▶GROUND NEWS: Spot Media Bias - Be Well Informed ground.news/brick ▶EL FARO PART 2 IS OUT NOW!: th-cam.com/video/BjiGHV3Si3A/w-d-xo.html ▶MORE IMMORTAR MARITIME... The Branson Duck Boat Tragedy: th-cam.com/video/0yG5C94qM2Y/w-d-xo.html The Scandies Rose Tragedy: th-cam.com/video/KFevuP5ua_8/w-d-xo.html The Ocean Ranger Disaster: th-cam.com/video/cyNFhthQ97Q/w-d-xo.html The Sunshine Skyway Bridge Collapse: th-cam.com/video/3htwtaJI2nM/w-d-xo.html TOSS A COIN TO YOUR RESEARCHER? www.patreon.com/BrickImmortar Supporters on Patreon enjoy exclusive, ad-free, sponsor-free, early-access versions of every video releasing!
I (finally) just took a peek at the tiers of your patreon. TYSM for having single digit amounts! I don't usually have the money every month for more than a few bucks extra to come out. When I get paid I'm definitely becoming a supporter!
Absolutely, you more than earned it this time! So much detail, I cannot imagine the work that went into it! Thank you again for your remarkable content!
Congrats on breaking 100k Sam! You'll probably get stuck between 400k-600k with how the algorithm works for awhile, but I know with your quality you'll cruise through a million someday soon. Rock on man!
Thank you for covering the sinking of the El Faro. This case has haunted me since I first heard of it. I read the entire NTSB report and it haunts me to this day. I think about Danielle Randolph and the rest of the crew often. They saw Hurricane Joaquin coming for them like a slow motion car crash but the captain had the final say. The captain was clearly under a lot of pressure himself to stick to a strict timeline set by the company. The transcript is heartbreaking. They should all be alive today.
Sorry to hear that. I once almost work for a ship company but got hired elsewhere. And I am the kind of guy who would advocate for safety, always. Had it been in my hands while in the backoffice of the company it would not have happened.
Worked on this ship in Tacoma when she was the Northern Lights. Every time it hit port in Tacoma, the ship repair crew (20 of us or more) I was on were waiting. We worked like mad right up to the time of departure to fix the biggest problems. She was a rusty tub that none of us shipyarders would even think of going off shore on. When she got too scary to run to Anchorage, they sent her to the Caribbean instead of the scrap yard to get a few more years of revenue out of her. Corporate greed at its finest. Ship is heavily insured, crew is replaceable.
@@TheFaveteLinguis Both are responsible. The captain absolutely was a problem, and was the main reason it went out how it did. But the company was also a problem, since instead of retiring the ship (which as stated above was well-known as a rusting piece of garbage). Tote Maritime decided to keep running this death trap of a ship instead of retiring it because they knew it would be cheaper to deal with the fatalities that could potentially arise rather than to retire it and start running their newer line of ships. Also Tote Maritime hired the captain - they knew of the problems he had and still chose to keep him on the payroll as captain of the El Faro. IMO Tote Maritime is more at fault than the captain, simply by letting him continue to captain the El Faro.
@@TheFaveteLinguis agreed, but he’s an extension of management and policies both good and bad. I would take note that in everything we’ve learned, you never once hear Tote take any interest or action to question why her captain was sailing that ship directly into the middle of a category 4 hurricane. At the end of the day though, no one can argue that the safety of the ship and crew was Davidsons’ responsibility 100%.
I work for a Marine supply company in Jacksonville. The owner was discussing this disaster the other day and talked about Danielle Randolph and other crew members she had worked with over the years. To those of you in the comments who had family on board, please know that your loved ones are still mourned by people in the industry and remembered by those who occasionally worked with them.
Our storyteller here did such a fantastic job relating the humanity of this story, I turned off the video at first sight of the Keel. RIP to all souls lost at sea, and our deepest gratitude to sailors the world over who make our daily lives livable.
I think about Danielle all the time. Didn’t know her at all, but she seemed like she would have made a great captain. Her focus on safety was evident through this entire ordeal. She didn’t deserve this- none of them did. RIP 💔
What a beautiful post, not connected by family, connected by livelihood, brothers and sisters who call the sea they're home, must always protect one another, this captain is shamed,God help him
My Sister was 2nd mate Danielle Randolph, thank you for this great video, gave me some closure. To the entire 33 crewmembers, you are still missed loved and heald dear in our hearts and minds. NBR.
I am so sorry for you loss. If it can be of any comfort I would like to share this with you. I work for a UK construction company and we use this story as an in depth case study to help promote the right safety culture in our business. This involves having actors play some of the people involved using actual words spoken that were recovered from the black box. This helps us look at the way words and actions made people feel and act in a difficult and pressured situation and how a leader involving and engaging with the expertise around them can help to drive a better and safer outcome. I would stress that this is done very respectfully and we allow a minutes silence to consider and remember those who were on board. People who have been through this (myself included) are visibly moved by this story and can only begin to imagine what you must have been through. I hope and strongly believe that the lessons learned here will make a difference to how we operate and ultimately this will save someone somewheres life or limb and I hope that this may offer some small crumb of comfort to you.
@@dogboyauckland thank you very much for you and everyone else's kind words and thoughts. I could spend days telling lovely stories of Danielle, I love the fact you are trying to teach and learn from mistakes, that's how we all learn. It is just incredibly unfortunate it took such a tragic experience for some to understand. I have spent many years in marine construction myself, I've seen the good bad and the ugly and experienced some scary things. So if you can teach people some great life lessons that may save someone else please do. Thank you all for your kind words, thoughts and prayers. May you all have fair winds and following seas GOD BLESS. NBR.
I hate speaking Ill of the dead but your sister was more prepared and acted more captain like than the captain. As with any accident he was not the sole reason for the sinking but part of the link. The actions of your sister though need to be recognized. Truly sorry for your loss and those of the remaining crew.
My friend's Cousin was lost at sea in the El Faro disaster. He had only been a crew member employed with Tote less than 3 months. He left behind a fiancee and two children, under 6 years old. He mentioned Capt. Davidson was full of himself, stubborn and prideful. His selfishness (and corporate greed) cost lives and irreparably tore families apart. RIP to all who perished and the families dealing with unfathomable loss.
Some people may be surprised at how many lives have been lost in airplane accidents and in ships at sea that sank, over the arrogance and ego of 1 captain. it is disturbing when you think about it. ( i know alot about most airline accidents that have occured also, a large number of them can be attributed to similar behaviors and reactions... although much much less so nowadays)
@@o0o-jd-o0o95Some might be...but I'M sure as HELL not!....jes' walk and talk around this mother..you'll find that lots of leaders who WOULD rather die than admit they don't know or don't understand... or dare to be second guessed....
I spent this entire video wondering how these people could allow this one inept man put their lives in danger. I don't understand the group think here. Maybe it's just my personality,but I would have called corporate, or the coast guard, and taken control of that ship, and turned east. They can fire me when we reach port.
I sailed as a cadet on the El. Morro. I have never seen such a flagrant disregard for safety in my entire life. One instance I remember we were being audited by ABS. The chief mate kept trying to distract the inspector from the rusted out fire mains. We were required to test the fire system. The fire main would blow out and we had to fix the holes. The strange thing was that it looked freshly painted but had big blisters every few feet. These blisters were wraps of duct tape over rust spots that were painted over that would blow out when the water was turned on. During that event, the cargo door to the aft hold was closed. Not only did the fire main not work, as the water rushed out on deck, it flowed freely down to the aft cargo hold even though it was closed. The aft cargo hold has a passage way to the engine room on tbe port side. Here we are sitting at the dock with water from a busted fire main leaking though the cargo hold door, running down and into the engine room. I can’t image what green water would have been like flowing into the engine room. This was just a minor thing I witnessed during my time on the ship. Sea star should be liable for everything. Yes, you can blame the crew as I did the chief mate in my experience, but it is the company that is responsible for the safety culture. Precious lives lost.
That's outrageous. I work in the design and fabrication side of this industry, specifically on piping systems, and of all the systems to be nonchalant about, the firemain?! Not only does that system perform the obvious damage control functions, but it's usually connected to the bilge system in some place too, and tell me a single piping system on a boat more important than the one that removes water from your ship
That the 2nd mate knew what would happen but the Captain didn't take her seriously always seemed like the most tragic part of this story. Her messages to her loved ones are heartbreaking.
I think she knew 100%! and she probably told the others not to tell her about the weather because that would make it seem more real to her. The other officers just completely played it off. Had they just taken the original suggested alternative route none of this would have happened. As a storm chaser you NEVER know what's going to happen with mother nature and the risk is not worth it AT ALL. Her messages broke my heart the most too. "Hope to talk to you on Friday" was indicative that she knew she might not make it out of this.
@@frankmiller95 disagree. There's no way to "know" what would happen but the 2nd suspected what could happen. People take the path of least resistance pretty regularly. They do what others expect them to do.
It’s really hard not to be incredibly angry at that captain. He was betting on people’s lives and pretty much killed everyone on board. Plenty of times there was opportunity to avoid disaster. RIP to the crew.
@@Argumemnon I agree, but the bulk of the blame has to be on the captain, here. With recklessness like that, it was only a matter of time until he got he and his crew killed.
@@williamwoolhouse5018 Uhmm…it explained how he was normally cautious in the past and that he was most likely under pressure due to the promotion he didn’t receive.
Yes, he was the proximate cause, but the fault doesn't lie with him alone. The company gave their ships several years of poor maintenance and their crews several years of poor training. Should have been fixed long before. The situation was a disaster waiting to happen, if not at this time with this ship, then another.
@@tesom9965 we see this im all industry. In one of the biggest shoppingmall our country asking the woman for a longsleeve and need her to explain what I am talking about, the restaurants and bars hire students (nothing wrong IF YOU PAY THEM GOOD) and many times the orders didnt end right.
I worked at the terminal in Tacoma when this ship was named Northern Lights. It took so much damage during one Alaskan storm that almost the entire crew quit the moment it returned to port. Apparently the 65' swells resulted in 60% of the ship being out of the water as it fell down the backside of each wave. It would accelerate to 36 knots and then bury itself into the front of the next wave driving it nearly to a halt as the steel screamed and twisted enough to put a 45 foot crack laterally along the spar deck and 30 foot vertically. The ship was rolling laterally within a half degree of capsizing for 36 hours and the crew had to remain strapped into their bunks listening to the ship shriek as the roll on containers were breaking free and slamming around on all decks. No one blamed the crew for walking after the details came out about the crossing.
The Faro falling down the backside of the swells and then accelerating, and then burying into the front of the next swell reminds me so much of the Edmund Fitzgerald--and we know what happened to the "Fitz" and her crew.
@@nutsackmania i quit my job and in last 2 weeks i got crushed and there refusing to pay the bill so i had to get a lawyer. my manager said i betrayed his trust and my old coworkers all took up lying to protect the company.
As a container ship captain myself, this is a very thorough explanation to what most likely happened to this unfortunate crew. From lacking bridge resource management to insufficient maintenance and even to explaining the possible reasons the captain may have had to choose this perilous voyage execution. Well done! Excellent investigation report.
The pressure on the Capt to get the cargo through at any cost on that time frame is what killed them, that and his use of outdated weather forecasts on bon voyage system that confused the Capt and thus put in near the eye of the storm
Question: Could the ship's First Officer, under maritime law and with the support of the other ship's officers, given the captain an ultimatum: Either (1) change course or (2) we will relieve you of command and find you to your cabin, and take him into the ship?
@@danstewart2770 exc question. What can a serviceperson do with a rusty hulk that has cargo chained to rust and an ignorant captain? Do the services just say “you should die if your captain says so?” I liked the narrator saying “you are important and your safety matters”. Anyone considering a seaman’s life or a military life needs to discuss this with their non military family member prior to service. You may be stuck under a psychopath’s command.
My good friend and engineering Mentor was the Chief engineer of this trip, he was an incredibly competent engineer i know he did everything he could to get that steam plant back online again. I miss him and I hope he and the other 32 crew on board have found peace! He will be remembered for the incredible person he was.
I was with the US Army's Transportation Corp during this vessels service in the Iraq war, when it was named the Northern Lights. It came over to Kuwait many times bringing Army equipment, and I was onboard the ship when that equipment was being unloaded. I remember how poor the ships condition was even then, many referring to it as a "rust bucket". They were using the same tie-down method mention in the video, that is, laying down tie-down chains along the deck to serve as tie-down points for vehicles, because there weren't enough D-rings in the deck itself. The cargo decks themselves actually sagged because the weight limits for vehicles being carried, exceeded the registered capacity. The rubber seals around the cargo hatch in the ships side were pretty much mangled from dry rot and constant opening and closing. The ships government contract ended around 2008, and then it began it's long periods of lay-up. I honestly thought it would be scrapped when it ended it's military contract, it really was in horrible shape.
@@LastAvailableAlias I talked to a crew member from the engine room about the condition of the ship, and he said the only thing Tote worried about were the engines, as long as they were working everything else was secondary. They didn't seem to concerned about anything that was viewed as secondary.
@@AcesnEights698 Absolutely, this seems to be a combination of human error, and the ship's deterioration coming together to form a perfect storm. No pun intended.
I remember following the El Faro incident in real time, as it was happening, and thinking, “Why in the heck are they heading straight toward the hurricane? This is insane!”
@@GORILLA_PIMPI lived in st marys georgia at the time, I remember el faro being on the news before this hurricane came through. The coverage placed blame on the company mainly, Im so sorry that this ended up happening tho
I sailed on this ship in 1996 as the SS Northern Lights from Tacoma to Anchorage. My previous ship was a super tanker, so this ship was nice and compact. The most dangerous thing on this ship for me was walking on the cargo deck as the longshoremen raced the tractors around the decks loading containers. Watching this video was so sad and at the same time so frustrating! As a former merchant mariner, one tends to put their trust in the captain in the ship to make wise decisions. Your safety is in their hands. Ram Chief Engineer (retired)
@@jimmydesouza4375 It (was) a RO-RO when it was in service between Tacoma and Anchorage. The trailers were driven up ramps from the dock using hustlers (yard tractors.)
@@ctdieselnut When in Alaska service containers were not stacked on deck, they were driven up dockside ramps using yard tractors. I'm a longshoreman in Tacoma and one of my first jobs was lashing the trailers to the deck using very heavy chains.
Anybody who's watched a few analyses of plane crashes knows that CRM is REALLY important. Subordinate crew members have literally allowed their captain to fly into the side of a mountain rather than take corrective action. And disasters have been averted by good CRM where captain and crew are able to cooperate.
In the overall scheme of things aviation is relatively a new mode compared of the several thousand year history of a vessel captain being lord and master. Even the word "Master" implies the total control they had over ships. I think a few captains I worked with who were still bitter a captain could no longer order flogging. My point is there is a more entrenched mindset among captain and crew that the captain knows all sees all and is not to be questioned. That mindset is gradually changing and BRM is slowly advancing.
Really good comment. CRM done right is one of the biggest reasons commercial aviation is so safe today. Bridge Resource Management can sometimes be a harder sell, as man has been sailing just a tad bit longer than man has flown, & the maritime tradition of the-captain-of-the-ship-calls-all-the-shots full stop, is still very much followed. The fact that proper BRM aboard El Faro would’ve saved 33 lives is heartbreaking.
I was thinking the same thing! After watching countless episodes of Mayday, CRM really has helped the industry move past the old ways of hierarchy in a crew of: I don't care what the rest of my crew thinks, I'm the captain and I know best.
I get infuriated this time of year. Danielle was my friend from Rockland, Maine. A few weeks or so before this happened she was telling us what a d!ck this "captain" was. I wish she would have just turned the ship to the safe route while he was sleeping and dealt with it afterwards. But she respected the chain of command too much.... RIP Danielle Randolph, Dylan Meklin and the rest... Gone but never forgotten 💔
i know this is 7 months later but this is crazy cuz danielles brother commented on this aswell you should reach out to him. extremely sad and honestly wish the people there would or could have done something about it if they could. honestly i would have knocked that captain out if i knew he was going directly towards the hurricane. shits sad and horrible and never should have happened. although the company did have alot of fault in it aswell. the ship should have been retired years before it was a massive rust bucket that nobody wanted to be on. literally all because of greed they wanted to get a few more years of revenue out of it. the entire ship was insanely covered by insurance and obviously the crew is replaceable there for the company doesn’t really lose anything by letting the old shitbox vessel sink.
The 3rd engineer was brand new and on one of his first ships out of college. He was one of my upperclassman mentors at the college when I there and he was a great guy was bound for a fantastic shipping career. This tragedy will always be close to me and you did a great job telling it correctly.
Out of curiosity, was there any explanation for why the oil level was so low? I assume that the list contributing to the loss of the main propulsion was simply caused by the captain being unaware of the mechanical properties of the engine and the situation with the oil level when he chose that particular maneuver. I'm just curious why nobody seemed to communicate on the ship? I wanted to make a career out of it, but that doesn't seem likely, so I have to fall back on some limited experience as a deckhand/ ships carpenter (now being phased out to some other title, I hear) to give me clues in stories like these.
@@matthewmosier8439 As an ship engineer myself, although on vastly different types of ship, its fair to assume they simply did not follow up on routine maintenance. Proper routine involves every day meassuring the oil sump levels and refilling as necessary. Most likely not even the engineers at the time thought that listing a certain way could have this fatal outcome, because if the sump is porperly filled listing should not cause this issue.
@@dipswewon4701 I’ve been Off-roading for literally half a century, and I just recently had my first experience with the fuel pickup going dry when I had 1/4 tank but sat too long in a steep angle. I hadn’t thought about the oil pickup having the same problem until that happened. I’m guessing you could run a ship a long time and never see what happens when you lean that far for that long. It seems like a perfect storm of incompetence, ignorance, and arrogance in the entire crew. It seems like nobody took their job seriously or took responsibility for their own life (like locating a survival suit and a life raft). I was an airborne ranger, and I can assure you my men and I knew where fire extinguishers, exits, floatation equipment, how to deploy emergency rafts, etc., were on everything we stepped foot in. I considered it part of my job. I can’t imagine having a person work for me, yet not learning the safety equipment that person needs.
@@garetheckley7018 I just had a conversation with my boss about our workplace safety. He was complaining about how staff were making decisions on recent jobs not to wear their safety harnesses or hard hats while doing high-level work on lifts. I've worked there over 10 years and have seen how things roll and periodically mentioned the supplying and reinforcement of safety gear/protocols in varying levels of assertion or observational commentary. I am not a manager of anybody. At some point I just quit making references. It all more centers on getting the job done, getting the invoice paid, and getting more jobs. I decided I wasn't going to worry about this more than he and his partner wife were going to. And I also wasn't going to cover if something does happen and someone official asks me historical questions. During that recent convo I told him that I was honestly shocked something worse hasn't happened in all this time and people do what they want because they do not reinforce safety. There is no official safety protocol policy in place to refer to either, much less have people sign off on. I think that it's more clicking because he's had to do some of this work while we are short staffed so the potential dangers are more apparent. Also, over the summer, someone slipped and fell on a job and broke her arm. I don't know if this affected their workers comp rates in some way as well or what. The contrast in the active concern now vs. before was interesting though.
The fact that the captain didn't know that his ship is on point with an eye of a hurricane is beyond words to describe the pure fear of being lost at sea.
he wasnt always the best man but is at the very end he was a good man and he was trying to help his crew until the last moments of his life. I think i would have just ignored him and just turned the ship around
@ChadGGolf It had 2 old style poorly suited life boats, and neither could have been deployed safely by the time the ship lost self propulsion, or practically at all by just 1 person.
The Capitain did know he's was heading towards a hurricane , He chose nit change course!!! If you paided attention to the video, a passing ship told the Capitain to change course.
Hearing that Captain's voice and saying "everybody's safe" knowing that he knew they were all but safe is upsetting. He must have known they were past the point of no return and decided to keep trying to salvage the ship. Terrible tragedy.
He was in full on denial. All those terrible accidents have one common denominator - people thinking „No way it’s that bad”, up until the last seconds.
Danielle had more brains and forethought than the Captain. I can only imagine how hard this has been for her family knowing she screamed warnings and alarms only for her to lose her life while the Captain blathered away about Alaska. This is a seriously sad and frustrating situation that never should've happened.
