Here’s an article you may be interested in that was published today by magazine Vanity Fair. In it, author Wiliam Langwiesche uses the 500-page transcript from the El Faro’s recovered Voyage Data Recorder and other information made available during the investigations to piece together a gripping retelling of the worst U.S. maritime disaster in decades – the sinking of the American cargo ship El Faro.
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.
Read the full article: The Clock is Ticking – Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
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