Into the Raging Sea: SS El Faro

Rachel Slade, author of "Into the Raging Sea", provides a detailed accounting of what happened in the sinking of the container ship El Faro where the crew of thirty-three perished.

[partenru]

“He’s 53 and afraid he’s about to be obsolete.” Regarding the Captain. Someone doesn’t understand that nothing holds more value at sea than experience. Yes, I’m a Captain.

[catwoman]

I have read this book a few times now. I think it is well written. I can't let go of the question of why the Captain so stubbornly stuck to his route. Lives lost so needlessly.

[Ayoc]

Awesome book. I was actually a part of the search and recovery team that found the ship and recovered the VDR.

[charlesfaure]

The appalling performance of the Captain on this trip suggests the reason he was passed over for a better command was not his age, but rather that he was a lousy captain. Of course no company would say or document that as long as he was kept on the payroll. When you get passed over in a corporate environment with "no adequate explanation" (which is never an obligation for management-level staff), there are often perfectly good reasons, including, perhaps, that there are better candidates available.

[classicalroach]

In case you haven’t read the complete transcript of the El Faro’s voice recorder, you should. It’s raw, authentically human, haunting, chilling, and 100% discredits this author’s racial tension theory.

In the last hours, with the ship severely listing, it was hard to stand up. The captain gave up his seat to Mr. Hamm, who had health and weight problems. And it is these two men who share the final dialogue as the ship literally sank. Mr. Hamm was unable to escape and was screaming for help. The captain pleaded with him to try, being totally unable to rescue him, which would have been futile anyway. The captain was with him until their death, the last words on recording being their horrifying desperate pleas to each other.

To use this gritty, ugly, tragic human story as a political racial ploy is abhorrent and deeply disrespectful.

[jchamp]

Read her book, "Into the Raging Sea". Very good read. Also read "Run the Storm" by George Michelsen Foy, which was also good. Run the Storm was more technical, while Into the Raging Sea was more personal, I felt. I also read the 500+ pages of the recording transcript. Thought Rachel Slade did a good presentation here. Remember, she is not an "expert" so to speak, so it may be hard for her to speak freely on it. Another good explanation of the sinking is called "Disastrous Indifference" on Youtube. Very good video.

[mickeydoodle]

It’s insane that even after this two-day parade of horrendous decisions, this Captain spends his last minutes waiting for some dude on land to what? Confirm for him that “yes, dummy - get your people OFF the boat!”. What a dumb waste of time. If this dude was trying to commit slow suicide and take 30 people with him, he couldn’t possibly have done a better job, even though he was ostensibly trying to do the exact opposite. Unbelievable incompetence. Unimaginable that this man was given a pilots license, much less charge of a ship and crew.

[Nitin_R_Naik]

It becomes quite obvious when you go through the entire story of that last trip that El Paso undertook : that there was obviously more reason for the survival of the ship that day than it was for its sinking -- as you see that the consensus reached by the crew who were continuously monitoring the dynamics of the situation knew very well that they were not only entering the hurricane but we're in fact heading directly towards the eye of the hurricane by following the orders of the captain, who incidentally was following his own tools which was around six hours old data.

In my opinion ( which I believe, no-one appears to have observed ) the captain was getting a readymade picture of the position of his ship along with the requisite data required for making a decision on the future course of action ( albeit, without realising that the data was quite old and irrelevant to the current situation ) on his computer, while the crew was working on the correct real-time satellite reported data; which the captain was refusing to believe and in doing so repeatedly assured the crew that all was in fact well.

This act of the captain, of refusing to consider the crew's point of view without asking them why they thought they were right and/ or their source of data ( which was actually from continuous satellite reports ) while all the time adamantly sticking to his own decision, despite being corrected by the lady second mate of the ship.

Another major factor that has been overlooked appears to be the fact that the captain had an experience of sailing in the northern seas ; which incidentally is very rough and turbulent. With such an experience he perhaps may have likened the ships situation to that of the ships in the northern seas and considered his ship as being un-sinkable; which may have further complicated his decision-making and contributed towards the sinking of the El Paso..

[johnengland]

Thank you for the narration, excellent

[joeypinterrockandroll]

i'm glad i watched this before buying her book. most of what she said is wrong.

[nicolewrytr]

It's a great book. Powerful & devasting.

[sterlingnorthum]

Well it looks like I have another book I need to buy. 😊 Thank you for the informed presentation.

[rickdunn]

As a professional deep sea mariner, this story about the Plimsoll line being moved without accountability...or oversight, does not ring true. Only the USCG has authority to change a "Plimsoll Mark", not ABS. This is traceable. The USCG, although a great org. is flawed. Also this change of the location of the Mark would have been done for all of the sister ships-records of the approval exist. The ship was operating under the ISM Code, which among other things, requires that the Company assess all known risks to its ships-this failed. Another ISM item is the DPA (Designated Person Ashore) was not immediately available-the Capt. should have been give the DPA's person/company cell phone number. Although, it's important to understand the Capt. Called the DPA way too late (days late) for the DPA to do anything. Where were the Operations Managers of TOTE? Why were they not talking to the Capt. about the storm days and hours before? Lots of questions are unanswered and NTSB did not find the answers. NTSB does not determine Root Cause-it's only charged with determining "Probably Cause" a much less mature level of causation.

[bobbiingram]

Into The Raging Sea is a fantastic book!

[kennhi]

When she mentioned Trump I got extremely angry. Trump wasn't POTUS in 2015 and had nothing to do with the racial tension on that ship. I actually worked on this ship when it was the Puerto Rico at Bount Island for North Florida Shipyards. Plus I'm black and again Trump has nothing to do with anything that happened with the crew or ship. I was going to buy the book until she said that

[seashepherds]

Very Much enjoyed this presentation and have bought the book. I look forward to visiting the Chatham Marconi Maritime Centre when next on Cape Cod! Time and Money well spent!

[supbruh]

bro there's an ai-generated thumbnail 💀

[bf]

It is unbelievable how you injected your politics into other people’s lived experience. Zero shame in it as well

[jeromevezie]

This presentation is very interesting. There is another book which is quite interesting, "leadership is language", especially several chapters, which assess this situation from the team management and captain's soft skills perspective (for instance, the captain doesn't seem to ask simple questions to his team, to initiate a dialogue, what makes you say that?. Another lens which brings further insight. It would be interesting to know if captains are trained around soft skills (listening, the art of questionning, emotions, ...) whereas it turns out to be key.
Even if we can assume that this captain isn't the root cause of this accident, only one of the causes. The organization (the company, the maritime system, upper-management pressure, HR incentives and goals, ...) is stronger than the individual, "A Bad System Will Beat a Good Person Every Time" (Edwards Demming), thus this captain might be sort of prisonner of this system, meaning whoever in his shoes, whatever the background and skills, might be doomed to failure.
We are under the impression that this captain was left with no choice but to manage this by himself and follow the initial route at any rate to be succesful to some extent, whatever the risks. Anyone can feel being, once in his life, in a sort of steel trap, feeling caught between a rock and a hard place and do crazy things with the benefit of hindsight, it is human. That's why the human factor is key. Maybe he was told, "Next time you change course, you get the blessing of the upper-management first", interpreting this as a threat of being fired... we don't know.

[maegenyoungs]

I seen messages saying this lady is amazing.. watch this video, and don’t skip, be patient, it will suck you in..