As the NTSB said, the rest of the crew should have done more BRM, rather than just sending texts. There was a first and third mate as well involved of course. One issue here is that crew do shifts and hand overs in 8 hour periods, so only one person in charge at a time. Seems that that all the crew were overworked and the 2nd mate was on sleeping medication at the time etc etc. Main issue is the company. They didn't even know where the ship was when it started sinking. The NTSB report needs to be read in full before any comments on "who is to blame" on youtube. Even then it is not clear cut as that storm was highly unusual, as NOAA even said. Intensified much more than expected and went to the south rather than swing westwards. There was a dispute from ship and dockworkers side on who lashed the cars down. They skimped on that. The main cause of failure seems to be a vehicle coming loose and smashing into the sea intake for the fire suppression system, so from that point onwards they just could not pump enough water out. The sea intake should have been protected by a bollard in hind sight. The NTSB report is about 200 pages long I think and 500 pages of transcript. Shows how complex this is. And even the members disagreed on their findings on BRM.
I Went to School with Danielle She was a hell of a great person. She was in one hell of a situation. I have sailed with captains that don't listen to their crews and it usually doesn't work out well for them. She should have called the company herself!
@@captainmikehamby5893 Out of curiosity, what would the consequences be nowadays if a crew mutinied against their captain? Additionally, what would the consequences be if they mutinied for reasons of safety? Ultimately, if there's only one person stubbornly making dangerous decisions, it wouldn't take much duct tape to rectify the situation (a bit to bind the hands, a bit to secure 'em to something sturdy, and possibly a bit more to cover the mouth). I'm wondering all this because too-harsh of consequences for a mutiny would discourage potentially-life-saving actions.
This is one of the reasons why competent and hardworking women get overshadowed by less competent men with bigger mouth and larger ego. It's also one of the reasons for the wage gap. They are not loud enough, they don't fight enough. That women should have kicked a fuss and threaten, straight up disobey the captain, not just complain.
She had a correct gut feeling about this voyage. Sadly, on the money. The string of bad decisions and neglect that led to this disaster is not unlike the Miami Towers collapse. Some parallels there. Innocent people died and the payout to the mariner's families was paltry by comparison.
As a truck driver I'd be interested to know more about what kind of trailers were on the ship and what their cargo was. As you said early in the video one of the biggest cargoes to Puerto Rico is refrigerated or 'reefer' freight. Reefer trailers handle a bit differently because their center of gravity is a bit higher with the large reefer unit up at the top front of the trailer. This is offset a little bit by the reefer fuel tank down under the frame of the trailer, but thats 50 gallons of diesel sloshing around, and the rule with reefers is that if you're dropping them off at a customer, you drop them off with at least 3/4 of a tank in them. All of the extra insulation in the walls of the trailer doesn't help the top heaviness either. Another problem with reefers is the kind of freight they haul. Reefer freight its notoriously, on average, the heaviest shit you'll haul in a standard double axle 53' trailer. With dry van you'll get loads like potato chips or insulation thats very light, and your whole gross weight is only like 25k. But with reefer, its ALWAYS heavy shit like meat, produce, beer. I don't think I've ever hauled a reefer load where my gross weight was under 75k, 80k being your max weight. Meat and beer isn't too bad because its so dense that you can only single stack it on the floor, so it helps keep you pretty stable. But produce? That stuff is juuuuust light enough that you can usually double stack it. One of the sketchiest loads I've ever hauled was apples. Apples are just light enough that you can stack them double wide, double high, and front to back. Its one of the only loads I've ever hauled where you're grossed out and cubed out. Cubed out meaning that all of the space in the trailer is being utilized. I had to haul them from Osoyoos, BC to Calgary AB over highway 3, the most southern BC/AB mountain pass, which the most windy one. With those apples stacked so high and being so heavy, that trailer wanted to roll over on every turn, and it doesn't help that almost all reefer trailers are air ride, therefore trading some stability for a smoother ride. And this is all doubly compounded if some of the trailers were containers on chassis. Container trailers are hands down the roughest things to haul. The fact that the container is separate from the trailer frame means that their even more top heavy, especially with how beefed up container frames have to be compared to a regular trailer body. Reefer containers compound this more, as the reefer unit and its fuel tank needs to be contained within the body of the container. And with how long containers will have to sit on ships and trains, their fuel tanks are even bigger, I think something in the neighborhood of 150 gallons. And the thing that would hurt container haulers the most in this situation is that they nearly universally have spring ride suspension as opposed to air ride. With air ride you can dump all of the air out of the trailer and make them sit stiff to the ground. With spring ride you can't do this, and the trailer is always riding on the suspension. This means that in a ship list, a reefer container hauler would be straining insanely hard against any securement. I don't really know anything about loading trailers on ships, so someone who is actually a ship yard shunter or a ship rigger might know more about this, the concerns I've listed might already be well known. But with how poorly it sounds like El Faro was loaded, known safety concerns might have been ignored. All I know is that all semi trailers aren't all created equal and can all be their own animals depending on how they're speced.
About the best thing I've read on Quora. In fact it's about ready for print. no better than "about ready for print". Every bit as well written as a memorable article I read in the New Yorker Magazine about cargo boats twenty years ago. What you write about seems like something that could go many ways. How about a book? .
They use the typical 45 reefers attached to the chassis and they get delivered like that to PR Trailer Bridge and Crowley are famous for that since they cut down cost of labor down
That is an incredible amount of information to do with trailers. Thank you for your insights. I did not know trailers could be so different depending on their load and setup.
Indifference or complacency is the single most common link between all major and minor accidents. Just not caring or treating something as acceptable are the things that will kill you.
The fact that we have voice records of all these correspondence, AND NO ONE ON EITHER SIDE SOUNDED THE LEAST BIT CONCERNED, is the obvious problem……..it’s like a 911 call where the operating is like “but what kind of pets; and what color are they, are in the house” when there’s people with guns doing a home invasion
Yup exactly but this should be called Corp Greed, i mean if you work for a company like that i'd sure heck want to know every single thing on how to avoid a thing like that and the procedures, this is why people need to know the whole company structure .
Agreed. On my Homeless Consultant Channel here I have said for years that the opposite of love is not hatred - it is indifference. Four million homeless Americans are not necessarily "hated". But they are not loved, and they are ignored as if they don't exist and don't matter. From that apathy arises the mindless stereotypes of homelessness that prevent anyone from even wanting to learn the truth anymore. Hence, I have 250 subscribers after six years of enormous effort while living in a car, while TH-cam is busy promoting self-serving "philanthropists" like Mr. Beast or murderers like McSkillet instead. That is indifference, and it is deadly.
Submarine veteran here. Excellent presentation with innumerable Lessons Learned. I can't imagine what the last moments were like for the crew when they realized that their deaths were imminent. Capt. Davidson, had he survived, would certainly have been brought up on criminal charges, convicted, and punished not only for his gross negligence, but the deaths of so many who relied on his experience, expertise, and seafaring judgement. Command at Sea carries with it the terrible burden of responsibility that few people can understand. He certainly failed in his duties, and he and his crew paid the ultimate price for his denial, arrogance, and misplaced sense of invincibility. Tragic and sad. RIP.
Utmost respect to you submariner. I couldn’t imagine I’d have the nerves to do that, although I greatly enjoy sailing. Can I ask what your job was like?
@Cletus VanDamme: Nuclear or diesel boat? I don't know about nukes which stay submerged most of their time at sea, but riding out a storm on an old WWII fleet-type diesel is not much different than any other 300ft vessel that has to ride it out on the surface. We rode out a hurricane on the surface off Hatteras in the 1950s. Being a lookout hanging in the ring on the side of the conning tower at night, all you saw were walls of water, three times higher than yourself, illuminated by the running light, crashing down on you. It was a scary experience for a naive 17year old kid who had total trust in the US Navy and the officers in charge. I loved the sea and was in awe of it's power and destructive potential.
@@vm-snss4910 Sound absolutely terrifying. I rode out Typhoon Paka off Guam but that was at a few hundred feet below and the gentle roll down there just made me sleep like a baby.
From what I’ve heard there was a 6 hour difference in the weather forecast that was receiving! Seems like the majority of this tragedy doesn’t fall on him! I’m certain he wasn’t on a murder suicide mission! I think that in the year 2022 the weather forecast for any marine vessel should have ZERO delay or difference in real time and tracking speed of storms!
This is always a hard watch for me. I can only imagine the terror the crew felt being effectively lead to their deaths. To see the written records of the crew's awareness of the situation is heartbreaking to me. The captain's poor decision making, both in the long and short term, directly lead to the deaths of many innocent people who, by the time they realized, were too far in with nowhere else to go on a boat on stormy seas. My most sincere condolences to those of you saying "my loved one was on that boat" and may all who were lost rest in peace.
As a second mate myself and knowing a member of their crew I have thought a lot about El Faro. I read the full transcrip from the recorder. As second mate I am responsible for pulling the most up to date weather (where the captain has access to a prettier version that has more predictive traits, but is not as up to date). One take away for me is you MUST make the captain understand in situations like this. He will thank you for it later. This is a second career for me so I was older in school and I saw how the young guys and gals were far less likely to speak up than they should in my view. Chain of command is important, but you can not have good bridge resource management if you are afraid to speak your mind to the captain when it counts.
I've never held any kind of position on a sea vessel and this isn't a comment particularly about this instance but just in general but wouldn't you, pretty much regardless of the field or topic *always* want someone that does just that? Point out things you can't see or view differently.. however you want to put it? I'm not saying to the point they're just doing it for the sake of being contrarian but yeah. I can't see a situation pretty much anywhere given all humans are prone to error and mistakes where having someone willing to speak out to help set you straight or correct you is a bad thing
@@BasementBubbatunde the ego and desperation of a person to basically "prove their mental model right" can be impossible to penetrate, and may devolve into outright verbal aggression. Especially when the culture you've worked in has been one of stringent vertical organization, speaking out may be risky for many reasons. People who are 1) in power and 2) in distress often don't want to hear that they're doing anything wrong. :(
@@mayatate2793 those types of gutless cowards are better known as narcissists/sociopaths. They're very common in men or women. Main red flags are anger issues and they cannot handle constructive criticism.
@@mayatate2793 Issue is, that an officer on a vessel is not a corporate post. Similar to command presense in the military the aggression needs to be dealt with as often in roles the existence of aggression is not de facto a part of the personality but rather the situation .
I’ve read that being forced to abandon ship in the eye-wall of such a powerful storm can easily become an “unsurvivable event” even in a survival suit, as there may be no clear break between the surface of the sea and the air one needs to breathe. It’s horrifying to think about what this crew was forced to experience in the final moments of their lives.
Bobbing in the water like you're in a giant washing machine with massive sheets of more water towering overhead and dropping down constantly... Must've been nightmarish.
The book Run The Storm suggested that because of the very late mustering of the crew that some may have entered the water WITHOUT their survival suits on because they had no time to put them on 😭
I’m currently sailing on the marlin class ship “perla caribe”. even though this ship is fairly new, I’m still very cautious since we carry 2x 900m3 tanks of LNG which is enough to crack the entire back of the ship if they decide to crack . Wish us safe seas as we go into 2022 hurricane season
What an avoidable tragedy, caused by the negligence of the company and the captain, who seemed full of hubris. So sad. The youngest person lost, Dylan Meklin, was just 23 years old. And we will never know who was the person who managed to get into an immersion suit, only to be left adrift to die because of the weather. May all of them Rest In Peace.
@@washedupwarvet2027 What they probably mean was if they we're with someone when they abandoned ship and only separated when the person in the suit died or if they were all alone from the very beginning.
@@jo-eo9ld I take it you don’t know much about shipwrecks. As soon as people go into the water, if they aren’t able to get into a life boat quickly the sea will carry them away. It’s extremely hard to stay together, let alone in the middle of a cat 3 hurricane.
Actually he lost his promotion for going the safe route in a previous situation avoiding a storm or hurticane, so he wanted to prove himself. So its the opposite of what u said. You dont think these big corporations arent greedy? They can replace the crew members
My Father served as the 1st officer on the Sister ship, the (Sea Star)SS EL YUNQUE.. he knew one of the guys on this ship.. this was horrible.. My dad was contacted by Sea Star, was asked to write a letter in Polish about the loss of Polish crew that were on this ship.. this was send out to the Polish families.. so sad. "This could of been avoided 100%" - My Dad
I rode out three days of 90 ft seas aboard USS Kearsarge back in 1996. It was like riding a 820 ft canoe up and down these valleys. We walked on bulkheads, almost lost aircraft and ate sandwiches until it blew out. When it was over we found fish and seaweed on the 50ft flight deck. God rest their souls.
Coastal and inland skipper and instructor here, this was an utterly stunning account, an universial lesson on safety and responsibility, as well as a life-changing experience for me. Thank you -- and may those 33 souls find peace!
It never ceases to amaze me how someone with such responsibility can still become complacent even when people's lives depend on you like that. Absolutely incredible and a sad situation all around.
I think people are ignoring the pressure from the company to stick to a quick timeline. The captain had already been reprimanded for being deemed “too cautious” when diverting course on a previous storm. This is in the report. I’m not saying he’s totally innocent but the company is just as responsible.
@@ripwednesdayadams It's sad too when you know that exact thing (company/outside influence) has caused these accidents for at least 200 years now and across multiple forms of transport. Same thing happened to the SS Arctic in the *1850s* and on the modern end the 05 Amagasaki train disaster
A lot of people want to act like an Admiral or king of a castle, without any of the responsibility it seems. Such a needless tragedy all from negligence and human arrogance
The captain isnt really a captain any more, he has to obey corporate. I mean any real captain with full authority would have changed to a safe course and when in trouble call the Coast Guard, not the company help line.
As said on Patreon, that was really amazing. The amount of detail provided for every part, from the maps, the animation, the pictures was perfect. It made it so easy to follow what was happinng, and where and why. Along with your great storytelling skills this was a great watch. So good in fact, when you mentioned "the video already got so long", I just noticed that already an hour has past, so captivating was it. Well done.
It’s kind of ironic that when everyone was telling the captain that they needed to change course to avoid the hurricane he didn’t listen. Then when he tried calling in the emergency no one would listen to him. This all on him. He’s the captain. He steered them right into a hurricane that should’ve been easy to avoid. I feel so bad for everyone who was lost on that ship cause they tried to do everything to get him to change course. Not only did he ignore them, he ended up killing all of them.
He should have lost his command a long time ago. I don't understand why corporate holds these captains for so long. There are plenty of young, capable men and women ready to take his place that understand how to avoid a damn storm.
14 months in Iraq with Marine infantry and almost every time something bad happened, complacency was a major contributing factor. We even had a saying, "complacency kills."
Former crew of the USS Nimitz, solo sailboat captain, and private pilot here. Thank you for this video. I often think back to situations like this to see if I too am making an error in judgment. Sometimes our ambition and balls are bigger than our abilities. Thanks for creating this content.
Sweet. Nimitz was in some aerial photos my husband snagged while aboard the USS Olympia. Every Naval vessel plus I believe every aircraft convened for a photo shoot somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Impressive. Amazing how many chapters in one’s life there are. If we are to be so lucky.
I'm completely off of true crime channels after discovering Brick Immortar, which I find to be the finest in its genre. The details and real world knowledge one can learn from this work makes for fine documentary...but the tone and style makes it superior from any documentary you'd see on broadcast TV, finally the comment section always restores some faith in my fellow citizens. The story of El Faro's last voyage and her crew is such a tragedy, as you point out a chain of decisions and events that sealed the fate of innocent lives. I feel like this content itself serves as a dignified memorial to their memories. Thank you.
I read a transcript of the VDR Bridge Audio Files a few years ago and was shocked how bad the situation was handled. The VDR records the last 24 hours before overwriting the data. There had been so many missed opportunities to avoid this desaster in this last 24 hours. I work in the martime industry for over 30 years, the past 15 as a Chief engineer and I have never seen such a disfunctional chain of command. I can't understand, why the officers where not able to stop the captain from killing them all. I really sad to watch...
it's not even that the opportunities were missed- they were ignored & dismissed by the person ultimately responsible for the lives of 33 people. and it's not an issue in the industry itself per say , it's in the economy that allows promotion and deadlines to be so readily placed above human life , and in the chains of command so eagerly ready to bury the story and walk away with some crocodile tears and empty promises to improve.
A young kid from my area, fresh from Maine Maritime was on the El Faro. This was his first trip, I believe. Crazy to see how this all likely played out. Thank you for this presentation, sir.
One of my best friends' little brothers best friend was that kid. honestly a horrible experience to go all that length to get a degree; and die because the corperation you work for didn't give a shit about the ship you were planning on sailing on.
He wasn't on this particular voyage when it went down, right? I was actually going to attend Maine Maritime for this past fall semester before some unexpected,... _"changes,..."_ occurred literally a week before class was supposed to start. Crazy.
My son is a Maine Maritime graduate and knew the guy you're talking about. FIVE graduates of the Academy across a span of many years died aboard the El Faro, and Maine Maritime Academy was grief-stricken after this disaster. Both the captain and 2nd Mate, Danielle Randolph were graduates. See video of memorial ceremony: th-cam.com/video/m_Y7TB2OPJg/w-d-xo.html
Me and my family were on a Disney Cruise literally a week after this ship sank in and around the area of where the ship sank. The Disney Cruise Captain sent out a message for all of us to hear aboard. He explained that the El Faro had sunk a week before and had asked if all could have a moment of silence. I till this day have the utmost respect for that Captain. As far as the El Faro sinking, I remember when the story broke about the ship and rescue crews looking for survivors, Al Roker on the Today show was furious that a company would sail a ship through a storm like that. Awful.
It technically wasn't the company's fault. It was the Captain's fault. For this specific incident, I'd say that the blame goes 90% to the Captain, 10% to the company.
Can't begin to imagine the fear the crew was going through. Scrambling to get a life vest/survival suit while looking out at those massive waves and fierce winds, fighting against the list, seeing the containers fall into the sea... Absolutely terrifying.
It's really difficult to comprehend the terror. The crew never stood a chance. In those final moments I'm sure they knew they weren't going to survive. Jumping into an open ocean with no survival equipment in the middle of a hurricane with 120mph+ winds. Absolute horror. Death is merciful in those conditions.
For further insight into the sinking, a good amount of crew details and voyage data recorder transcript, and other details of the ship and her life, I recommend reading the book "Run the Storm" by George Michelsen Foy. That being said, I do have a few comments I'd like to state/ask. For starters, the grandfathering of obsolete safety equipment is infuriating. Open topped lifeboats are useless in harsh conditions (even if modern lifeboats wouldn't survive the storm, they'd have a better chance and protect the crew inside). How these ships can be handwaved through inspections to the point they're literally falling apart is beyond me. Also about the Coast Guard, what exactly qualifies "risk of sinking/distress phase"?? The ship has been reported as flooding with a heavy list. Yes, the captain is downplaying the situation, but shouldn't "distress phase" mean any serious problem aboard ship? And on the subject of communication: why was it so hard for the captain to say the three most critical words when the situation become untenable: Mayday, mayday, mayday.
Regarding the coast guard, a ship in distress phase puts their personnel and equipment at great risk. Trying to muster a rescue during a hurricane isn't exactly safe. So unless they know for a fact the ship is going to sink, they're not going out there. If this ship hadn't suffered a plant failure, it would've survived in all likelihood. So the coast guard was waiting until your last point; the captain had to declare they were sinking/at great risk of being unrecoverable. Why didn't he? Well, for the same reason most of them never do. He didn't want to admit that the situation was unrecoverable, despite that truth being obvious. Because I truly believe he thought the conditions weren't that bad and everything was going to be fine. "It was like this in Alaska all the time!". He truly believed he hadn't made any decisions that were catastrophic, so when everything went that badly, he was unable to grasp how this had happened. He was unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation. His brain believed that there must be more margins, or a solution for recovery. Because in his mind, right up until disaster struck, everything was okay. So he was completely unable to say those three words. His brain wasn't capable of comprehending that the situation could be that bad. That's why disasters happen, people will continue to believe everything is okay and stick to a "keep calm and carry on mentality" right up until the ship rolls over or the plane crashes into the mountain. It's a failing in the usual mentality. "Don't panic" is the usual advice for emergencies, but a lot of people in these high stress positions turn that into "never panic, just keep doing your job, and everything will work out". And worse yet, sometimes they actually do save a near-disaster with that mentality, they do make it through an almost certain death situation, and that reinforces their belief that their mentality is all you need to survive.
Why do you believe the registry was puertorican? Lighter requirements, meaning less money spent. I guess the captain got grilled on performance metrics on the last run and, not to loose the promotion out of this rust bucket, chose to not avoid the next storm..
