Coast Guard Says Cargo Ship Sank; Body Of 1 Crew Member Found

Extinguishing hope that the car­go ship that went miss­ing near the Bahamas could have sur­vived a Thursday encounter with Hurricane Joaquin, the Coast Guard announced Monday that the ship, El Faro, sank, accord­ing to the Associated Press. The Coast Guard also found an uniden­ti­fied body of one crew mem­ber. Several “sur­vival suits” were spot­ted float­ing in the water, one of which con­tained the body. In addi­tion, an emp­ty, heav­i­ly dam­aged lifeboat was found. Barry Young of Jacksonville, Fla., whose grand-nephew, Shawn Riviera, was a crew mem­ber on El Faro, said his fam­i­ly is tem­per­ing their hope that Riviera could be alive with the real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion. He spoke with Jessica Palombo of WJCT, Jacksonville’s NPR mem­ber sta­tion.

“The Coast Guard did say that they are still see­ing debris. They’ve found oth­er sur­vival suits, they called them gum­my suits, so they’re try­ing to find each and every one to make sure there’s not a per­son in that suit who’s alive, who they can res­cue and take back to their fam­i­lies,” Young said, adding that the Coast Guard is now adding ves­sels to the search. “It does give you hope, but to be hon­est with you, the real­i­ty of it, we don’t see it as com­ing out any oth­er way than trag­ic.” U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Mark Fedor told the media that the search has shift­ed from find­ing the ves­sel to res­cu­ing pas­sen­gers who may still be alive. “We are still look­ing for sur­vivors or any signs of life,” he said. “The search for sur­vivors continues.”

The ship, owned by Tote Maritime, set out from Jacksonville, Fla., on Sept. 29 laden with com­mer­cial goods and 33 crew mem­bers — 28 Americans and five from Poland. On Thursday, the ship lost pow­er and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and began to take on water as it passed an island in the south­east­ern Bahamas, about 10 miles from the cen­ter of the hur­ri­cane, accord­ing to the AP. Fedor says it appears that the crew was forced to aban­don the sink­ing ship in a Category 4 hur­ri­cane. “So you’re talk­ing up to 140 mile an hour winds, seas upwards of 50 feet, vis­i­bil­i­ty basi­cal­ly at zero. Those are chal­leng­ing con­di­tions to sur­vive in.”

Laurie Bobillot of Maine, whose 24-year-old daugh­ter, Danielle Randolph, was a crew mem­ber on the ship, said she received a mes­sage from her daugh­ter before the ship went down. “Not sure you’ve been fol­low­ing the weath­er at all,” Bobillot read dur­ing an inter­view with WGME, Portland’s CBS affil­i­ate. “But there’s a hur­ri­cane out here and we are head­ing straight into it, Category 3. Last we checked, winds are super bad and seas are not great. Love to every­one.” On Friday, the Coast Guard deployed a res­cue heli­copter to look for El Faro, but found no sign of it.

The CEO of a Tote Maritime sub­sidiary in Jacksonville, Phil Greene, says Captain Michael Davidson thought he could pass in front of the storm, but the ship had a prob­lem with its propul­sion sys­tem and end­ed up with­out pow­er in Joaquin’s path.

On Saturday, the Coast Guard report­ed find­ing a life ring from the ship and Navy and Air Force planes and ships joined the search. The fol­low­ing day, the Coast Guardfound large debris that appeared to include mate­r­i­al from the ship, along with oil on the sur­face of the water. Joseph Murphy, a for­mer mas­ter of com­mer­cial ships and now an instruc­tor at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, told Here & Now that he can under­stand why the tragedy occurred. “Unfortunately, while peo­ple may think we have per­fect infor­ma­tion, we do not. When they sailed, it was report­ed as a trop­i­cal storm, some­thing that ship has gone through many times in that very same areas,” he said. “What was not antic­i­pat­ed or known was the inten­si­fi­ca­tion of the storm and its devel­op­ment into a Category 4.”

Murphy said that one of the acad­e­my’s grad­u­ates was aboard the ship. He char­ac­ter­ized the loss as one of the “per­ils of the sea. He said the ship “had the best of equip­ment, it was well inspect­ed. The crew were well trained. They were sim­ply over­whelmed by the force of nature.” But for the fam­i­lies of those lost at sea, these words are small com­fort. Young says his fam­i­ly is strug­gling with the sit­u­a­tion. “My fam­i­ly as a whole, we’re just band­ing togeth­er to sup­port each oth­er. That’s all we can do right now,” Young says. He says Riviera was a cook on the ship and describes his grand-nephew as a “go-get­ter” with two chil­dren and one on the way. Young said the tragedy has been hard on his fam­i­ly, espe­cial­ly his niece — Shawn is her only child. Story orig­i­nat­ed here : Coast Guard Says Cargo Ship Sank; Body Of 1 Crew Member Found