then add the waves on top of that. They went through hell.
Ping.
Yeah, is sounds to me that the owners just admitted culpability.
They sail them until they break.
And after they break, they haul them together, bring in the welding crew and keep on sailing.
This actually happened to an MSTS ship parked at a West Coast dock in the early 1950s.
In 2008, I took a July cruise out of NYC. There was a hurricane hugging the SE US coast. The ship with its incredible navigation and weather information stayed east of it. Joaquim had that weird unpredictable path. I could see how a ship with a combination of mechanical difficulties and an unpredictable storm was at some point going to get caught up in a storm.
..”a bucket of bolts..”
Top-heavy, too, if loaded up with containers.
I don’t think there was much time. If the ship was listing 15 degrees and no propulsion, shifting of the cargo would have caused the ship to capsize and sink very quickly.
I think this ship still had open top life boats. These should of been changed decades ago
I was in the Air Force, not the Navy, but as a day sailor, I'm pretty sure that the term 'boat' would not apply to the El Faro.
Container ships are loaded by computer program to get the right center of gravity. Containers have different weights of cargo, you can put heavier weighted containers below deck.
However, on deck containers can create an incredible wind driven force.
There was nothing mechanical about the decision to sail into a cat-3 hurricane.
The el faro was a ro-ro. Below deck were vehicles. The cars might be what shifted to create the list.
“I was in the Air Force, not the Navy, but as a day sailor, I’m pretty sure that the term ‘boat’ would not apply to the El Faro. “
The El Faro was 790’ long. The author must think the cut off from boat to ship starts a 800’. :-)
snip
Capt. Mark Fedor said one large debris field was spotted near the last known location of the
790-foot container ship El Faro near the Bahamas. The body, which Fedor said was "unidentifiable,"
was discovered in a survival suit, but no other human remains or survivors were immediately located.
"We are still looking for survivors or any signs of life," Fedor said at a news conference
near Miami. "We're not looking for the vessel any longer."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/el-faro-cargo-ship-sank-body-recovered-coast-guard-article-1.2385522
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