The captain confused familiarity with risk. The past is not apredictor of the future. Else people would never die, since they had not died in the past. It seems the captain also was more concerned about reputation and not losing his job and was unthinkably optimistic. If I was second in command I would have ordered people to get their safety gear nearby or just put it on.
I only have one complaint about this video, which is you saying the video is getting too long. I could watch/listen to these reports for hours on end. I have binged every video and will be watching every new release! This content is among the best I’ve seen on TH-cam, up there with mentour pilot. Thorough, insightful, respectful, and thought provoking. Keep up the good work sir!
@@Trashkantai I will check that one out! Another lesser subbed channel is Mini Air Crash Investigation. His are a little less in depth but he seems to cover a lot more of them, and a lot of lesser known crashes and incidents. Definitely worth a watch!
Ryan, I agree. I feel guilty sometimes being fascinated by videos like these, because these are real people who die in them, and their lives shouldnt be for my amusement. Idk how to feel, but I do enjoy watching these videos. I dont think anyone on this planet could do a better job making them than these guys. So thorough, and easy to understand. Simply amazinh productions. Am I sick for wishing there were more of them?
2:30 the ships "El Morro" and "El Yunque" actually stand for two landmarks in Puerto Rico, not the nose nor the anvil. "El Morro" is the historic fort in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico and "El Yunque" is the national rainforest - one of the few if not the only tropical rainforests in the National Parks System.
So, basically, the captain inadvertently tried his hardest to sink a (relatively) perfectly seaworthy ship, and unfortunately none of the bystanders felt comfortable disagreeing and potentially saving lives. Unfortunate.. ineptitude at it's finest.
Captain is ultimately responsible for this tragedy, but he’s dead, and the best way to prevent something like this happening again, is to fully investigate who or what was pushing down on the captain from the top, holding them accountable, and making real change.
considering the conditions of it's sister ship, it's highly unlikely the ship was particularly seaworthy; but you're correct, it does appear the captain misread the situation badly, got in too deep and allowed his ego to get in the way of rational decision making, leading to a loss of all hands. that said, even if there was an orderly evacuation, in those conditions it's highly unlikely anyone would have survived even with a raft until help came. sinking a few KM from the eye of a cat4 hurricane that then would linger about 20km from the sinking spot for a day, pretty much doomed everyone regardless how the evacuation went.
This ship was not seaworthy, it was skating by and in no way with in the standards set the the ABS and the USCG. This ship should have been scrapped years prior.
@@jamesbelbin6343 The USCG inspects these ships on a regular basis. They allowed it to sail with all the deficiencies mentioned, rust everywhere, obsolete lifeboats, minimal electronics, minimal lube oil in the supply tanks, lack of training etc. They will overlook almost any defect to save the ship owners money.
I can hardly sit through 5 min long videos but this was so interesting, I couldn't stop watching. No unnecessary dramatic music, no stupid story manipulations, no cheap attempts to make it more intriguing. I felt genuine interest in the story and I love how detailed it was. An incredible step-by-step investigation of what had and also might have happened. The industry/company was abusive and exploitative and the captain was exactly the same. The crew didn't just die. They suffered abuse, negligence and likely total panic hours before the ship sank. And the death at sea itself must've been horrible. I wonder how long it took. Minutes? Hours? Days?...
As a retired National Weather Service marine meteorologist, I offer several observations: 1) Timeliness of weather observations and forecasts paid a critical role here. Aviators and mariners need to know how long it takes for this information to arrive. Aviators have met their deaths trying to cut around a thunderstorm too closely because they were relying on radar data that they didn't know was 5 minutes old. Here, six hour old forecasts at a critical time contributed to the wrong decision. 2) Ship routing companies have meteorologists who can not only help route ships to save fuel, but serve as valuable consultants in storm avoidance situations. Very few small companies pay for these services, but they should. 3) The lack of a working anemometer was not a factor. Most ships report winds by observing sea state. 4) The capt. was counting on the official forecast to be absolutely perfect. Instead, he needed to account for a margin of error even if it meant several diversionary routes that later proved to be unwarranted. 5) Joaguin needed a larger than normal margin of error during this event because the storm had just formed and it was drifting into an abrupt change of steering currents. On the other hand, for powerful storms that are moving at a steady clip in a straight or broadly curved line, the margin of error can be smaller. Surprisingly, this isn't accounted for in the official NHC cone, but it should be.
Thanks for your insights! The thing that sticks with me is the margin or error. I grew up sailing with my grandpa and that’s one of the things he always taught me. Always account for the margin of error, and never assume anything to be perfect when sailing. Although, it was a 40 foot sailboat so we had to be a bit more careful since our motor was only for emergencies or for navigating the canals and getting out of the bay
Yes I agree. I am a former Radio Officer, and taught GMDSS for a number of years. The Captain did not follow his STCW training at all. It was as if he were sailing back in the 1800's. He seemed to rely on some third party weather service for up-dates, which by their own admission were hours old. Based on the fact this ship had to have been a GMDSS compliant vessel, or it would not have been allowed to leave port, he had: NAVTEX receiver, receiving data via the USCG, but coming directly from the NWS, and he also had his Sat C, EGC (enhanced Group Call), SafetyNET marine weather up-dates coming directly from the NWS, on current weather conditions in a specific maritime region, plus he had a a calibrated barometer on the bridge. All of which anyone with normal ability could see that there was a major disaster about to unfold. It also appears that his frame of reference to sea conditions was based on extremely low pressures coming across the Aleutian Island chain, which can be very dangerous, but do not generate the tightly compressed kinetic energy of a rotating hurricane. A receipt for disaster.
As a retired mariner, I can attest that the vast majority of emergencies at sea are because of a series of events. I was trained to think ahead and be prepared to the worst case scenario for each event. Also vessel maintenance is crucial, I have refused to leave port if deficiencies weren't corrected. Even though I was accused of being a little to 'by the book' I was able to retire without a single loss of life or loss of vessel. There is far more to being a Captain than getting a vessel from point A to point B on time.
@@grmpEqweer Yep, swiss cheese model rather then theory. Making just one good decision, even with only a margin of a minute until the point of no return, is often all that is required to avoid a catastrophic disaster. It's not about how many mistakes you make, it's about your ability to make one right decision before everyone dies.
I was apart of the USCGC Northland crew during this incident. The search and rescue operations for the El Faro is very vivid. We were south of Cuba during this storm for hurricane avoidance, it was a very long few days. Once we were tasked with SAR for El Faro, it was remarkable the amount of people involved with searching for survivors. I've never seen so many crew members out on deck just looking out and hoping for some sort sighting. The seas were eerily calm during this search. It was remarkable working this case and seeing how dedicated our crew and the other units were in trying to locate any and all crew members. May they rest in peace.
You know you're a great creator when I didn't realize this was damn near a feature length film until you said "this video has gotten extremely long" and I checked the timestamp
Over a year ago I watched another doc on this ships sinking. I guessed this was another doc on the same ship. I was completely blown away at how in-depth your doc was compared to the other one. I have been binge watching your videos for the last couple days. Keep up the good work! Short videos, long ones. You're doing a great job. Subscribed.
“It’s time to come this way.” Haunting that the only option the AS had was to put on a life vest and walk into a hurricane after following the orders of a Captain who put him there in the first place. Truly a nightmare scenario for the crew.
Even the way he handled that pisses me off. Its like he wasn't physically trying to help the AS, just coax him off the bridge like you'd try to coax a scared toddler. I mean I understand that maybe the captain couldn't get to him due to a severe list or something, but given the captains actions and attitude up to that time it's just too easy for me to imagine him leaning against the door jamb watching the AS panic.
That's because he wanted to make sure that everything written on record had is on record at his best future intentions and what was best for him in mind I thought he acted like that when he was telling that lady on the phone El faro Tryin to blame the help. Stupid ship master
Exactly.. come this way like straight out the door and jump out into the ocean in the ferocious hurricane. My God the thought of it makes me sick. I can’t even fathom how it went for them. 😔
Almost the same thing happened to an 18yr old bulk carrier I'm was in 2015-2016, 1997 MV Polyneos, Panamax 7 hatch Bulk Carrier w/out cranes. We were anchored outside the Yangtze after drydock & loading heavy steel rolls(bound for Ravena, Salerno, & Venice Italy) on a old ship usually carrying grains & bauxite. A freak Typhoon was heading toward our anchorage spot, as we surrounded by 20 or more ships we hunkered down. As the typhoon hit every ship around us started leaving, some lost their achors due to the strong winds. We were last to leave the anchorage spot, the Master finally made the right decision that save our lives. As we were underway to hide in Taiwan, the ship had to make two 90 degree turns to make the u-turn needed to head towards Taiwan. Midway to the 2nd turn the Main Engine died, and as we sat dead in the water, me & the engine crew scrambling to restart the main engine. We were hit by 3 huge freak waves portside almost capsizing the ship, Everything that were not bolted down, tables, chairs, personal items, everything fell. It was a some sort of a miracle that the ship's engine was able to restart and we didn't died in that catastrophe. Edit: I'm dumb didn't proof read before posting. It was two 90 degree turns from what I remembered from 3rd mate's retelling of the events. Lastly our Carriage style overhead provision crane was left hanging on the edge of it's rails stbd side, after bosun tried "securing it" when all of that was happening.
Wow! The Northern Lights! I was the tactical supervisor in charge of protecting this vessel from Greece to the Persian Gulf and 2005. We were never given any type of tour notification or anything regarding to lifeboats, etc. I remember buying a lawnchair and bringing it with me and suntanning on superstructure starboard side, top deck. The military equipment lashed to the decks look no different with the chains than it did in the video from five years later
I had no idea the danger of this industry until now. What I do know is incompetence, laziness, pressure to skip over safety precautions is absolutely unacceptable. If you’re a restaurant manager, a pilot or a captain of a ship, you have the responsibility to keep your team and customers safe at all cost. You don’t skip checklist, maintenance issues, or suggestions from your team out of ego. If you’re in charge you go above and beyond for the safety of everyone. What a tragedy.
Can’t forget than unlike calling 911 or even experiencing an emergency in an airplane, you don’t have Fire/EMS/LEO minutes away, or even an airport in worst case scenarios a few hours away, when you’re on a ship in the middle of the ocean. It can take days for anyone to reach you
I had this thought about pilots and captions after binging so many disaster videos that they should be doing much more stringent testing and psychological qualifications to get these positions. I realized later that I shouldn't be judging without knowing what actually goes into the hiring of these individuals but even now it bugs me. Especially in the case of the Costa Concordia. Like the captain went from head of security to captain and he completely abandoned the ship along with the passengers onboard. It would be beyond distressing to find out that these people who have hundreds of lives in their hands aren't tested in some way to find out how they'll react to disaster or them knowing that the people's lives onboard are their responsibility snd they should act accordingly.
When you said 'this video's already really long' I had absolutely no idea I'd already been watching for an hour. This was an incredible in-depth look at a tragedy I'd never heard of, that should never have happened. Confirmation of bias at its absolute best. Or worst. That second mate should have been able to lay the facts out and been listened to - she would have made far better leader and captain than the actual captain, whose apathy is just astounding. Even to not really making clear to the onshore personnel how bad the situation was (and their calm collectedness seems to show that they didn't really understand how bad the situation was - if anyone in that conversation had mentioned 'hurricane' it would have gone differently, although I'm honestly not sure what help someone hundreds of miles away could be when there was no oil in the engine, nor any, seemingly, to put in the engine!) How anyone could have classed that vessel as seaworthy in the first place is mind-boggling never mind the fact that the captain decided to take it out to sea with a known hurricane somewhere in his path, even if he did think it was miles from where he'd be. The area a hurricane covers can be hundreds of miles and there are gale-force winds even when you're nowhere near the eye of the storm!
@@ibeatyoutubecircumventingy6344 Profits get put first over human lives far far too often, in all industries, which a horrible indictment on the world we live in.
Wow! I thought I worked for unethical companies, and incompetent management, but this puts my experiences into perspective. I've been injured on the job, needed surgery, and fought money grubbing employers who were responsible for my injuries and treatment, but at least I'm alive and able to get justice, and then move on. This is a whole different level. Mistakes are catastrophic, and the whole work crew loses their life. The company collects the insurance, and the families are lucky if they get enough to bury their dead without going into financially crippling debt while they try to survive the tragic loss.
@@WindTurbineSyndrome The emails shown seem to indicate that the company management for all their faults maintenance wise, never objected to any weather diversions. The captain failed to get current weather reports and failed to take a safer route. I do not buy that this was all due to pressure. His mental model and crew resource management was was lacking and he is the most responsible for what happened.
@@WindTurbineSyndrome Money has nothing to do with the captain disregarding warnings from other captains and thea NOAA reports. This captain was a moron, plain and simple.
@@yellekc it's definitely possible to be pressured with it not leaving evidence in emails or other official communications. I remember I once led my shift leave early during a bad snow storm. Officially I was given leeway to let them leave if I thought conditions could be dangerous. Unofficially it was hinted to me in numerous ways that they definitely didn't want me to let them leave early for the rest of that winter. I still agree that the captain is responsible, but I don't think the emails are the be all end all.
I read the transcripts of the in-bridge communications shortly after they were released, and this tragedy always struck me as so haunting. Between the inwardly paranoid & outwardly confident Ship's Master, to the observant 2nd Mate, to the terrified helmsman, to the silent Polish Nationals to the franticly working Engineering crew, these felt like real people to me, not just words on a page, and their preventable death was a tragedy a million small mistakes in the making, as most great tragedies are. It's easy to look at some nitpicky regulation and say 'who cares' or 'why are we wasting time on this?' but all those little neglected things can lead to a very big problem. Sometimes, you have to sweat the small stuff. RIP to the crew of the El Faro.
It wasn't mistakes which kept such rust bucket in use and at sea at time when even properly maintained ships should have made different course choises. It was greed which lead to this disaster. And as usual those people truly behind this chain of events never get their neck put on line. At least in aviation companies with unsafe practises get fined and eventually banned! Until that happens, there's always next El Faro waiting to happen.
Same here. I’ve always loved maritime history, and this was the first disaster I payed attention to in real time (in first year of high school in 2015). It was a heart pulling read, particularly near the end as the AB (I assumed was Frank Hamm) struggled to leave the bridge, brought me to tears. It is something that will always stay with me, as have other horrendous tragedies. Those that most come to mind are the Conception diveboat fire, Stellar Daisy’s break up, and the fiery loss of the tanker Sanchi.
You said it with regard to regulations/company rules. I'm a bit more familiar with railroads, and the PRR from roughly 1935-1955 was considered one of if not the safest railroads in North America. Maintenance crews and engineers enforced rules very strictly because in most cases they knew such rules were written in blood.
The captain’s stupidity knew no bounds , Even when a crew member states “I’m a goner” the captain still has faith in his own capabilities “No you’re not, time to come this way” as if he’s saving people like a hero What an absolute fool of a man
Yes just YES. Been patiently waiting for this since your Ocean Ranger video. You are awesome and your documentary style vids blow those terrible part live action docu dramas from cable TV out of the water. I would gladly wait to see you cover the Deepwater Horizon or heck even an older disaster such as the Sinking of the Lusitania or Empress of Ireland. Any of those being covered by you would be awesome! I'd patiently wait years because I know you'd do a fantastic job. Great work as always. Also respect and condolences to the crew lost, one of the crew members was from my home town as well as another's widow was on the news a few years back reflecting while looking on at the Golden Ray that capsized in St. Simmons Sound.
@@bowtiejess80 My cousin's husband was lost on the Ocean Ranger. Her two sons grew up not knowing their father. Very sad time in the history of Newfoundland.
As someone from Puerto Rico, this hit hard knowing all those men died in order to keep the way of life we are used to normal. I used to work at a restaurant and remember the chaos because the shipment got lost, some people got mad blaming bad planning, not realizing the truth until it was informed on the news. Watching this makes me even more upset and mad at all the bad decisions taken by management and responders.
This captain acted like the captain of the Titanic, ignoring warning signs. But the difference is management of SS EL FARO would accept any course change without hesitation but the captain ran straight into the storm.
@@vaffangool9196 They could have ensured their buoy was transmitting properly before leaving that poor person in the immersion suit, that was waving their arms to rescuers, to die in the ocean.
@@fortunekader9121 Yes! This hit me the most. Why isn’t this discussed more in the comment section? They literally had a survivor and left him/her. Can you imagine what that poor soul was thinking?
But if he had successfully sailed through the hurricane, he would have become a legend. Sometimes you gotta take risks if you want good stories to tell at the bar.
Wow! Just wow! After the Sewol videos I remember clearly thinking "Thank God nothing so crazy and reckless could happen in the US". I was so wrong. I thought I knew the El Faro story. It was shocking to see how all of those little things added up to this tragedy. Even though I knew the end result, I could still feel my heart racing as the storm intensified in the video! The VDR voice data was something I had very little knowledge of and was very difficult to hear. Also, great analogy with the Tornado warnings! I've been looking forward to this video and he didn't disappoint!! Well done!👍👍☺
I remember this incident quite clearly since it was covered in the local PR news for a whole month since on top of the loss of life, it wrecked the island's supply chain in a way that wasn't seen again until 2017 when Hurricane Maria happened. People were so angry & heartbroken because all of this could have been avoided. Look forward to seeing part 2 since so many things changed after this disaster but it's unfortunate that it had to come at the cost of 33 lives.
True. Puerto Rico only had two ships supplying goods to the island, after the loss of El Faro, it was down to only one. Such a tragedy. May their souls rest.
This is heartbreaking... I can't imagine being stuck on a ship that was knowingly sailing into a hurricane without being able to do anything about it. How scary
Had to do a technical paper and presentation on this in engineering school. I was assigned to analyze the engineering failure that led to the sinking. After weeks of looking for one, the only failures I found were the toxic captain and the terrible company sailing them into a hurricane. Things aren't designed to sail in hurricanes. There's the conclusion from an engineering perspective.
The oil level isn't an engineering concern? Yeah, it took on water due to negligence in both loading and storm precautions (not engineering problems) but they lost steering due to that low oil level
@@patagualianmostly7437 I don't understand this take that failing to maintain a minimum level of oil as specified is an engineering rather than maintenance fault. I would imagine that part of the reason for this minimum fill level is so that oil pressure is maintained for a given degree of trim/lost conditions. Put another way: you can always try to design a safer car, but it ain't the fault of the airbags when someone dies driving it off a cliff.
@@Pantherophis yeah, roll will mess up engines. One episode of "Deadliest Catch" one of the ships gets hit with a freak wave. BOTH engines immediately STALLED!! they managed to get it back to port on one engine, but that took a while just to get that up and running. If they'd gotten hit by another wave they'd probably have not made it back to port at all.
Not in engineering school but I think the hasty conversion from roll on to lift on could’ve thrown things off, plus the fact that the cars were secured with mere chains instead of maybe having some sort of built in system to lock them in and prevent them from snapping free the way they did here.
As far as I can tell, lube oil level is specifically an engineering issue. From the USCG report: "A former EL FARO C/E testified at the MBI that during his tenure with Sea Star Lines (1998-2013), standard operating procedures were to operate with a lubricating oil sump level between 28 to 32 inches.131 He testified that he normally kept the sump level higher to prevent the loss of lube oil suction. He further testified that during his time on EL FARO, the level was sometimes increased, at the direction of a C/E, to a higher level of 30”-32” for voyages where heavy weather was anticipated. The former C/E recalled needing to add an inch or two of oil to the sump once a quarter to compensate for normal oil consumption." At departure, El Faro's oil sounding equated to 24.6". This is all from Section 7.2.7.2 of the USCG report, available here: media.defense.gov/2017/Oct/01/2001820187/-1/-1/0/FINAL%20PDF%20ROI%2024%20SEP%2017.PDF
These maritime tragedies usually leave me with a profound lingering melancholy but this one was different in that the overwhelming emotion is of rising anger. This strayed beyond mere corporate manslaughter into the realm of cold blooded murder. We have a huge problem in the business world currently in that the traits deemed desirable for senior leadership and the boardroom are those of the common or garden psychopath. This is all coming to a head as we speak and it could very well be the death of us all, innocents that we are. The master of this vessel displays such characteristics in spades. Had he not killed himself and all his innocent crew, his desire to be promoted would undoubtedly have been met. His desire to cut corners and be a “risk taker” for the company in this cut throat industry is definitely in no doubt.
He was fired from his previous job for being too cautious. I forget the details but it was something about requesting a tow in to port when his vessel was disabled in some way. This was the safer approach but it cost time and money. His employer thought he didnt need it and was upset with him and terminated his employment. Perhaps he learned his lesson. You should consider that it was not a desire for promotion but his desire to keep his Captains job. What are the odds he would ever get to be the Captain of another ship at age 48 if he were fired again for erring on the side of caution in a way that delayed delivery of cargo or in some way cost his employer money? "We have a huge problem in the business world currently in that the traits deemed desirable for senior leadership and the boardroom are those of the common or garden psychopath." You got that right... its just that maybe its not the Captain that should be the target of this assessment.
Imagine how different the captain's actions, decisions, and motivations would have been had he known he was no longer in consideration for the captaincy position he wanted. Had he known that, he almost certainly would have been far more cautious.
if that was an underlying motivation, then its the Same as in war, officers looking at senior level politics and promotion will make choices that can cost unnecessary/unwarranted loss of life.
Hard to believe how calm and professional the shipmaster was on the opening emergency call. The emergency channel operator handling it with all of the urgency of a hospital main switchboard phone call...how on earth did the SM not scream into the radio they were sinking and needed help immediately I don't know.
Actually, he was using the ships Sat B system, which is used for commercial communications, which he should not have been on. You can listen to the land based satellite operators. They did not know exactly how to handle the distress, because they are trained basically as switchboard operators, and not in distress communications. So that was a major error on the part of the captain. Note: He was only say 200 miles from USCG Miami, who are trained to communicate with emergency traffic. All he had to do was call them. Did he? NO! Why not? I don't know. If he went through USCG approved GMDSS training he would have know to do so. Results? Everyone died.
@@mikemalloy1681 Crazy right? I can't make any sense of that. I can understand how they got into the situation and how the boat met it's demise but I can't make any sense out of why he didn't sound the alarm with the proper people. I don't recall him ever making contact with the coast guard and I believe they were notified by someone else on their behalf. Was he embarrassed you think and still thought just maybe he could fix the problem or was it pure panic and he didn't know what to do?
@@mikemalloy1681 Given his extremely non-chalant attitude that sent the El Faro straight towards the eye of Joaquin, my hunch is he didn't call USCG Miami because he didn't fully grasp the severity of the situation. Maybe still wanting to keep the matter "internal".
Very impressive. Hands down, this is THE most comprehensive report about the El Faro disaster I have ever found. Look no further for any more information about it- No matter how small it may be, you can be at ease knowing that any information there is on the sinking, you can bet it is in this video report. Yet still, anytime I hear about this event, I always get chills knowing about the last email that Danielle Randolph sent to her mom at 3:34 am, acknowledging their path into the Cat. 3 hurricane, and ending with "love to everyone". 33 people. Folks that were no stranger to the ocean. Just gone. The entire ordeal was just...so damned avoidable. Such an absolute shame. I hope and pray that the families and friends of all 33 people have been able to find some sort of inner peace...and forgiveness. ❤
This reminds me of when Amazon told all those warehouse workers to stay put and keep working during a tornado. If you read some of the final messages those workers sent to loved ones before the tornado tore through the building, you can see that they also knew they were in danger but were afraid to disobey and protect themselves because then they would lose their jobs and potentially be unable to afford living expenses for themselves and their loved ones afterwards anyway. I have to wonder if that was a factor in why the crew of the El Faro didn't mutiny despite knowing that they were headed into the heart of a hurricane.
I live close to the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, IL that was damaged by that tornado. The unnecessary loss of life was abhorrent and sad. They tore down the remains of the damaged part of the warehouse, which was about 3/4 of the warehouse, and plan on rebuilding it.
I would say that's exactly the situation on this Bridge, Maria. Say anything within hearing of the Captain and there'd be hell to pay - and you'd be picking up your final pay cheque. Unfortunately none of these poor souls got to pick up their final anything. Everyone feared him by the sounds of things.
I genuinely don't think these things are as much about not losing one's job as they are about a ingrained deference to authority. There are lots of tales of non-commercial sinkings where the passengers just sat around watching the ship flood without attempting to get themselves to safety. Passengers of hijacked planes almost never try to take back control of the plane. In situations like these, we're just so used to waiting for authoritative instructions, and once we get them, following them.
Ill never understand why a sea captain would ever take the risk of getting anywhere near severe let alone tropical weather. Assuming your ship is strong enough to handle such weather seems like a foolish an unnecessary risk. To many times in history it has been shown that no matter how strong or supposedly unsinkable a ship is it went down. I know delays of cargo can be potentially financially costly but I would think that would be a better risk than that of the lives of innocent crew members. I’ll admit Im no expert sailor so it may well be my that I don’t fully understand all the factors involved in sea based cargo shipping.
@@19eightyforeisnow give me a break! Thats literally speculation and even mentioned it was purely speculation in this video. Not confirmed in any way, shape or form.
I just want to offer my sincere thanks to you and your team for making this video. I was a freshman at the Maine Maritime Academy when the El Faro was lost and I vividly remember how worried the entire academy was for the crew, and the candlelight vigil we held while coast guard search efforts were ongoing. This video gave me a lot of answers to questions I had concerning the tragedy, and while I did not personally know any of the sailors lost that day, this video has helped me achieve some closure with the event.
Oh man, the emergency service women are being so kind and soft and professional, but it's almost as though they don't grasp of the severity of what was happening on board
The captain was really downplaying what was happening to the people on the shore. What was being reported didnt seem to match the severity of the issues at all.
To be fair, in a real emergency like this, he should have been calling the coast guard, not trying to get tech support from the corporate office. I’m sure the ladies in the phone had no idea how bad his situation actually was.
@@Leigh-says-stuff Not the first Video here, where it seems the people in charge of the situation are more concerned with talking to Corporate than getting actual help.
Damn.. i almost cried listening to the the Rank and File voice their concerns 😟 I used to work at a corporation just like that - in 2003 we lost an amazing young woman - Elizabeth Strianese - due to lax safety procedure... The accident scene was HORRIFIC ! She was only 20 yrs old and her father has worked maintenance their for 10 years !! I sincerely means this when i say that my life flashed in front of my eyes. Every single one of use use to bypass that same interlock while the line was running ... Joking about safety meetings etc .. Jesus I'm still ashamed of how we all acted before that day... God Bless you guys and gals out there in the blue collar world - keep up the good fight ! Protect YOURSELF !
Sorry to hear about the young lady and the terrible tragedy for all involved. I've worked in nursing and I've seen my fair share of unsafe conditions. it seems that people loose their common sense when involved in group think, and being afraid of rules that clearly are unsafe being made by someone who holds a title above theirs. Makes me think of 911 and the people who used their higher minds and left, versus the people who were told nothing to see here and to go back to wait to die.
CRM is crucial. We learned about it in university, going over so many disasters where a crew member had concerns but was ignored or held their tongue because the captain’s word was law.
A barely seaworthy and shoddy rustbucket of a ship whose modifications made it as unstable as could be gotten away with, its cargo secured in its decks in the most slipshod and barely acceptable way, a Captain who had little to no interest in his job or timely weather forecasts, a category 4 hurricane right in the ship's path. What could possibly go wrong?
Biggest factors ? -- 1st: indifference by who trying to contact ! -- Ability of ship, is of the lesser factors. -- 2nd: actually waiting ! -- 3rd:: message of "tine is running out". (At this point, would be correct to say: "Abandon Ship" ! ) -- 4th: never declared: SOS ! 8th (or later): the condition of the ship. 9th (or later): those who let the ship to be on the water 10th (or later): people blaming others, for creating other "excuses" for the sinking. After the 1sr "please wait", the communicator should have been thrown over board !
??? Weather ??? The ship is facing a category 4 hurricane. -- Which way to steer the ship ? ******* -- Calling weather monitors; -- Put on hold; -- Hurricane is getting closer; -- Not going to survive on this course; -- Storm is starting to arrive, -- Put on hold; -- Time is running out; -- Put on hold; -- Hurricane has begun; -- There is only black skies; -- Waves are getting huge, -- Only possible hope, somebody answers . (At least record our departing words ! )
@Dirk Carmel what were they going to do for this captain? He was in a cat 3 hurricane, listing and taking on water. He needed to be told and get permission to call a mayday and abandon ship? Yeah he shouldn’t be put on hold but he shouldn’t have put everyone in that situation in the first place. And should have had the knowledge and experience to know that no one on the other side of the phone could help him in that situation unless it’s to call the coast guard fr him. And he STILL was acting like it wasn’t a life or death situation. Saying he wasn’t ringing abandon ship yet. The fact that he was put on hold was the least problematic issue he was dealing with at that moment. It was his fault.
I was part of the emergency response operations that recovered the damaged lifeboat. We also searched the local islands for signs of life. Incredibly sad.
Didn't know the coast guard searched islands for life, even thought its basic stuff I just never heard of search and rescue doing it on the news. Super interesting
I'm still trying to wrap my head around this as I watch more of the video. They were so organized when it came time to search and rescue; but the captain couldn't even get in touch with someone who could help him before the boat sunk? He had to leave a voicemail? This is absolutely unbelievable.
He didn’t Want to get in touch with anyone. I think that’s what you’re missing. He only contacted his own company to keep from publicity or leaks and to keep from being scolded or losing face. He had every chance and opportunity and the tools to do so. But he wanted to be promoted. And thought he could just salvage it himself without letting anyone know. That’s what cost everyone their lives.
The captain only sent distress calls via the GMDSS (DSC digital distress calls via regular old HF radio and the ship’s satellite terminal) and SASS systems at the last moment. He did not make a voice radio Mayday call. The satphone calls were the only voice communications made during that time, and they could hardly be considered “distress calls”. The captain is downplaying the severity of the emergency until the very end, you can hear it on the recording.
I dated a guy who worked for the coast guard. Watching video of his boat being flipped around during a rescue was terrifying. They are tough and have guts of steel. I could never do that job. I get car sick just driving across town.
I feel like when the captain went to bed and the storm was upgraded to a category 3, the officer who phoned the captain on what to do should have just lied to the bridge crew. Just straight up told them that the captain changed his mind and told everyone to steer the ship to safe waters, instead of telling the bridge the truth that the captain wants them to sail into a category 3 storm. Insubordination? Yes. Dismissal? Very likely. Legal action? Not off the table. Career ending move? Probably. Very ugly situation when the captain returns? Absolutely. But you and your colleagues would be alive and that is precious beyond all worth.
Hindsight's 20/20, it's very hard to come up with this choice on the spot. Specially with your career at stake, if they had altered their course they probably wouldn't have known they avoided death, and the Captain being as prideful as he was would've made them responsible for the delay.
If the captain even appears to most to be sending the crew directly towards a hurricane, subordination is a necessity. The commanding officer is acting incompetent and is too impaired to command others. You absolutely should be able to fight any punishment based on how listening to a clearly incompetent officer would be criminal negligence. Not to say I blame the crew, I don't. It takes a lot of courage to fight against incompetent orders, and without the right mindset, it won't happen. It's better to train the crew ahead of time in what to do in such a situation and encourage the crew to be more vocal. Encourage an atmosphere more akin to on airplanes. Don't punish people for reporting problems, encourage good crew management, have actual checklists to follow, and actually implement changes after any potential issues show up.
Man, I can't imagine being the person who knows what's about to happen when the boss is surrounded by "buddies from Alaska" keep agreeing that he's right and "she's overreacting".
I’ve we worked offshore since 1993 and what this captain did was beyond negligent. Unfortunately it’s these disaster’s that shine a light on the importance of ship and crew safety over deadlines and customer requests or demands. Safety, at least in the Gulf of Mexico oilfield didn’t become the primary concern until the Deepwater horizon disaster. Sad that safety, while heavily promoted is even to this day put on the back burner when profits are being threatened.
Is this type of activity common in the industry? Looking outside, it is looking like profits take precedence over all else and lessons have to be learned the hard way.
I have been binging your content all morning and your research and knowledge is extremely refreshing and impressive. I can no longer watch or waste my time with the average disaster compilation or countdown videos of "this disaster happened". You've produced elite content in the disaster category that answers/explains the 5 W's behind the disaster and you should be proud. Keep up the great work!
"Uh, hey, corporate? My ship appears to be sinking!" "Your call is very important to us and we thank you for continuing to hold." *Smooth jazz continues to play*
I am a licensed merchant marine officer the problems with the El Faro are industry wide with individuals in the office over ruling the masters with most not having any sea experience and no concept of the dangers of what they demand of Captains this environment will not change until the Coast Guard and D.O.T. hold management accountable. God bless these souls 🙏 and their families. Amen 🙏
But it seemed that this company trusted the captain to make decisions and let him and he made a bad one. Not saying that this company isn't bad in many other ways.
@@Kremithefrog1 The ISM code states that every company must have a Safety Management System (SMS). In each SMS it is clearly written that the Captain has overriding authority. This means that the Captain should not ask the company if he can do something but just inform them of what he is doing and why. Once the Captain asks, the company can only say yes or risk full liability if something happens. That is because e-mails can be saved as evidence. Phone calls however are a different story. I have seen shore management give stupid orders by phone to the Captain which were immediately countermanded once the Captain asked confirmation by e-mail. Therefore it is entirely plausible that behind the scenes the Captain was chewed out for his previous course alterations that resulted in delays. Also while the lower ranks are promoted by higher ranking people by at lest somewhat considering their ability and seeing them work this does not apply to Captains who are promoted by some shore manager whose only concern is the commercial side of things.
@@Kremithefrog1 From the Captain's behavior it would be no surprise to find that his earlier decision to burn extra fuel avoiding a storm was NOT popular with his employers. This kind of criticism doesn't show up in emails. He seems to have felt his job was on the line, and he was right. I wonder if the decision to pass him over was actually last-strawed by those extra 160 miles.
@@Kremithefrog1 No. The people in charge are not so stupid as to put in writing that they are displeased when a captain makes a decision that is more conservative but costs time and money. EVERY industry comes with pressure for those in charge to "keep on schedule." Of course the higher ups will publicly say "we trust your judgement to make the right decision." But the unsaid part is "as long as its the decision we want you to make"... a sentiment they can communicate very subtly but VERY clearly.
I was just reading about the sinking of the Bounty during Hurricane Sandy. Although the Bounty and El Faro were completely different ships, there were some eerie similarities. Both captains decided to sail straight into hurricanes, both ships were not in the best condition and had issues with crucial components, and both needed necessary repairs. One of the most striking similarities was the behavior and attitude of the captains. They acted acted as if the ship wasn’t going down up until practically the last minute. Is this a captain thing? Or just an unfortunate coincidence? I also can’t believe that a modern ship didn’t have adequate lifeboats- those look similar to the ones on the Titanic for fuck’s sake! The poor crew never had a chance trying to board an open top lifeboat or a flimsy life raft in the middle of a Cat 4 hurricane. My heart aches for them, especially Danielle. I can’t help but think that if she was captain none of this would have happened and everyone would be alive. Rest In Peace 💔
I remember one of the Edmund Fitzgerald videos Captain Bernie Cooper of Arthur M.Anderson (the first boat to arrive at the sight). He said him and the Fitzgerald captains thought their boats could weather any storm and not sink.
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I (finally) just took a peek at the tiers of your patreon. TYSM for having single digit amounts! I don't usually have the money every month for more than a few bucks extra to come out. When I get paid I'm definitely becoming a supporter!
Sry, I already tossed all my coins to my Witcher
Absolutely, you more than earned it this time! So much detail, I cannot imagine the work that went into it! Thank you again for your remarkable content!
Congrats on breaking 100k Sam! You'll probably get stuck between 400k-600k with how the algorithm works for awhile, but I know with your quality you'll cruise through a million someday soon. Rock on man!
Thank you for covering the sinking of the El Faro. This case has haunted me since I first heard of it. I read the entire NTSB report and it haunts me to this day. I think about Danielle Randolph and the rest of the crew often. They saw Hurricane Joaquin coming for them like a slow motion car crash but the captain had the final say. The captain was clearly under a lot of pressure himself to stick to a strict timeline set by the company. The transcript is heartbreaking. They should all be alive today.
My cousin Dylan was on this ship, it was his first job soon after graduating from Maine maritime academy. Rest In Peace
Damn... sorry for your loss....
So sorry for your loss. Kings Point '84
That is so sad 😞 sorry for your lost
Sorry for your loss from a fellow mariner
Sorry to hear that. I once almost work for a ship company but got hired elsewhere. And I am the kind of guy who would advocate for safety, always. Had it been in my hands while in the backoffice of the company it would not have happened.
Worked on this ship in Tacoma when she was the Northern Lights. Every time it hit port in Tacoma, the ship repair crew (20 of us or more) I was on were waiting. We worked like mad right up to the time of departure to fix the biggest problems. She was a rusty tub that none of us shipyarders would even think of going off shore on. When she got too scary to run to Anchorage, they sent her to the Caribbean instead of the scrap yard to get a few more years of revenue out of her. Corporate greed at its finest. Ship is heavily insured, crew is replaceable.
Well said.
That’s a horrid view. Dollars over lives. All to common I imagine.
BS. Captain is responsible.
@@TheFaveteLinguis Both are responsible. The captain absolutely was a problem, and was the main reason it went out how it did. But the company was also a problem, since instead of retiring the ship (which as stated above was well-known as a rusting piece of garbage). Tote Maritime decided to keep running this death trap of a ship instead of retiring it because they knew it would be cheaper to deal with the fatalities that could potentially arise rather than to retire it and start running their newer line of ships. Also Tote Maritime hired the captain - they knew of the problems he had and still chose to keep him on the payroll as captain of the El Faro. IMO Tote Maritime is more at fault than the captain, simply by letting him continue to captain the El Faro.
@@TheFaveteLinguis agreed, but he’s an extension of management and policies both good and bad. I would take note that in everything we’ve learned, you never once hear Tote take any interest or action to question why her captain was sailing that ship directly into the middle of a category 4 hurricane.
At the end of the day though, no one can argue that the safety of the ship and crew was Davidsons’ responsibility 100%.
I work for a Marine supply company in Jacksonville. The owner was discussing this disaster the other day and talked about Danielle Randolph and other crew members she had worked with over the years.
To those of you in the comments who had family on board, please know that your loved ones are still mourned by people in the industry and remembered by those who occasionally worked with them.
Such a tragedy, just so sad. God bless.
Our storyteller here did such a fantastic job relating the humanity of this story, I turned off the video at first sight of the Keel. RIP to all souls lost at sea, and our deepest gratitude to sailors the world over who make our daily lives livable.
I think about Danielle all the time. Didn’t know her at all, but she seemed like she would have made a great captain. Her focus on safety was evident through this entire ordeal. She didn’t deserve this- none of them did. RIP 💔
What a beautiful post, not connected by family, connected by livelihood, brothers and sisters who call the sea they're home, must always protect one another, this captain is shamed,God help him
Why wasn’t the owner prosecuted for this? Just look at the condition of the El Faro and her sister ship the El Yunque.
My Sister was 2nd mate Danielle Randolph, thank you for this great video, gave me some closure. To the entire 33 crewmembers, you are still missed loved and heald dear in our hearts and minds.
NBR.
Wow, I’m so sorry for your loss. She seemed like a very intelligent woman, I wish your family peace and great memories of your sister.
I am so sorry for you loss. If it can be of any comfort I would like to share this with you. I work for a UK construction company and we use this story as an in depth case study to help promote the right safety culture in our business. This involves having actors play some of the people involved using actual words spoken that were recovered from the black box. This helps us look at the way words and actions made people feel and act in a difficult and pressured situation and how a leader involving and engaging with the expertise around them can help to drive a better and safer outcome. I would stress that this is done very respectfully and we allow a minutes silence to consider and remember those who were on board. People who have been through this (myself included) are visibly moved by this story and can only begin to imagine what you must have been through. I hope and strongly believe that the lessons learned here will make a difference to how we operate and ultimately this will save someone somewheres life or limb and I hope that this may offer some small crumb of comfort to you.
@@dogboyauckland thank you very much for you and everyone else's kind words and thoughts. I could spend days telling lovely stories of Danielle, I love the fact you are trying to teach and learn from mistakes, that's how we all learn. It is just incredibly unfortunate it took such a tragic experience for some to understand. I have spent many years in marine construction myself, I've seen the good bad and the ugly and experienced some scary things. So if you can teach people some great life lessons that may save someone else please do.
Thank you all for your kind words, thoughts and prayers. May you all have fair winds and following seas GOD BLESS.
NBR.
I am so sorry for your loss.
I hate speaking Ill of the dead but your sister was more prepared and acted more captain like than the captain. As with any accident he was not the sole reason for the sinking but part of the link. The actions of your sister though need to be recognized. Truly sorry for your loss and those of the remaining crew.
My friend's Cousin was lost at sea in the El Faro disaster. He had only been a crew member employed with Tote less than 3 months. He left behind a fiancee and two children, under 6 years old. He mentioned Capt. Davidson was full of himself, stubborn and prideful. His selfishness (and corporate greed) cost lives and irreparably tore families apart.
RIP to all who perished and the families dealing with unfathomable loss.
Holland?
So sad.
I'm so sorry for your friend's cousins family. So very sad. 🙏❤️😥
Some people may be surprised at how many lives have been lost in airplane accidents and in ships at sea that sank, over the arrogance and ego of 1 captain. it is disturbing when you think about it. ( i know alot about most airline accidents that have occured also, a large number of them can be attributed to similar behaviors and reactions... although much much less so nowadays)
@@o0o-jd-o0o95Some might be...but I'M sure as HELL not!....jes' walk and talk around this mother..you'll find that lots of leaders who WOULD rather die than admit they don't know or don't understand... or dare to be second guessed....
Hearing how much the other officers were concerned, it makes you think that there are times when mutiny is perfectly acceptable
indeed!
I spent this entire video wondering how these people could allow this one inept man put their lives in danger. I don't understand the group think here. Maybe it's just my personality,but I would have called corporate, or the coast guard, and taken control of that ship, and turned east. They can fire me when we reach port.
@ripn929707 you mean west...
@@ripn929707lol yea ok bud
@@ripn929707youve never had a manager give a wrong call. Yet no one speaks up?
I sailed as a cadet on the El. Morro. I have never seen such a flagrant disregard for safety in my entire life. One instance I remember we were being audited by ABS. The chief mate kept trying to distract the inspector from the rusted out fire mains. We were required to test the fire system. The fire main would blow out and we had to fix the holes. The strange thing was that it looked freshly painted but had big blisters every few feet. These blisters were wraps of duct tape over rust spots that were painted over that would blow out when the water was turned on. During that event, the cargo door to the aft hold was closed. Not only did the fire main not work, as the water rushed out on deck, it flowed freely down to the aft cargo hold even though it was closed. The aft cargo hold has a passage way to the engine room on tbe port side. Here we are sitting at the dock with water from a busted fire main leaking though the cargo hold door, running down and into the engine room. I can’t image what green water would have been like flowing into the engine room. This was just a minor thing I witnessed during my time on the ship. Sea star should be liable for everything. Yes, you can blame the crew as I did the chief mate in my experience, but it is the company that is responsible for the safety culture. Precious lives lost.
That's outrageous. I work in the design and fabrication side of this industry, specifically on piping systems, and of all the systems to be nonchalant about, the firemain?! Not only does that system perform the obvious damage control functions, but it's usually connected to the bilge system in some place too, and tell me a single piping system on a boat more important than the one that removes water from your ship
@@jugo1944 It's also a pipe that has to work under pretty high pressure, surely. Patching it with *duct tape* is absolutely homicidal behavior.
Sounds like the ship should've been scrapped.
That the 2nd mate knew what would happen but the Captain didn't take her seriously always seemed like the most tragic part of this story. Her messages to her loved ones are heartbreaking.
Every time I heard a survival suit was spotted i hoped it was her...
I think she knew 100%! and she probably told the others not to tell her about the weather because that would make it seem more real to her. The other officers just completely played it off. Had they just taken the original suggested alternative route none of this would have happened. As a storm chaser you NEVER know what's going to happen with mother nature and the risk is not worth it AT ALL. Her messages broke my heart the most too. "Hope to talk to you on Friday" was indicative that she knew she might not make it out of this.
No matter how competent we become at something. One’s ego is always looming as their potential undoing.
@@ryandraper6894 iv stood many watches and you are absolutely right
@@frankmiller95 disagree. There's no way to "know" what would happen but the 2nd suspected what could happen.
People take the path of least resistance pretty regularly. They do what others expect them to do.
It’s really hard not to be incredibly angry at that captain. He was betting on people’s lives and pretty much killed everyone on board. Plenty of times there was opportunity to avoid disaster. RIP to the crew.
Let's not let the company off the hook. If the ship had been properly maintained, this probably wouldn't have happened.
@@Argumemnon I agree, but the bulk of the blame has to be on the captain, here.
With recklessness like that, it was only a matter of time until he got he and his crew killed.
@@williamwoolhouse5018 Uhmm…it explained how he was normally cautious in the past and that he was most likely under pressure due to the promotion he didn’t receive.
Yes, he was the proximate cause, but the fault doesn't lie with him alone. The company gave their ships several years of poor maintenance and their crews several years of poor training. Should have been fixed long before. The situation was a disaster waiting to happen, if not at this time with this ship, then another.
@@tesom9965 we see this im all industry. In one of the biggest shoppingmall our country asking the woman for a longsleeve and need her to explain what I am talking about, the restaurants and bars hire students (nothing wrong IF YOU PAY THEM GOOD) and many times the orders didnt end right.
I worked at the terminal in Tacoma when this ship was named Northern Lights. It took so much damage during one Alaskan storm that almost the entire crew quit the moment it returned to port. Apparently the 65' swells resulted in 60% of the ship being out of the water as it fell down the backside of each wave. It would accelerate to 36 knots and then bury itself into the front of the next wave driving it nearly to a halt as the steel screamed and twisted enough to put a 45 foot crack laterally along the spar deck and 30 foot vertically. The ship was rolling laterally within a half degree of capsizing for 36 hours and the crew had to remain strapped into their bunks listening to the ship shriek as the roll on containers were breaking free and slamming around on all decks.
No one blamed the crew for walking after the details came out about the crossing.
The Faro falling down the backside of the swells and then accelerating, and then burying into the front of the next swell reminds me so much of the Edmund Fitzgerald--and we know what happened to the "Fitz" and her crew.
@@4325air Mmmmm No. No where near....
@@nutsackmania Do you even have a job? Stupid question.
@@nutsackmania i quit my job and in last 2 weeks i got crushed and there refusing to pay the bill so i had to get a lawyer. my manager said i betrayed his trust and my old coworkers all took up lying to protect the company.
@@4325air We don't really know do we? We have a good guess.
As a container ship captain myself, this is a very thorough explanation to what most likely happened to this unfortunate crew. From lacking bridge resource management to insufficient maintenance and even to explaining the possible reasons the captain may have had to choose this perilous voyage execution. Well done! Excellent investigation report.
Cool! So did you learn anything?
Thanks, it's always good to know if these channels are for real or not.
The pressure on the Capt to get the cargo through at any cost on that time frame is what killed them, that and his use of outdated weather forecasts on bon voyage system that confused the Capt and thus put in near the eye of the storm
Question: Could the ship's First Officer, under maritime law and with the support of the other ship's officers, given the captain an ultimatum: Either (1) change course or (2) we will relieve you of command and find you to your cabin, and take him into the ship?
@@danstewart2770 exc question. What can a serviceperson do with a rusty hulk that has cargo chained to rust and an ignorant captain? Do the services just say “you should die if your captain says so?” I liked the narrator saying “you are important and your safety matters”. Anyone considering a seaman’s life or a military life needs to discuss this with their non military family member prior to service. You may be stuck under a psychopath’s command.
My good friend and engineering Mentor was the Chief engineer of this trip, he was an incredibly competent engineer i know he did everything he could to get that steam plant back online again. I miss him and I hope he and the other 32 crew on board have found peace! He will be remembered for the incredible person he was.
God Speed to a fine mariner. So sorry for your loss.
Steam engines were not in use on this vessel.
@@iwanaGoFast2010The El Faro's propulsion was a "Single shaft, double reduction compound steam turbine (11,190kW)".
@@iwanaGoFast2010even if you were right, would this be the time or place for that collection?
If he was right it sure would be, color me surprised because I thought most ships just ran bunker fuel marine diesels @@jamesnurgle6368
“It was like this every day in Alaska”
I’m fairly confident it was not Category 3 hurricane every single day
"PFFT! ONLY 30+ foot swells? ONLY 115 MPH winds? ONLY torrential rain?! That's nothing! When I was your age, that was our daily trip to school!"
Or course not, it was category 5, dodging huge icebergs, uphill, both ways!
The captain sounded like a "1 upper".
If you've been to Tenerife, they've been to Eleven-rife
@@MongooseTacticool Ok that was a good one
@@lunaequinox7333 Not an original of mine but it's a good one 👌
I was with the US Army's Transportation Corp during this vessels service in the Iraq war, when it was named the Northern Lights. It came over to Kuwait many times bringing Army equipment, and I was onboard the ship when that equipment was being unloaded. I remember how poor the ships condition was even then, many referring to it as a "rust bucket". They were using the same tie-down method mention in the video, that is, laying down tie-down chains along the deck to serve as tie-down points for vehicles, because there weren't enough D-rings in the deck itself. The cargo decks themselves actually sagged because the weight limits for vehicles being carried, exceeded the registered capacity. The rubber seals around the cargo hatch in the ships side were pretty much mangled from dry rot and constant opening and closing. The ships government contract ended around 2008, and then it began it's long periods of lay-up. I honestly thought it would be scrapped when it ended it's military contract, it really was in horrible shape.
Interesting. This thing was destined to sink it seems
@@LastAvailableAlias I talked to a crew member from the engine room about the condition of the ship, and he said the only thing Tote worried about were the engines, as long as they were working everything else was secondary. They didn't seem to concerned about anything that was viewed as secondary.
Thank you for your service!
@@cleasanna05 Driving it straight into a hurricane certainly helped. Plenty of rust buckets live long enough to see the ship-breakers.
@@AcesnEights698 Absolutely, this seems to be a combination of human error, and the ship's deterioration coming together to form a perfect storm. No pun intended.
I remember following the El Faro incident in real time, as it was happening, and thinking, “Why in the heck are they heading straight toward the hurricane? This is insane!”
How did you follow it during real time?
You mean like on the news?
@@GORILLA_PIMP maybe on MarineTraffic?
@@GORILLA_PIMPI lived in st marys georgia at the time, I remember el faro being on the news before this hurricane came through. The coverage placed blame on the company mainly, Im so sorry that this ended up happening tho
I sailed on this ship in 1996 as the SS Northern Lights from Tacoma to Anchorage. My previous ship was a super tanker, so this ship was nice and compact. The most dangerous thing on this ship for me was walking on the cargo deck as the longshoremen raced the tractors around the decks loading containers.
Watching this video was so sad and at the same time so frustrating!
As a former merchant mariner, one tends to put their trust in the captain in the ship to make wise decisions. Your safety is in their hands.
Ram
Chief Engineer (retired)
Currently studying marine engineering at the Texas A&M Maritime academy. I go by Ram so from one Ram to another, hello 👋
They use tractors to move the containers around the deck? I thought they just used a crane and pulleys. How big are the tractors?
I did Crowley's Jax/Lake Charles to San Juan run for years as CE, also a year or so hauling containers Norfolk to Keflavik. I don't miss it...!
@@jimmydesouza4375 It (was) a RO-RO when it was in service between Tacoma and Anchorage. The trailers were driven up ramps from the dock using hustlers (yard tractors.)
@@ctdieselnut When in Alaska service containers were not stacked on deck, they were driven up dockside ramps using yard tractors. I'm a longshoreman in Tacoma and one of my first jobs was lashing the trailers to the deck using very heavy chains.
Anybody who's watched a few analyses of plane crashes knows that CRM is REALLY important. Subordinate crew members have literally allowed their captain to fly into the side of a mountain rather than take corrective action. And disasters have been averted by good CRM where captain and crew are able to cooperate.
I was told when I started flying 'don't sit there in silence if I'm going to kill us both.' I think this is good advice.
Yep. Everyone fears the guy/gal who signs their paycheck... can't piss them off by pointing out something they are doing that is stupid!
In the overall scheme of things aviation is relatively a new mode compared of the several thousand year history of a vessel captain being lord and master. Even the word "Master" implies the total control they had over ships. I think a few captains I worked with who were still bitter a captain could no longer order flogging. My point is there is a more entrenched mindset among captain and crew that the captain knows all sees all and is not to be questioned. That mindset is gradually changing and BRM is slowly advancing.
Really good comment. CRM done right is one of the biggest reasons commercial aviation is so safe today. Bridge Resource Management can sometimes be a harder sell, as man has been sailing just a tad bit longer than man has flown, & the maritime tradition of the-captain-of-the-ship-calls-all-the-shots full stop, is still very much followed. The fact that proper BRM aboard El Faro would’ve saved 33 lives is heartbreaking.
I was thinking the same thing! After watching countless episodes of Mayday, CRM really has helped the industry move past the old ways of hierarchy in a crew of: I don't care what the rest of my crew thinks, I'm the captain and I know best.
I get infuriated this time of year. Danielle was my friend from Rockland, Maine. A few weeks or so before this happened she was telling us what a d!ck this "captain" was. I wish she would have just turned the ship to the safe route while he was sleeping and dealt with it afterwards. But she respected the chain of command too much.... RIP Danielle Randolph, Dylan Meklin and the rest... Gone but never forgotten 💔
She seems like she was an incredible woman. I wish they’d make a movie about this.
i know this is 7 months later but this is crazy cuz danielles brother commented on this aswell you should reach out to him. extremely sad and honestly wish the people there would or could have done something about it if they could. honestly i would have knocked that captain out if i knew he was going directly towards the hurricane. shits sad and horrible and never should have happened. although the company did have alot of fault in it aswell. the ship should have been retired years before it was a massive rust bucket that nobody wanted to be on. literally all because of greed they wanted to get a few more years of revenue out of it. the entire ship was insanely covered by insurance and obviously the crew is replaceable there for the company doesn’t really lose anything by letting the old shitbox vessel sink.
😢😢😢 heartbreaking. I'm sorry for your loss. That captain was infuriating.😮😮
What an awful loss, she and her deckhands were the only ones with any sense. Rest well, Danielle
I’m sorry 🙏🏾
The 3rd engineer was brand new and on one of his first ships out of college. He was one of my upperclassman mentors at the college when I there and he was a great guy was bound for a fantastic shipping career. This tragedy will always be close to me and you did a great job telling it correctly.
Out of curiosity, was there any explanation for why the oil level was so low? I assume that the list contributing to the loss of the main propulsion was simply caused by the captain being unaware of the mechanical properties of the engine and the situation with the oil level when he chose that particular maneuver. I'm just curious why nobody seemed to communicate on the ship?
I wanted to make a career out of it, but that doesn't seem likely, so I have to fall back on some limited experience as a deckhand/ ships carpenter (now being phased out to some other title, I hear) to give me clues in stories like these.
@@matthewmosier8439 As an ship engineer myself, although on vastly different types of ship, its fair to assume they simply did not follow up on routine maintenance. Proper routine involves every day meassuring the oil sump levels and refilling as necessary.
Most likely not even the engineers at the time thought that listing a certain way could have this fatal outcome, because if the sump is porperly filled listing should not cause this issue.
@@dipswewon4701 I’ve been Off-roading for literally half a century, and I just recently had my first experience with the fuel pickup going dry when I had 1/4 tank but sat too long in a steep angle. I hadn’t thought about the oil pickup having the same problem until that happened.
I’m guessing you could run a ship a long time and never see what happens when you lean that far for that long.
It seems like a perfect storm of incompetence, ignorance, and arrogance in the entire crew. It seems like nobody took their job seriously or took responsibility for their own life (like locating a survival suit and a life raft).
I was an airborne ranger, and I can assure you my men and I knew where fire extinguishers, exits, floatation equipment, how to deploy emergency rafts, etc., were on everything we stepped foot in. I considered it part of my job.
I can’t imagine having a person work for me, yet not learning the safety equipment that person needs.
@@garetheckley7018 I just had a conversation with my boss about our workplace safety. He was complaining about how staff were making decisions on recent jobs not to wear their safety harnesses or hard hats while doing high-level work on lifts.
I've worked there over 10 years and have seen how things roll and periodically mentioned the supplying and reinforcement of safety gear/protocols in varying levels of assertion or observational commentary. I am not a manager of anybody.
At some point I just quit making references. It all more centers on getting the job done, getting the invoice paid, and getting more jobs. I decided I wasn't going to worry about this more than he and his partner wife were going to. And I also wasn't going to cover if something does happen and someone official asks me historical questions.
During that recent convo I told him that I was honestly shocked something worse hasn't happened in all this time and people do what they want because they do not reinforce safety. There is no official safety protocol policy in place to refer to either, much less have people sign off on.
I think that it's more clicking because he's had to do some of this work while we are short staffed so the potential dangers are more apparent. Also, over the summer, someone slipped and fell on a job and broke her arm. I don't know if this affected their workers comp rates in some way as well or what.
The contrast in the active concern now vs. before was interesting though.
I knew them as well. Class of 2011
The fact that the captain didn't know that his ship is on point with an eye of a hurricane is beyond words to describe the pure fear of being lost at sea.
this ship was not on point in a lot of other things, beeing in the worst place at the worst time is only one
he wasnt always the best man but is at the very end he was a good man and he was trying to help his crew until the last moments of his life.
I think i would have just ignored him and just turned the ship around
@@speedman69420the ship didn’t have life boats?
@ChadGGolf It had 2 old style poorly suited life boats, and neither could have been deployed safely by the time the ship lost self propulsion, or practically at all by just 1 person.
The Capitain did know he's was heading towards a hurricane ,
He chose nit change course!!!
If you paided attention to the video,
a passing ship told the Capitain to change course.
Hearing that Captain's voice and saying "everybody's safe" knowing that he knew they were all but safe is upsetting. He must have known they were past the point of no return and decided to keep trying to salvage the ship. Terrible tragedy.
that...assumes he was competent enough, or far out of denial enough, to recognize this...
He was in full on denial.
All those terrible accidents have one common denominator - people thinking „No way it’s that bad”, up until the last seconds.
Danielle had more brains and forethought than the Captain. I can only imagine how hard this has been for her family knowing she screamed warnings and alarms only for her to lose her life while the Captain blathered away about Alaska. This is a seriously sad and frustrating situation that never should've happened.
As the NTSB said, the rest of the crew should have done more BRM, rather than just sending texts. There was a first and third mate as well involved of course.
One issue here is that crew do shifts and hand overs in 8 hour periods, so only one person in charge at a time.
Seems that that all the crew were overworked and the 2nd mate was on sleeping medication at the time etc etc.
Main issue is the company. They didn't even know where the ship was when it started sinking.
The NTSB report needs to be read in full before any comments on "who is to blame" on youtube. Even then it is not clear cut as that storm was highly unusual, as NOAA even said. Intensified much more than expected and went to the south rather than swing westwards.
There was a dispute from ship and dockworkers side on who lashed the cars down. They skimped on that. The main cause of failure seems to be a vehicle coming loose and smashing into the sea intake for the fire suppression system, so from that point onwards they just could not pump enough water out. The sea intake should have been protected by a bollard in hind sight.
The NTSB report is about 200 pages long I think and 500 pages of transcript. Shows how complex this is. And even the members disagreed on their findings on BRM.
I Went to School with Danielle She was a hell of a great person. She was in one hell of a situation. I have sailed with captains that don't listen to their crews and it usually doesn't work out well for them. She should have called the company herself!
@@captainmikehamby5893 Out of curiosity, what would the consequences be nowadays if a crew mutinied against their captain? Additionally, what would the consequences be if they mutinied for reasons of safety? Ultimately, if there's only one person stubbornly making dangerous decisions, it wouldn't take much duct tape to rectify the situation (a bit to bind the hands, a bit to secure 'em to something sturdy, and possibly a bit more to cover the mouth). I'm wondering all this because too-harsh of consequences for a mutiny would discourage potentially-life-saving actions.
This is one of the reasons why competent and hardworking women get overshadowed by less competent men with bigger mouth and larger ego. It's also one of the reasons for the wage gap.
They are not loud enough, they don't fight enough.
That women should have kicked a fuss and threaten, straight up disobey the captain, not just complain.
She had a correct gut feeling about this voyage. Sadly, on the money. The string of bad decisions and neglect that led to this disaster is not unlike the Miami Towers collapse. Some parallels there. Innocent people died and the payout to the mariner's families was paltry by comparison.
Given his behavior during this tragedy, I understand why he was passed over for command of a new ship.
well he died so
Nah greedy fat cat CEO and corporate higher ups would fully encourage this and love this behaviour. He was doing this to impress them
Thought the same
too bad he wasnt sacked before this voyage
Ship listing at 18 degrees. Captain is like "This is fine."
As a truck driver I'd be interested to know more about what kind of trailers were on the ship and what their cargo was. As you said early in the video one of the biggest cargoes to Puerto Rico is refrigerated or 'reefer' freight. Reefer trailers handle a bit differently because their center of gravity is a bit higher with the large reefer unit up at the top front of the trailer. This is offset a little bit by the reefer fuel tank down under the frame of the trailer, but thats 50 gallons of diesel sloshing around, and the rule with reefers is that if you're dropping them off at a customer, you drop them off with at least 3/4 of a tank in them. All of the extra insulation in the walls of the trailer doesn't help the top heaviness either.
Another problem with reefers is the kind of freight they haul. Reefer freight its notoriously, on average, the heaviest shit you'll haul in a standard double axle 53' trailer. With dry van you'll get loads like potato chips or insulation thats very light, and your whole gross weight is only like 25k. But with reefer, its ALWAYS heavy shit like meat, produce, beer. I don't think I've ever hauled a reefer load where my gross weight was under 75k, 80k being your max weight. Meat and beer isn't too bad because its so dense that you can only single stack it on the floor, so it helps keep you pretty stable. But produce? That stuff is juuuuust light enough that you can usually double stack it. One of the sketchiest loads I've ever hauled was apples. Apples are just light enough that you can stack them double wide, double high, and front to back. Its one of the only loads I've ever hauled where you're grossed out and cubed out. Cubed out meaning that all of the space in the trailer is being utilized. I had to haul them from Osoyoos, BC to Calgary AB over highway 3, the most southern BC/AB mountain pass, which the most windy one. With those apples stacked so high and being so heavy, that trailer wanted to roll over on every turn, and it doesn't help that almost all reefer trailers are air ride, therefore trading some stability for a smoother ride.
And this is all doubly compounded if some of the trailers were containers on chassis. Container trailers are hands down the roughest things to haul. The fact that the container is separate from the trailer frame means that their even more top heavy, especially with how beefed up container frames have to be compared to a regular trailer body. Reefer containers compound this more, as the reefer unit and its fuel tank needs to be contained within the body of the container. And with how long containers will have to sit on ships and trains, their fuel tanks are even bigger, I think something in the neighborhood of 150 gallons. And the thing that would hurt container haulers the most in this situation is that they nearly universally have spring ride suspension as opposed to air ride. With air ride you can dump all of the air out of the trailer and make them sit stiff to the ground. With spring ride you can't do this, and the trailer is always riding on the suspension. This means that in a ship list, a reefer container hauler would be straining insanely hard against any securement.
I don't really know anything about loading trailers on ships, so someone who is actually a ship yard shunter or a ship rigger might know more about this, the concerns I've listed might already be well known. But with how poorly it sounds like El Faro was loaded, known safety concerns might have been ignored. All I know is that all semi trailers aren't all created equal and can all be their own animals depending on how they're speced.
That was really interesting to be read. As a fanatic simtrucker that were great insights.
Love your profile pic and name as well :)
About the best thing I've read on Quora. In fact it's about ready for print. no better than "about ready for print". Every bit as well written as a memorable article I read in the New Yorker Magazine about cargo boats twenty years ago.
What you write about seems like something that could go many ways. How about a book?
.
They use the typical 45 reefers attached to the chassis and they get delivered like that to PR Trailer Bridge and Crowley are famous for that since they cut down cost of labor down
That is an incredible amount of information to do with trailers. Thank you for your insights. I did not know trailers could be so different depending on their load and setup.
That was very informative, thank you.
"Disastrous Indifference" A very fitting title, and good food for thought about how indifference in our own lives can cause problems for others.
Well said
Indifference or complacency is the single most common link between all major and minor accidents.
Just not caring or treating something as acceptable are the things that will kill you.
The fact that we have voice records of all these correspondence, AND NO ONE ON EITHER SIDE SOUNDED THE LEAST BIT CONCERNED, is the obvious problem……..it’s like a 911 call where the operating is like “but what kind of pets; and what color are they, are in the house” when there’s people with guns doing a home invasion
Yup exactly but this should be called Corp Greed, i mean if you work for a company like that i'd sure heck want to know every single thing on how to avoid a thing like that and the procedures, this is why people need to know the whole company structure .
Agreed. On my Homeless Consultant Channel here I have said for years that the opposite of love is not hatred - it is indifference. Four million homeless Americans are not necessarily "hated". But they are not loved, and they are ignored as if they don't exist and don't matter. From that apathy arises the mindless stereotypes of homelessness that prevent anyone from even wanting to learn the truth anymore. Hence, I have 250 subscribers after six years of enormous effort while living in a car, while TH-cam is busy promoting self-serving "philanthropists" like Mr. Beast or murderers like McSkillet instead. That is indifference, and it is deadly.
Submarine veteran here. Excellent presentation with innumerable Lessons Learned. I can't imagine what the last moments were like for the crew when they realized that their deaths were imminent. Capt. Davidson, had he survived, would certainly have been brought up on criminal charges, convicted, and punished not only for his gross negligence, but the deaths of so many who relied on his experience, expertise, and seafaring judgement. Command at Sea carries with it the terrible burden of responsibility that few people can understand. He certainly failed in his duties, and he and his crew paid the ultimate price for his denial, arrogance, and misplaced sense of invincibility. Tragic and sad. RIP.
Utmost respect to you submariner. I couldn’t imagine I’d have the nerves to do that, although I greatly enjoy sailing. Can I ask what your job was like?
The company should be held responsible too.
@Cletus VanDamme: Nuclear or diesel boat? I don't know about nukes which stay submerged most of their time at sea, but riding out a storm on an old WWII fleet-type diesel is not much different than any other 300ft vessel that has to ride it out on the surface. We rode out a hurricane on the surface off Hatteras in the 1950s. Being a lookout hanging in the ring on the side of the conning tower at night, all you saw were walls of water, three times higher than yourself, illuminated by the running light, crashing down on you. It was a scary experience for a naive 17year old kid who had total trust in the US Navy and the officers in charge. I loved the sea and was in awe of it's power and destructive potential.
@@vm-snss4910 Sound absolutely terrifying. I rode out Typhoon Paka off Guam but that was at a few hundred feet below and the gentle roll down there just made me sleep like a baby.
From what I’ve heard there was a 6 hour difference in the weather forecast that was receiving! Seems like the majority of this tragedy doesn’t fall on him! I’m certain he wasn’t on a murder suicide mission! I think that in the year 2022 the weather forecast for any marine vessel should have ZERO delay or difference in real time and tracking speed of storms!
This is always a hard watch for me. I can only imagine the terror the crew felt being effectively lead to their deaths. To see the written records of the crew's awareness of the situation is heartbreaking to me. The captain's poor decision making, both in the long and short term, directly lead to the deaths of many innocent people who, by the time they realized, were too far in with nowhere else to go on a boat on stormy seas. My most sincere condolences to those of you saying "my loved one was on that boat" and may all who were lost rest in peace.
This is what people mean when they say TH-cam is better than TV. Thanks for the high effort content.
RIP Keith Griffin... My cousins husband. My cousin pregnant with twins that never got meet their father.
RIP... I Wish the family peace and comfort
As a second mate myself and knowing a member of their crew I have thought a lot about El Faro. I read the full transcrip from the recorder. As second mate I am responsible for pulling the most up to date weather (where the captain has access to a prettier version that has more predictive traits, but is not as up to date). One take away for me is you MUST make the captain understand in situations like this. He will thank you for it later. This is a second career for me so I was older in school and I saw how the young guys and gals were far less likely to speak up than they should in my view. Chain of command is important, but you can not have good bridge resource management if you are afraid to speak your mind to the captain when it counts.
I've never held any kind of position on a sea vessel and this isn't a comment particularly about this instance but just in general but wouldn't you, pretty much regardless of the field or topic *always* want someone that does just that? Point out things you can't see or view differently.. however you want to put it? I'm not saying to the point they're just doing it for the sake of being contrarian but yeah. I can't see a situation pretty much anywhere given all humans are prone to error and mistakes where having someone willing to speak out to help set you straight or correct you is a bad thing
@@BasementBubbatunde the ego and desperation of a person to basically "prove their mental model right" can be impossible to penetrate, and may devolve into outright verbal aggression. Especially when the culture you've worked in has been one of stringent vertical organization, speaking out may be risky for many reasons. People who are 1) in power and 2) in distress often don't want to hear that they're doing anything wrong. :(
@@mayatate2793 those types of gutless cowards are better known as narcissists/sociopaths. They're very common in men or women. Main red flags are anger issues and they cannot handle constructive criticism.
@@mayatate2793 Issue is, that an officer on a vessel is not a corporate post. Similar to command presense in the military the aggression needs to be dealt with as often in roles the existence of aggression is not de facto a part of the personality but rather the situation .
@@BasementBubbatunde True in any field, whether physical like ships, aircraft, and construction, or mental like legal, medicine, and management.
I’ve read that being forced to abandon ship in the eye-wall of such a powerful storm can easily become an “unsurvivable event” even in a survival suit, as there may be no clear break between the surface of the sea and the air one needs to breathe. It’s horrifying to think about what this crew was forced to experience in the final moments of their lives.
Bobbing in the water like you're in a giant washing machine with massive sheets of more water towering overhead and dropping down constantly...
Must've been nightmarish.
The book Run The Storm suggested that because of the very late mustering of the crew that some may have entered the water WITHOUT their survival suits on because they had no time to put them on 😭
Terrifying thought
Can you clarify what you mean by “no clear break between…” please?
@@baubau1584 boy your a smart one
I’m currently sailing on the marlin class ship “perla caribe”. even though this ship is fairly new, I’m still very cautious since we carry 2x 900m3 tanks of LNG which is enough to crack the entire back of the ship if they decide to crack . Wish us safe seas as we go into 2022 hurricane season
You will be ok ❤️🙏🏾
Fair seas and flowing winds friend
Be well and safe.
Fair winds and following seas!
Good luck, seamen. 🙏
"Red at night, sailor's delight, red light at morning, sailor's take warning." I've experienced as anecdotally 100% true in my 30 years on the water
Glad you alive bro..🎉🎉🎉
I live near the water and can say anecdotally it has been fairly accurate
Yes sir. I live by it. Some think it's not true but it is.
I live by it ,land or sea
There's an almost identical one for shepherds. "Red at night, shepherds' delight. Red in the morning, shepherds' warning"
What an avoidable tragedy, caused by the negligence of the company and the captain, who seemed full of hubris. So sad. The youngest person lost, Dylan Meklin, was just 23 years old. And we will never know who was the person who managed to get into an immersion suit, only to be left adrift to die because of the weather. May all of them Rest In Peace.
I wonder who that person was too. And if they were alone, how long they were able to survive, what actually caused their death. Very sad.
@@rsfarris86 if they were alone? They were found floating alone on a vast vast ocean. Wtf…
@@washedupwarvet2027 What they probably mean was if they we're with someone when they abandoned ship and only separated when the person in the suit died or if they were all alone from the very beginning.
@@jo-eo9ld I take it you don’t know much about shipwrecks. As soon as people go into the water, if they aren’t able to get into a life boat quickly the sea will carry them away. It’s extremely hard to stay together, let alone in the middle of a cat 3 hurricane.
@cydkriletich6538:..Well said, man..! 🙏🕯🎄..Happy Christmas to you..!!
Captain steers into the middle of a major hurricane whilst wondering why his bosses didn't promote him
Not really... he was safe before and didn't get promotion, so tried to be brave... 😞
Actually he lost his promotion for going the safe route in a previous situation avoiding a storm or hurticane, so he wanted to prove himself. So its the opposite of what u said. You dont think these big corporations arent greedy? They can replace the crew members
This is a prime example of sometimes you have to take your Supervisor, lock him up in a room, and make your own orders....
My Father served as the 1st officer on the Sister ship, the (Sea Star)SS EL YUNQUE.. he knew one of the guys on this ship.. this was horrible.. My dad was contacted by Sea Star, was asked to write a letter in Polish about the loss of Polish crew that were on this ship.. this was send out to the Polish families.. so sad. "This could of been avoided 100%" - My Dad
Ohhhhh my heart breaks every time I read a comment like this.
I rode out three days of 90 ft seas aboard USS Kearsarge back in 1996.
It was like riding a 820 ft canoe up and down these valleys. We walked on bulkheads, almost lost aircraft and ate sandwiches until it blew out.
When it was over we found fish and seaweed on the 50ft flight deck.
God rest their souls.
I hope you ate the fish.
Do you still work on ships?
Coastal and inland skipper and instructor here, this was an utterly stunning account, an universial lesson on safety and responsibility, as well as a life-changing experience for me. Thank you -- and may those 33 souls find peace!
As usual, safety manuals and guidelines are always written with the blood and lives lost on all tragedies before they are implemented.
It never ceases to amaze me how someone with such responsibility can still become complacent even when people's lives depend on you like that. Absolutely incredible and a sad situation all around.
I think people are ignoring the pressure from the company to stick to a quick timeline. The captain had already been reprimanded for being deemed “too cautious” when diverting course on a previous storm. This is in the report. I’m not saying he’s totally innocent but the company is just as responsible.
@@ripwednesdayadams It's sad too when you know that exact thing (company/outside influence) has caused these accidents for at least 200 years now and across multiple forms of transport. Same thing happened to the SS Arctic in the *1850s* and on the modern end the 05 Amagasaki train disaster
A lot of people want to act like an Admiral or king of a castle, without any of the responsibility it seems. Such a needless tragedy all from negligence and human arrogance
The captain isnt really a captain any more, he has to obey corporate. I mean any real captain with full authority would have changed to a safe course and when in trouble call the Coast Guard, not the company help line.
As said on Patreon, that was really amazing. The amount of detail provided for every part, from the maps, the animation, the pictures was perfect. It made it so easy to follow what was happinng, and where and why. Along with your great storytelling skills this was a great watch. So good in fact, when you mentioned "the video already got so long", I just noticed that already an hour has past, so captivating was it. Well done.
Yes, I realised I'd been watching for an hour and thought it had only been 15 minutes. So good.
It’s kind of ironic that when everyone was telling the captain that they needed to change course to avoid the hurricane he didn’t listen. Then when he tried calling in the emergency no one would listen to him. This all on him. He’s the captain. He steered them right into a hurricane that should’ve been easy to avoid. I feel so bad for everyone who was lost on that ship cause they tried to do everything to get him to change course. Not only did he ignore them, he ended up killing all of them.
They didn't try everything. Nobody mutinied despite captain giving such insane orders.
He should have lost his command a long time ago. I don't understand why corporate holds these captains for so long. There are plenty of young, capable men and women ready to take his place that understand how to avoid a damn storm.
@@Vespyr_ they said he was normally careful, and was likey acting risky because of his pending promotion
They should have thrown him overboard and charted a new course.
@@Vespyr_ given he was on a literally rusted-out shitbox,
my guess is he was really, really cheap to hire...
14 months in Iraq with Marine infantry and almost every time something bad happened, complacency was a major contributing factor. We even had a saying, "complacency kills."
Can you give some examples of complacency you witnessed that led to something bad happening over there?
Former crew of the USS Nimitz, solo sailboat captain, and private pilot here. Thank you for this video. I often think back to situations like this to see if I too am making an error in judgment. Sometimes our ambition and balls are bigger than our abilities. Thanks for creating this content.
Get your instrument rating if you don’t have it yet. ATP here and the instrument rating will save you when nothing else can.
Have you ever seen a u.f.o. ?
That's the point of videos like this. It's better (and safer!) to learn from the mistakes of others than from your own.
Sweet. Nimitz was in some aerial photos my husband snagged while aboard the USS Olympia. Every Naval vessel plus I believe every aircraft convened for a photo shoot somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Impressive. Amazing how many chapters in one’s life there are. If we are to be so lucky.
I'm completely off of true crime channels after discovering Brick Immortar, which I find to be the finest in its genre. The details and real world knowledge one can learn from this work makes for fine documentary...but the tone and style makes it superior from any documentary you'd see on broadcast TV, finally the comment section always restores some faith in my fellow citizens. The story of El Faro's last voyage and her crew is such a tragedy, as you point out a chain of decisions and events that sealed the fate of innocent lives. I feel like this content itself serves as a dignified memorial to their memories. Thank you.
I read a transcript of the VDR Bridge Audio Files a few years ago and was shocked how bad the situation was handled. The VDR records the last 24 hours before overwriting the data. There had been so many missed opportunities to avoid this desaster in this last 24 hours. I work in the martime industry for over 30 years, the past 15 as a Chief engineer and I have never seen such a disfunctional chain of command. I can't understand, why the officers where not able to stop the captain from killing them all. I really sad to watch...
I mean I know it's easy to say this but lock his ass in his stateroom and move the ship better to lose your job then die
it's not even that the opportunities were missed- they were ignored & dismissed by the person ultimately responsible for the lives of 33 people. and it's not an issue in the industry itself per say , it's in the economy that allows promotion and deadlines to be so readily placed above human life , and in the chains of command so eagerly ready to bury the story and walk away with some crocodile tears and empty promises to improve.
Captains fault all the way
A young kid from my area, fresh from Maine Maritime was on the El Faro. This was his first trip, I believe. Crazy to see how this all likely played out. Thank you for this presentation, sir.
One of my best friends' little brothers best friend was that kid. honestly a horrible experience to go all that length to get a degree; and die because the corperation you work for didn't give a shit about the ship you were planning on sailing on.
He wasn't on this particular voyage when it went down, right? I was actually going to attend Maine Maritime for this past fall semester before some unexpected,... _"changes,..."_ occurred literally a week before class was supposed to start. Crazy.
My son is a Maine Maritime graduate and knew the guy you're talking about. FIVE graduates of the Academy across a span of many years died aboard the El Faro, and Maine Maritime Academy was grief-stricken after this disaster. Both the captain and 2nd Mate, Danielle Randolph were graduates. See video of memorial ceremony:
th-cam.com/video/m_Y7TB2OPJg/w-d-xo.html
I went to high school with Mike, he was a good friend. I was devastated when this happened.
@Indra's Vajra You do understand that people that are already familiar with this topic are going to watch this video and comment on it, right?
Me and my family were on a Disney Cruise literally a week after this ship sank in and around the area of where the ship sank. The Disney Cruise Captain sent out a message for all of us to hear aboard. He explained that the El Faro had sunk a week before and had asked if all could have a moment of silence. I till this day have the utmost respect for that Captain.
As far as the El Faro sinking, I remember when the story broke about the ship and rescue crews looking for survivors, Al Roker on the Today show was furious that a company would sail a ship through a storm like that. Awful.
It technically wasn't the company's fault. It was the Captain's fault. For this specific incident, I'd say that the blame goes 90% to the Captain, 10% to the company.
@@SergeantExtreme The company provided the rustbucket that became their tomb. It's more like 70% to the Captain, 30% to the company.
Please tell me that you mean that you respect the captain of the disney cruise rather than the El Faro captain
Can't begin to imagine the fear the crew was going through. Scrambling to get a life vest/survival suit while looking out at those massive waves and fierce winds, fighting against the list, seeing the containers fall into the sea... Absolutely terrifying.
Horrifying :(
It's really difficult to comprehend the terror. The crew never stood a chance. In those final moments I'm sure they knew they weren't going to survive. Jumping into an open ocean with no survival equipment in the middle of a hurricane with 120mph+ winds. Absolute horror. Death is merciful in those conditions.
Bit by bit fear growing then knowing ur done by solely by captain lack of ability to encompass a bad situation growing bit by bit.
For further insight into the sinking, a good amount of crew details and voyage data recorder transcript, and other details of the ship and her life, I recommend reading the book "Run the Storm" by George Michelsen Foy.
That being said, I do have a few comments I'd like to state/ask. For starters, the grandfathering of obsolete safety equipment is infuriating. Open topped lifeboats are useless in harsh conditions (even if modern lifeboats wouldn't survive the storm, they'd have a better chance and protect the crew inside). How these ships can be handwaved through inspections to the point they're literally falling apart is beyond me.
Also about the Coast Guard, what exactly qualifies "risk of sinking/distress phase"?? The ship has been reported as flooding with a heavy list. Yes, the captain is downplaying the situation, but shouldn't "distress phase" mean any serious problem aboard ship?
And on the subject of communication: why was it so hard for the captain to say the three most critical words when the situation become untenable: Mayday, mayday, mayday.
Regarding the coast guard, a ship in distress phase puts their personnel and equipment at great risk. Trying to muster a rescue during a hurricane isn't exactly safe. So unless they know for a fact the ship is going to sink, they're not going out there. If this ship hadn't suffered a plant failure, it would've survived in all likelihood. So the coast guard was waiting until your last point; the captain had to declare they were sinking/at great risk of being unrecoverable. Why didn't he?
Well, for the same reason most of them never do. He didn't want to admit that the situation was unrecoverable, despite that truth being obvious. Because I truly believe he thought the conditions weren't that bad and everything was going to be fine. "It was like this in Alaska all the time!". He truly believed he hadn't made any decisions that were catastrophic, so when everything went that badly, he was unable to grasp how this had happened. He was unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation. His brain believed that there must be more margins, or a solution for recovery. Because in his mind, right up until disaster struck, everything was okay. So he was completely unable to say those three words. His brain wasn't capable of comprehending that the situation could be that bad. That's why disasters happen, people will continue to believe everything is okay and stick to a "keep calm and carry on mentality" right up until the ship rolls over or the plane crashes into the mountain.
It's a failing in the usual mentality. "Don't panic" is the usual advice for emergencies, but a lot of people in these high stress positions turn that into "never panic, just keep doing your job, and everything will work out". And worse yet, sometimes they actually do save a near-disaster with that mentality, they do make it through an almost certain death situation, and that reinforces their belief that their mentality is all you need to survive.
@@CharlesFreck Thank you for the detailed reply!
@@CharlesFreck four simple words; captain was a narcissist.
Why do you believe the registry was puertorican? Lighter requirements, meaning less money spent. I guess the captain got grilled on performance metrics on the last run and, not to loose the promotion out of this rust bucket, chose to not avoid the next storm..
The captain confused familiarity with risk. The past is not apredictor of the future. Else people would never die, since they had not died in the past. It seems the captain also was more concerned about reputation and not losing his job and was unthinkably optimistic. If I was second in command I would have ordered people to get their safety gear nearby or just put it on.
I only have one complaint about this video, which is you saying the video is getting too long. I could watch/listen to these reports for hours on end. I have binged every video and will be watching every new release! This content is among the best I’ve seen on TH-cam, up there with mentour pilot. Thorough, insightful, respectful, and thought provoking. Keep up the good work sir!
We have similar tastes you would like Green Dot Aviation
@@Trashkantai I will check that one out! Another lesser subbed channel is Mini Air Crash Investigation. His are a little less in depth but he seems to cover a lot more of them, and a lot of lesser known crashes and incidents. Definitely worth a watch!
@@ryanvickery5491 Thank you i will check the out
Mentour pilot is for commercial aviation what this channel is for maritime. Both the best in what they cover, imo.
Ryan, I agree. I feel guilty sometimes being fascinated by videos like these, because these are real people who die in them, and their lives shouldnt be for my amusement.
Idk how to feel, but I do enjoy watching these videos. I dont think anyone on this planet could do a better job making them than these guys. So thorough, and easy to understand.
Simply amazinh productions. Am I sick for wishing there were more of them?
2:30 the ships "El Morro" and "El Yunque" actually stand for two landmarks in Puerto Rico, not the nose nor the anvil. "El Morro" is the historic fort in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico and "El Yunque" is the national rainforest - one of the few if not the only tropical rainforests in the National Parks System.
I was gonna post this. My wife is Puerto Rican and we visit the island often.
Does el Faro have any special meaning besides lighthouse?
im surprised this comment hasnt been acknowledged by the video maker jesus
So, basically, the captain inadvertently tried his hardest to sink a (relatively) perfectly seaworthy ship, and unfortunately none of the bystanders felt comfortable disagreeing and potentially saving lives.
Unfortunate.. ineptitude at it's finest.
Captain is ultimately responsible for this tragedy, but he’s dead, and the best way to prevent something like this happening again, is to fully investigate who or what was pushing down on the captain from the top, holding them accountable, and making real change.
considering the conditions of it's sister ship, it's highly unlikely the ship was particularly seaworthy; but you're correct, it does appear the captain misread the situation badly, got in too deep and allowed his ego to get in the way of rational decision making, leading to a loss of all hands. that said, even if there was an orderly evacuation, in those conditions it's highly unlikely anyone would have survived even with a raft until help came. sinking a few KM from the eye of a cat4 hurricane that then would linger about 20km from the sinking spot for a day, pretty much doomed everyone regardless how the evacuation went.
This ship was not seaworthy, it was skating by and in no way with in the standards set the the ABS and the USCG. This ship should have been scrapped years prior.
@@jamesbelbin6343 The USCG inspects these ships on a regular basis. They allowed it to sail with all the deficiencies mentioned, rust everywhere, obsolete lifeboats, minimal electronics, minimal lube oil in the supply tanks, lack of training etc. They will overlook almost any defect to save the ship owners money.
@@jamesbelbin6343 that's why I said relatively. The thing still floated at least, that was about as seaworthy as she got.
I can hardly sit through 5 min long videos but this was so interesting, I couldn't stop watching. No unnecessary dramatic music, no stupid story manipulations, no cheap attempts to make it more intriguing. I felt genuine interest in the story and I love how detailed it was. An incredible step-by-step investigation of what had and also might have happened. The industry/company was abusive and exploitative and the captain was exactly the same. The crew didn't just die. They suffered abuse, negligence and likely total panic hours before the ship sank. And the death at sea itself must've been horrible. I wonder how long it took. Minutes? Hours? Days?...
In the open sea in a hurricane and not in an immersion suit? Minutes. Definitely not days, and almost certainly not hours.
As a retired National Weather Service marine meteorologist, I offer several observations:
1) Timeliness of weather observations and forecasts paid a critical role here. Aviators and mariners need to know how long it takes for this information to arrive. Aviators have met their deaths trying to cut around a thunderstorm too closely because they were relying on radar data that they didn't know was 5 minutes old. Here, six hour old forecasts at a critical time contributed to the wrong decision.
2) Ship routing companies have meteorologists who can not only help route ships to save fuel, but serve as valuable consultants in storm avoidance situations. Very few small companies pay for these services, but they should.
3) The lack of a working anemometer was not a factor. Most ships report winds by observing sea state.
4) The capt. was counting on the official forecast to be absolutely perfect. Instead, he needed to account for a margin of error even if it meant several diversionary routes that later proved to be unwarranted.
5) Joaguin needed a larger than normal margin of error during this event because the storm had just formed and it was drifting into an abrupt change of steering currents. On the other hand, for powerful storms that are moving at a steady clip in a straight or broadly curved line, the margin of error can be smaller. Surprisingly, this isn't accounted for in the official NHC cone, but it should be.
Good observations.
Thanks for your insights! The thing that sticks with me is the margin or error. I grew up sailing with my grandpa and that’s one of the things he always taught me. Always account for the margin of error, and never assume anything to be perfect when sailing. Although, it was a 40 foot sailboat so we had to be a bit more careful since our motor was only for emergencies or for navigating the canals and getting out of the bay
Yes I agree. I am a former Radio Officer, and taught GMDSS for a number of years. The Captain did not follow his STCW training at all. It was as if he were sailing back in the 1800's. He seemed to rely on some third party weather service for up-dates, which by their own admission were hours old. Based on the fact this ship had to have been a GMDSS compliant vessel, or it would not have been allowed to leave port, he had: NAVTEX receiver, receiving data via the USCG, but coming directly from the NWS, and he also had his Sat C, EGC (enhanced Group Call), SafetyNET marine weather up-dates coming directly from the NWS, on current weather conditions in a specific maritime region, plus he had a a calibrated barometer on the bridge. All of which anyone with normal ability could see that there was a major disaster about to unfold. It also appears that his frame of reference to sea conditions was based on extremely low pressures coming across the Aleutian Island chain, which can be very dangerous, but do not generate the tightly compressed kinetic energy of a rotating hurricane. A receipt for disaster.
Failures at all levels allowed this to occur, a series of small insignificant events let this happpen, this was 100% an avoidable tragedy
Each and every little link in the chain to complete disaster, cliché but true!
@@jamesm3471
IIRC, Swiss cheese theory of disasters-all the holes line up.
As a retired mariner, I can attest that the vast majority of emergencies at sea are because of a series of events. I was trained to think ahead and be prepared to the worst case scenario for each event. Also vessel maintenance is crucial, I have refused to leave port if deficiencies weren't corrected. Even though I was accused of being a little to 'by the book' I was able to retire without a single loss of life or loss of vessel. There is far more to being a Captain than getting a vessel from point A to point B on time.
@@grmpEqweer Yep, swiss cheese model rather then theory. Making just one good decision, even with only a margin of a minute until the point of no return, is often all that is required to avoid a catastrophic disaster. It's not about how many mistakes you make, it's about your ability to make one right decision before everyone dies.
@@CharlesFreck
Model, not theory. Copy. 👍
I was apart of the USCGC Northland crew during this incident. The search and rescue operations for the El Faro is very vivid. We were south of Cuba during this storm for hurricane avoidance, it was a very long few days. Once we were tasked with SAR for El Faro, it was remarkable the amount of people involved with searching for survivors. I've never seen so many crew members out on deck just looking out and hoping for some sort sighting. The seas were eerily calm during this search. It was remarkable working this case and seeing how dedicated our crew and the other units were in trying to locate any and all crew members.
May they rest in peace.
My heart breaks for the crew. Especially the woman who was emailing her family. What a tragedy.
You know you're a great creator when I didn't realize this was damn near a feature length film until you said "this video has gotten extremely long" and I checked the timestamp
my thoughts exactly!!
Over a year ago I watched another doc on this ships sinking. I guessed this was another doc on the same ship. I was completely blown away at how in-depth your doc was compared to the other one. I have been binge watching your videos for the last couple days. Keep up the good work! Short videos, long ones. You're doing a great job. Subscribed.
“It’s time to come this way.” Haunting that the only option the AS had was to put on a life vest and walk into a hurricane after following the orders of a Captain who put him there in the first place. Truly a nightmare scenario for the crew.
Even the way he handled that pisses me off. Its like he wasn't physically trying to help the AS, just coax him off the bridge like you'd try to coax a scared toddler. I mean I understand that maybe the captain couldn't get to him due to a severe list or something, but given the captains actions and attitude up to that time it's just too easy for me to imagine him leaning against the door jamb watching the AS panic.
That's because he wanted to make sure that everything written on record had is on record at his best future intentions and what was best for him in mind I thought he acted like that when he was telling that lady on the phone El faro
Tryin to blame the help. Stupid ship master
Exactly.. come this way like straight out the door and jump out into the ocean in the ferocious hurricane. My God the thought of it makes me sick. I can’t even fathom how it went for them. 😔
Almost the same thing happened to an 18yr old bulk carrier I'm was in 2015-2016, 1997 MV Polyneos, Panamax 7 hatch Bulk Carrier w/out cranes. We were anchored outside the Yangtze after drydock & loading heavy steel rolls(bound for Ravena, Salerno, & Venice Italy) on a old ship usually carrying grains & bauxite. A freak Typhoon was heading toward our anchorage spot, as we surrounded by 20 or more ships we hunkered down. As the typhoon hit every ship around us started leaving, some lost their achors due to the strong winds. We were last to leave the anchorage spot, the Master finally made the right decision that save our lives. As we were underway to hide in Taiwan, the ship had to make two 90 degree turns to make the u-turn needed to head towards Taiwan. Midway to the 2nd turn the Main Engine died, and as we sat dead in the water, me & the engine crew scrambling to restart the main engine. We were hit by 3 huge freak waves portside almost capsizing the ship, Everything that were not bolted down, tables, chairs, personal items, everything fell. It was a some sort of a miracle that the ship's engine was able to restart and we didn't died in that catastrophe.
Edit: I'm dumb didn't proof read before posting. It was two 90 degree turns from what I remembered from 3rd mate's retelling of the events. Lastly our Carriage style overhead provision crane was left hanging on the edge of it's rails stbd side, after bosun tried "securing it" when all of that was happening.
If you should know any single thing about bauxite it should be that it is mad dangerous to transport. Kudos on the seamanship
What is a 90 degree U-Turn?
If you are a mariner you would know a u-turn is 180°. I smell BS!
@@mz00956 Haha, yeah.
90 degrees is a right turn
Wow! The Northern Lights!
I was the tactical supervisor in charge of protecting this vessel from Greece to the Persian Gulf and 2005.
We were never given any type of tour notification or anything regarding to lifeboats, etc.
I remember buying a lawnchair and bringing it with me and suntanning on superstructure starboard side, top deck.
The military equipment lashed to the decks look no different with the chains than it did in the video from five years later
I had no idea the danger of this industry until now. What I do know is incompetence, laziness, pressure to skip over safety precautions is absolutely unacceptable. If you’re a restaurant manager, a pilot or a captain of a ship, you have the responsibility to keep your team and customers safe at all cost. You don’t skip checklist, maintenance issues, or suggestions from your team out of ego. If you’re in charge you go above and beyond for the safety of everyone. What a tragedy.
Can’t forget than unlike calling 911 or even experiencing an emergency in an airplane, you don’t have Fire/EMS/LEO minutes away, or even an airport in worst case scenarios a few hours away, when you’re on a ship in the middle of the ocean. It can take days for anyone to reach you
Sometimes productivity trumps safety.
I had this thought about pilots and captions after binging so many disaster videos that they should be doing much more stringent testing and psychological qualifications to get these positions. I realized later that I shouldn't be judging without knowing what actually goes into the hiring of these individuals but even now it bugs me. Especially in the case of the Costa Concordia. Like the captain went from head of security to captain and he completely abandoned the ship along with the passengers onboard. It would be beyond distressing to find out that these people who have hundreds of lives in their hands aren't tested in some way to find out how they'll react to disaster or them knowing that the people's lives onboard are their responsibility snd they should act accordingly.
When you said 'this video's already really long' I had absolutely no idea I'd already been watching for an hour. This was an incredible in-depth look at a tragedy I'd never heard of, that should never have happened.
Confirmation of bias at its absolute best. Or worst. That second mate should have been able to lay the facts out and been listened to - she would have made far better leader and captain than the actual captain, whose apathy is just astounding. Even to not really making clear to the onshore personnel how bad the situation was (and their calm collectedness seems to show that they didn't really understand how bad the situation was - if anyone in that conversation had mentioned 'hurricane' it would have gone differently, although I'm honestly not sure what help someone hundreds of miles away could be when there was no oil in the engine, nor any, seemingly, to put in the engine!)
How anyone could have classed that vessel as seaworthy in the first place is mind-boggling never mind the fact that the captain decided to take it out to sea with a known hurricane somewhere in his path, even if he did think it was miles from where he'd be. The area a hurricane covers can be hundreds of miles and there are gale-force winds even when you're nowhere near the eye of the storm!
His level of moronic complacency was truly astounding.
Money friend that industry is very very shonky at best when you start involving corporate ideals like profit margins etc
Apparently the _El Faro_ was actually a solid ship, only superficially rusty. Though, the crew was mainly relying on its speed to outrun the storm.
@@ibeatyoutubecircumventingy6344 Profits get put first over human lives far far too often, in all industries, which a horrible indictment on the world we live in.
Wow! I thought I worked for unethical companies, and incompetent management, but this puts my experiences into perspective. I've been injured on the job, needed surgery, and fought money grubbing employers who were responsible for my injuries and treatment, but at least I'm alive and able to get justice, and then move on. This is a whole different level. Mistakes are catastrophic, and the whole work crew loses their life. The company collects the insurance, and the families are lucky if they get enough to bury their dead without going into financially crippling debt while they try to survive the tragic loss.
The families have to sue. Companies should absolutely take responsibility.
Man, this captain was _terrible!_ He was responsible for everyone's lives on that boat, and he half-assed it.
Money he was pressured to keep the ship moving.
@@WindTurbineSyndrome
The emails shown seem to indicate that the company management for all their faults maintenance wise, never objected to any weather diversions. The captain failed to get current weather reports and failed to take a safer route. I do not buy that this was all due to pressure. His mental model and crew resource management was was lacking and he is the most responsible for what happened.
@@WindTurbineSyndrome Money has nothing to do with the captain disregarding warnings from other captains and thea NOAA reports. This captain was a moron, plain and simple.
@@yellekc well said! I agree wholeheartedly
@@yellekc it's definitely possible to be pressured with it not leaving evidence in emails or other official communications.
I remember I once led my shift leave early during a bad snow storm. Officially I was given leeway to let them leave if I thought conditions could be dangerous. Unofficially it was hinted to me in numerous ways that they definitely didn't want me to let them leave early for the rest of that winter.
I still agree that the captain is responsible, but I don't think the emails are the be all end all.
I read the transcripts of the in-bridge communications shortly after they were released, and this tragedy always struck me as so haunting. Between the inwardly paranoid & outwardly confident Ship's Master, to the observant 2nd Mate, to the terrified helmsman, to the silent Polish Nationals to the franticly working Engineering crew, these felt like real people to me, not just words on a page, and their preventable death was a tragedy a million small mistakes in the making, as most great tragedies are. It's easy to look at some nitpicky regulation and say 'who cares' or 'why are we wasting time on this?' but all those little neglected things can lead to a very big problem. Sometimes, you have to sweat the small stuff. RIP to the crew of the El Faro.
It wasn't mistakes which kept such rust bucket in use and at sea at time when even properly maintained ships should have made different course choises.
It was greed which lead to this disaster.
And as usual those people truly behind this chain of events never get their neck put on line.
At least in aviation companies with unsafe practises get fined and eventually banned!
Until that happens, there's always next El Faro waiting to happen.
Same here. I’ve always loved maritime history, and this was the first disaster I payed attention to in real time (in first year of high school in 2015). It was a heart pulling read, particularly near the end as the AB (I assumed was Frank Hamm) struggled to leave the bridge, brought me to tears. It is something that will always stay with me, as have other horrendous tragedies. Those that most come to mind are the Conception diveboat fire, Stellar Daisy’s break up, and the fiery loss of the tanker Sanchi.
You said it with regard to regulations/company rules. I'm a bit more familiar with railroads, and the PRR from roughly 1935-1955 was considered one of if not the safest railroads in North America. Maintenance crews and engineers enforced rules very strictly because in most cases they knew such rules were written in blood.
The captain’s stupidity knew no bounds ,
Even when a crew member states “I’m a goner” the captain still has faith in his own capabilities
“No you’re not, time to come this way” as if he’s saving people like a hero
What an absolute fool of a man
Yes just YES. Been patiently waiting for this since your Ocean Ranger video. You are awesome and your documentary style vids blow those terrible part live action docu dramas from cable TV out of the water. I would gladly wait to see you cover the Deepwater Horizon or heck even an older disaster such as the Sinking of the Lusitania or Empress of Ireland. Any of those being covered by you would be awesome! I'd patiently wait years because I know you'd do a fantastic job. Great work as always. Also respect and condolences to the crew lost, one of the crew members was from my home town as well as another's widow was on the news a few years back reflecting while looking on at the Golden Ray that capsized in St. Simmons Sound.
I absolutely agree, the quality of his videos is through the roof! Simply amazing.
@@bowtiejess80 My cousin's husband was lost on the Ocean Ranger. Her two sons grew up not knowing their father. Very sad time in the history of Newfoundland.
Hey, don't knock docudramas! :-( I've seen many good ones!
As someone from Puerto Rico, this hit hard knowing all those men died in order to keep the way of life we are used to normal. I used to work at a restaurant and remember the chaos because the shipment got lost, some people got mad blaming bad planning, not realizing the truth until it was informed on the news. Watching this makes me even more upset and mad at all the bad decisions taken by management and responders.
This captain acted like the captain of the Titanic, ignoring warning signs. But the difference is management of SS EL FARO would accept any course change without hesitation but the captain ran straight into the storm.
*I must be missing something,* what more could the responders have done in this case?
@@lcfflc3887 they were in a hurricane….
@@vaffangool9196 They could have ensured their buoy was transmitting properly before leaving that poor person in the immersion suit, that was waving their arms to rescuers, to die in the ocean.
@@fortunekader9121 Yes! This hit me the most. Why isn’t this discussed more in the comment section? They literally had a survivor and left him/her. Can you imagine what that poor soul was thinking?
The Captain's indifference and blind confidence got 32 people and himself killed. Truly a tragedy...
But if he had successfully sailed through the hurricane, he would have become a legend. Sometimes you gotta take risks if you want good stories to tell at the bar.
@@PatrickPierceBateman
Can't argue that homey lol
@Patrick Bateman This is so stupid I can't even believe you posted it. You never sail through a cat fucking 4 cane.
@@PatrickPierceBateman real legends don’t kill 32 people with them
@@SoJoever exactly! legends don't risk the lives they are responsible for, simply for bragging rights at a bar.
Wow! Just wow! After the Sewol videos I remember clearly thinking "Thank God nothing so crazy and reckless could happen in the US". I was so wrong. I thought I knew the El Faro story. It was shocking to see how all of those little things added up to this tragedy. Even though I knew the end result, I could still feel my heart racing as the storm intensified in the video! The VDR voice data was something I had very little knowledge of and was very difficult to hear. Also, great analogy with the Tornado warnings! I've been looking forward to this video and he didn't disappoint!! Well done!👍👍☺
I remember this incident quite clearly since it was covered in the local PR news for a whole month since on top of the loss of life, it wrecked the island's supply chain in a way that wasn't seen again until 2017 when Hurricane Maria happened. People were so angry & heartbroken because all of this could have been avoided. Look forward to seeing part 2 since so many things changed after this disaster but it's unfortunate that it had to come at the cost of 33 lives.
True. Puerto Rico only had two ships supplying goods to the island, after the loss of El Faro, it was down to only one. Such a tragedy. May their souls rest.
Hence the common sense of researching and implementation of how to live as humans in a self-sufficient manner.
This is heartbreaking... I can't imagine being stuck on a ship that was knowingly sailing into a hurricane without being able to do anything about it. How scary
That’s my thought too. Complete nightmare.
Had to do a technical paper and presentation on this in engineering school. I was assigned to analyze the engineering failure that led to the sinking. After weeks of looking for one, the only failures I found were the toxic captain and the terrible company sailing them into a hurricane. Things aren't designed to sail in hurricanes. There's the conclusion from an engineering perspective.
The oil level isn't an engineering concern? Yeah, it took on water due to negligence in both loading and storm precautions (not engineering problems) but they lost steering due to that low oil level
@@patagualianmostly7437 I don't understand this take that failing to maintain a minimum level of oil as specified is an engineering rather than maintenance fault. I would imagine that part of the reason for this minimum fill level is so that oil pressure is maintained for a given degree of trim/lost conditions.
Put another way: you can always try to design a safer car, but it ain't the fault of the airbags when someone dies driving it off a cliff.
@@Pantherophis yeah, roll will mess up engines. One episode of "Deadliest Catch" one of the ships gets hit with a freak wave. BOTH engines immediately STALLED!! they managed to get it back to port on one engine, but that took a while just to get that up and running. If they'd gotten hit by another wave they'd probably have not made it back to port at all.
Not in engineering school but I think the hasty conversion from roll on to lift on could’ve thrown things off, plus the fact that the cars were secured with mere chains instead of maybe having some sort of built in system to lock them in and prevent them from snapping free the way they did here.
As far as I can tell, lube oil level is specifically an engineering issue. From the USCG report: "A former EL FARO C/E testified at the MBI that during his tenure with Sea Star Lines (1998-2013), standard operating procedures were to operate with a lubricating oil sump level between 28 to 32 inches.131 He testified that he normally kept the sump level higher to prevent the loss of lube oil suction. He further testified that during his time on EL FARO, the level was
sometimes increased, at the direction of a C/E, to a higher level of 30”-32” for voyages where heavy weather was anticipated. The former C/E recalled needing to add an inch or two of oil to the sump once a quarter to compensate for normal oil consumption." At departure, El Faro's oil sounding equated to 24.6". This is all from Section 7.2.7.2 of the USCG report, available here: media.defense.gov/2017/Oct/01/2001820187/-1/-1/0/FINAL%20PDF%20ROI%2024%20SEP%2017.PDF
These maritime tragedies usually leave me with a profound lingering melancholy but this one was different in that the overwhelming emotion is of rising anger. This strayed beyond mere corporate manslaughter into the realm of cold blooded murder.
We have a huge problem in the business world currently in that the traits deemed desirable for senior leadership and the boardroom are those of the common or garden psychopath. This is all coming to a head as we speak and it could very well be the death of us all, innocents that we are. The master of this vessel displays such characteristics in spades. Had he not killed himself and all his innocent crew, his desire to be promoted would undoubtedly have been met. His desire to cut corners and be a “risk taker” for the company in this cut throat industry is definitely in no doubt.
He was fired from his previous job for being too cautious. I forget the details but it was something about requesting a tow in to port when his vessel was disabled in some way. This was the safer approach but it cost time and money. His employer thought he didnt need it and was upset with him and terminated his employment.
Perhaps he learned his lesson.
You should consider that it was not a desire for promotion but his desire to keep his Captains job.
What are the odds he would ever get to be the Captain of another ship at age 48 if he were fired again for erring on the side of caution in a way that delayed delivery of cargo or in some way cost his employer money?
"We have a huge problem in the business world currently in that the traits deemed desirable for senior leadership and the boardroom are those of the common or garden psychopath."
You got that right... its just that maybe its not the Captain that should be the target of this assessment.
Imagine how different the captain's actions, decisions, and motivations would have been had he known he was no longer in consideration for the captaincy position he wanted. Had he known that, he almost certainly would have been far more cautious.
if that was an underlying motivation, then its the Same as in war, officers looking at senior level politics and promotion will make choices that can cost unnecessary/unwarranted loss of life.
Hard to believe how calm and professional the shipmaster was on the opening emergency call. The emergency channel operator handling it with all of the urgency of a hospital main switchboard phone call...how on earth did the SM not scream into the radio they were sinking and needed help immediately I don't know.
Actually, he was using the ships Sat B system, which is used for commercial communications, which he should not have been on. You can listen to the land based satellite operators. They did not know exactly how to handle the distress, because they are trained basically as switchboard operators, and not in distress communications. So that was a major error on the part of the captain. Note: He was only say 200 miles from USCG Miami, who are trained to communicate with emergency traffic. All he had to do was call them. Did he? NO! Why not? I don't know. If he went through USCG approved GMDSS training he would have know to do so. Results? Everyone died.
@@mikemalloy1681 Crazy right? I can't make any sense of that. I can understand how they got into the situation and how the boat met it's demise but I can't make any sense out of why he didn't sound the alarm with the proper people. I don't recall him ever making contact with the coast guard and I believe they were notified by someone else on their behalf. Was he embarrassed you think and still thought just maybe he could fix the problem or was it pure panic and he didn't know what to do?
it's kind of telling that the 2nd mate had the distress call ready to go an hour before she got permission to send them...
I wish we got to hear more of that conversation of him asking for a Q.I and the cost guards one
@@mikemalloy1681 Given his extremely non-chalant attitude that sent the El Faro straight towards the eye of Joaquin, my hunch is he didn't call USCG Miami because he didn't fully grasp the severity of the situation. Maybe still wanting to keep the matter "internal".
Very impressive.
Hands down, this is THE most comprehensive report about the El Faro disaster I have ever found. Look no further for any more information about it- No matter how small it may be, you can be at ease knowing that any information there is on the sinking, you can bet it is in this video report.
Yet still, anytime I hear about this event, I always get chills knowing about the last email that Danielle Randolph sent to her mom at 3:34 am, acknowledging their path into the Cat. 3 hurricane, and ending with "love to everyone".
33 people. Folks that were no stranger to the ocean. Just gone.
The entire ordeal was just...so damned avoidable.
Such an absolute shame.
I hope and pray that the families and friends of all 33 people have been able to find some sort of inner peace...and forgiveness. ❤
Rachel Slade's "Into the Raging Sea" is an excellent read for this disaster.
What about the transcripts? I’d like to read them.
There are times where I look at a situation and go “yeah, a mutiny would be justified here”
This reminds me of when Amazon told all those warehouse workers to stay put and keep working during a tornado. If you read some of the final messages those workers sent to loved ones before the tornado tore through the building, you can see that they also knew they were in danger but were afraid to disobey and protect themselves because then they would lose their jobs and potentially be unable to afford living expenses for themselves and their loved ones afterwards anyway.
I have to wonder if that was a factor in why the crew of the El Faro didn't mutiny despite knowing that they were headed into the heart of a hurricane.
I live close to the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, IL that was damaged by that tornado. The unnecessary loss of life was abhorrent and sad.
They tore down the remains of the damaged part of the warehouse, which was about 3/4 of the warehouse, and plan on rebuilding it.
I would say that's exactly the situation on this Bridge, Maria. Say anything within hearing of the Captain and there'd be hell to pay - and you'd be picking up your final pay cheque. Unfortunately none of these poor souls got to pick up their final anything. Everyone feared him by the sounds of things.
The fact that we live in a world where people have to pick between their life or their job at some point.
And the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
I genuinely don't think these things are as much about not losing one's job as they are about a ingrained deference to authority. There are lots of tales of non-commercial sinkings where the passengers just sat around watching the ship flood without attempting to get themselves to safety. Passengers of hijacked planes almost never try to take back control of the plane. In situations like these, we're just so used to waiting for authoritative instructions, and once we get them, following them.
Ill never understand why a sea captain would ever take the risk of getting anywhere near severe let alone tropical weather. Assuming your ship is strong enough to handle such weather seems like a foolish an unnecessary risk. To many times in history it has been shown that no matter how strong or supposedly unsinkable a ship is it went down. I know delays of cargo can be potentially financially costly but I would think that would be a better risk than that of the lives of innocent crew members. I’ll admit Im no expert sailor so it may well be my that I don’t fully understand all the factors involved in sea based cargo shipping.
Sadly, in many cases the money is more worth than the lives potentially lost to the people in charge.
@@19eightyforeisnow give me a break! Thats literally speculation and even mentioned it was purely speculation in this video. Not confirmed in any way, shape or form.
@@johnieskateshard In his mind he thought he would maybe ?
By the way, even if people survived, the cargo is lost. Soo you loose even more.
Human error is almost always the root cause of industrial incidents.
I just want to offer my sincere thanks to you and your team for making this video. I was a freshman at the Maine Maritime Academy when the El Faro was lost and I vividly remember how worried the entire academy was for the crew, and the candlelight vigil we held while coast guard search efforts were ongoing. This video gave me a lot of answers to questions I had concerning the tragedy, and while I did not personally know any of the sailors lost that day, this video has helped me achieve some closure with the event.
Oh man, the emergency service women are being so kind and soft and professional, but it's almost as though they don't grasp of the severity of what was happening on board
I'm sure they're trained to act like that. Just like 911 operators.
The captain was really downplaying what was happening to the people on the shore. What was being reported didnt seem to match the severity of the issues at all.
@@urzaserra256 I wonder when he finally realized he wasn't going to weasel his way out of this one... seems like it took a _very_ long time.
To be fair, in a real emergency like this, he should have been calling the coast guard, not trying to get tech support from the corporate office. I’m sure the ladies in the phone had no idea how bad his situation actually was.
@@Leigh-says-stuff Not the first Video here, where it seems the people in charge of the situation are more concerned with talking to Corporate than getting actual help.
Damn.. i almost cried listening to the the Rank and File voice their concerns 😟
I used to work at a corporation just like that - in 2003 we lost an amazing young woman - Elizabeth Strianese - due to lax safety procedure... The accident scene was HORRIFIC !
She was only 20 yrs old and her father has worked maintenance their for 10 years !! I sincerely means this when i say that my life flashed in front of my eyes. Every single one of use use to bypass that same interlock while the line was running ... Joking about safety meetings etc ..
Jesus I'm still ashamed of how we all acted before that day... God Bless you guys and gals out there in the blue collar world - keep up the good fight ! Protect YOURSELF !
Sorry to hear about the young lady and the terrible tragedy for all involved. I've worked in nursing and I've seen my fair share of unsafe conditions. it seems that people loose their common sense when involved in group think, and being afraid of rules that clearly are unsafe being made by someone who holds a title above theirs. Makes me think of 911 and the people who used their higher minds and left, versus the people who were told nothing to see here and to go back to wait to die.
CRM is crucial. We learned about it in university, going over so many disasters where a crew member had concerns but was ignored or held their tongue because the captain’s word was law.
A barely seaworthy and shoddy rustbucket of a ship whose modifications made it as unstable as could be gotten away with, its cargo secured in its decks in the most slipshod
and barely acceptable way, a Captain who had little to no interest in his job or timely weather forecasts, a category 4 hurricane right in the ship's path. What could possibly go
wrong?
I think they atleast might be a little late
Biggest factors ?
-- 1st: indifference by who trying to contact !
-- Ability of ship, is of the lesser factors.
-- 2nd: actually waiting !
-- 3rd:: message of "tine is running out".
(At this point, would be correct to say:
"Abandon Ship" ! )
-- 4th: never declared: SOS !
8th (or later): the condition of the ship.
9th (or later): those who let the ship to be on the water
10th (or later): people blaming others, for creating other "excuses" for the sinking.
After the 1sr "please wait",
the communicator should have
been thrown over board !
??? Weather ???
The ship is facing
a category 4 hurricane.
-- Which way to steer the ship ?
*******
-- Calling weather monitors;
-- Put on hold;
-- Hurricane is getting closer;
-- Not going to survive on this course;
-- Storm is starting to arrive,
-- Put on hold;
-- Time is running out;
-- Put on hold;
-- Hurricane has begun;
-- There is only black skies;
-- Waves are getting huge,
-- Only possible hope,
somebody answers .
(At least record our departing words ! )
@Dirk Carmel what were they going to do for this captain? He was in a cat 3 hurricane, listing and taking on water. He needed to be told and get permission to call a mayday and abandon ship? Yeah he shouldn’t be put on hold but he shouldn’t have put everyone in that situation in the first place. And should have had the knowledge and experience to know that no one on the other side of the phone could help him in that situation unless it’s to call the coast guard fr him. And he STILL was acting like it wasn’t a life or death situation. Saying he wasn’t ringing abandon ship yet. The fact that he was put on hold was the least problematic issue he was dealing with at that moment. It was his fault.
I was part of the emergency response operations that recovered the damaged lifeboat. We also searched the local islands for signs of life. Incredibly sad.
Thank you for your service.
Didn't know the coast guard searched islands for life, even thought its basic stuff I just never heard of search and rescue doing it on the news. Super interesting
I'm still trying to wrap my head around this as I watch more of the video. They were so organized when it came time to search and rescue; but the captain couldn't even get in touch with someone who could help him before the boat sunk? He had to leave a voicemail? This is absolutely unbelievable.
He didn’t Want to get in touch with anyone. I think that’s what you’re missing. He only contacted his own company to keep from publicity or leaks and to keep from being scolded or losing face. He had every chance and opportunity and the tools to do so. But he wanted to be promoted. And thought he could just salvage it himself without letting anyone know. That’s what cost everyone their lives.
The captain only sent distress calls via the GMDSS (DSC digital distress calls via regular old HF radio and the ship’s satellite terminal) and SASS systems at the last moment. He did not make a voice radio Mayday call. The satphone calls were the only voice communications made during that time, and they could hardly be considered “distress calls”.
The captain is downplaying the severity of the emergency until the very end, you can hear it on the recording.
He waited until they were in the position in which search and rescue would of been impossible anyway.
I dated a guy who worked for the coast guard. Watching video of his boat being flipped around during a rescue was terrifying. They are tough and have guts of steel. I could never do that job. I get car sick just driving across town.
A friend of my father was aboard that vessel. Rest In Peace. Can’t believe it’s almost been 7 years
I feel like when the captain went to bed and the storm was upgraded to a category 3, the officer who phoned the captain on what to do should have just lied to the bridge crew. Just straight up told them that the captain changed his mind and told everyone to steer the ship to safe waters, instead of telling the bridge the truth that the captain wants them to sail into a category 3 storm.
Insubordination? Yes.
Dismissal? Very likely.
Legal action? Not off the table.
Career ending move? Probably.
Very ugly situation when the captain returns? Absolutely.
But you and your colleagues would be alive and that is precious beyond all worth.
Hindsight's 20/20, it's very hard to come up with this choice on the spot. Specially with your career at stake, if they had altered their course they probably wouldn't have known they avoided death, and the Captain being as prideful as he was would've made them responsible for the delay.
If the captain even appears to most to be sending the crew directly towards a hurricane, subordination is a necessity. The commanding officer is acting incompetent and is too impaired to command others. You absolutely should be able to fight any punishment based on how listening to a clearly incompetent officer would be criminal negligence. Not to say I blame the crew, I don't. It takes a lot of courage to fight against incompetent orders, and without the right mindset, it won't happen. It's better to train the crew ahead of time in what to do in such a situation and encourage the crew to be more vocal. Encourage an atmosphere more akin to on airplanes. Don't punish people for reporting problems, encourage good crew management, have actual checklists to follow, and actually implement changes after any potential issues show up.
Man, I can't imagine being the person who knows what's about to happen when the boss is surrounded by "buddies from Alaska" keep agreeing that he's right and "she's overreacting".
I’ve we worked offshore since 1993 and what this captain did was beyond negligent. Unfortunately it’s these disaster’s that shine a light on the importance of ship and crew safety over deadlines and customer requests or demands. Safety, at least in the Gulf of Mexico oilfield didn’t become the primary concern until the Deepwater horizon disaster. Sad that safety, while heavily promoted is even to this day put on the back burner when profits are being threatened.
Is this type of activity common in the industry?
Looking outside, it is looking like profits take precedence over all else and lessons have to be learned the hard way.
Safety is alsways priority no 1, until it starts to cost the company money.
I have been binging your content all morning and your research and knowledge is extremely refreshing and impressive. I can no longer watch or waste my time with the average disaster compilation or countdown videos of "this disaster happened". You've produced elite content in the disaster category that answers/explains the 5 W's behind the disaster and you should be proud. Keep up the great work!
"Uh, hey, corporate? My ship appears to be sinking!"
"Your call is very important to us and we thank you for continuing to hold."
*Smooth jazz continues to play*
I am a licensed merchant marine officer the problems with the El Faro are industry wide with individuals in the office over ruling the masters with most not having any sea experience and no concept of the dangers of what they demand of Captains this environment will not change until the Coast Guard and D.O.T. hold management accountable.
God bless these souls 🙏 and their families.
Amen 🙏
But it seemed that this company trusted the captain to make decisions and let him and he made a bad one. Not saying that this company isn't bad in many other ways.
One term for those office people I have heard is "Cubicle Captains."
@@Kremithefrog1 The ISM code states that every company must have a Safety Management System (SMS). In each SMS it is clearly written that the Captain has overriding authority. This means that the Captain should not ask the company if he can do something but just inform them of what he is doing and why. Once the Captain asks, the company can only say yes or risk full liability if something happens. That is because e-mails can be saved as evidence. Phone calls however are a different story. I have seen shore management give stupid orders by phone to the Captain which were immediately countermanded once the Captain asked confirmation by e-mail. Therefore it is entirely plausible that behind the scenes the Captain was chewed out for his previous course alterations that resulted in delays. Also while the lower ranks are promoted by higher ranking people by at lest somewhat considering their ability and seeing them work this does not apply to Captains who are promoted by some shore manager whose only concern is the commercial side of things.
@@Kremithefrog1 From the Captain's behavior it would be no surprise to find that his earlier decision to burn extra fuel avoiding a storm was NOT popular with his employers. This kind of criticism doesn't show up in emails. He seems to have felt his job was on the line, and he was right. I wonder if the decision to pass him over was actually last-strawed by those extra 160 miles.
@@Kremithefrog1 No. The people in charge are not so stupid as to put in writing that they are displeased when a captain makes a decision that is more conservative but costs time and money.
EVERY industry comes with pressure for those in charge to "keep on schedule." Of course the higher ups will publicly say "we trust your judgement to make the right decision." But the unsaid part is "as long as its the decision we want you to make"... a sentiment they can communicate very subtly but VERY clearly.
I was just reading about the sinking of the Bounty during Hurricane Sandy. Although the Bounty and El Faro were completely different ships, there were some eerie similarities. Both captains decided to sail straight into hurricanes, both ships were not in the best condition and had issues with crucial components, and both needed necessary repairs.
One of the most striking similarities was the behavior and attitude of the captains. They acted acted as if the ship wasn’t going down up until practically the last minute. Is this a captain thing? Or just an unfortunate coincidence?
I also can’t believe that a modern ship didn’t have adequate lifeboats- those look similar to the ones on the Titanic for fuck’s sake! The poor crew never had a chance trying to board an open top lifeboat or a flimsy life raft in the middle of a Cat 4 hurricane. My heart aches for them, especially Danielle. I can’t help but think that if she was captain none of this would have happened and everyone would be alive. Rest In Peace 💔
I remember one of the Edmund Fitzgerald videos Captain Bernie Cooper of Arthur M.Anderson (the first boat to arrive at the sight). He said him and the Fitzgerald captains thought their boats could weather any storm and not sink.
Narcissism is a pox on humanity combining pride and incompetence.