I. “The Clock Is Ticking”

In the darkness before dawn on Thursday, October 1, 2015, an American merchant captain named Michael Davidson sailed a 790-foot U.S.-flagged cargo ship, El Faro, into the eye wall of a Category 3 hurricane on the exposed windward side of the Bahama Islands. El Faro means “the lighthouse” in Spanish. The hurricane, named Joaquin, was one of the heaviest ever to hit the Bahamas. It overwhelmed and sank the ship. Davidson and the 32 others aboard drowned. They had been headed from Jacksonville, Florida, on a weekly run to San Juan, Puerto Rico, carrying 391 containers and 294 trailers and cars. The ship was 430 miles southeast of Miami in deep water when it went down. Davidson was 53 and known as a stickler for safety. He came from Windham, Maine, and left behind a wife and two college-age daughters. Neither his remains nor those of his shipmates were ever recovered. Disasters at sea do not get the public attention that aviation accidents do, in part because the sea swallows the evidence. It has been reported that a major merchant ship goes down somewhere in the world every two or three days; most are ships sailing under flags of convenience, with underpaid crews and poor safety records. The El Faro tragedy attracted immediate attention for several reasons. El Faro was a U.S.-flagged ship with a respected captain—and it should have been able to avoid the hurricane. Why didn’t it? Add to that mystery this simple fact: the sinking of El Faro was the worst U.S. maritime disaster in three decades.

To the outside world, the first hint of trouble came with a phone call that Captain Davidson made from El Faro’s navigation bridge to the owners, a shipping company called TOTE, and specifically to the safety-and-operations manager, a former captain named John Lawrence, who was listed on the ship as the official point of contact, or “designated person ashore.” The time was 6:59 A.M., just after dawn. Lawrence was dressing for work at his home in Jacksonville, and he just missed answering. When he got to his cell phone he saw that the call had come in from a satellite number and that a voice mail had been left. He listened to the message, which sounded calm, even nonchalant. It was 33 seconds long:

Captain Lawrence? Captain Davidson. Thursday morning, 0700. We have a navigational incident. I’ll keep it short. A scuttle popped open on two-deck and we were having some free communication of water go down the three-hold. Have a pretty good list. I want to just touch—contact you verbally here. Everybody’s safe, but I want to talk to you.

There was no background noise. To Lawrence, this did not sound like a message of distress. He began to dial the satellite number to return the call.

Meanwhile, Davidson, having failed to get through, dialed TOTE’s emergency call center, a company that provides after-hours services primarily to physicians. At 7:01, the operator answered. Sounding less casual than he had in his message to Lawrence, Davidson said, “This is a marine emergency. Yes, this is a marine emergency.”

The operator said, “O.K., sir.”

“Are you connecting me through to a Q.I.?” “Q.I.” stands for “qualified individual.” He used the term to mean a designated person ashore.

The operator answered, “That’s what I’m getting ready to do. We’re seeing who is on call, and I’m going to get you right to them. Give me one second, sir. I’m going to put you on a quick hold. So one moment, please.” She paused. “O.K., sir. I just need your name, please.”

“Yes, ma’am. My name is Michael Davidson. Michael C. Davidson.”

She paused. “Your rank?”

“Ship’s master.”

“O.K. Thank you.” She paused. “Ship’s name?”

“El Faro.”

“Spell that. E-l . . .”

Davidson said, “Oh, man! The clock is ticking! Can I please speak to a Q.I.?” His voice crackled with tension. “El Faro. Echo Lima Space Foxtrot Alpha Romeo Oscar. El Faro!”

“O.K., in case I lose you, what is your phone number, please?”

He gave her two numbers. She said, “Got it, sir. Again, I’m going to get you reached right now. One moment, please.”

While he waited, Davidson used a handheld radio to call the ship’s chief mate, who was on a lower deck checking on a cargo hold that was flooding massively. Another operator at the call center came on the line. She said, “Just really briefly, what is the problem you’re having?” Her request appears to have been a procedural requirement at the call center. Davidson had already been waiting for five minutes and at one point had impatiently muttered, “Oh, God!” Now he answered in a resigned monotone. “I have a marine emergency and I would like to speak to a Q.I. We had a hull breach—a scuttle blew open during a storm. We have water down in three-hold with a heavy list. We’ve lost the main propulsion unit. The engineers cannot get it going. Can I speak to a Q.I., please?”

The operator said, “Yes, thank you so much.” She paused. “One moment . . .”

She patched him through to Lawrence. On the phone at last with his peer, Davidson sounded calm again. He said, “Yeah, I’m real good. We have, uh, secured the source of water coming into the vessel. A scuttle was blown open by the water perhaps, no one knows, can’t tell. It’s since been closed. However, three-hold’s got a considerable amount of water in it. We have a very—very healthy port list. The engineers cannot get lube-oil pressure on the plant, therefore we’ve got no main engine. And let me give you a latitude and longitude. I just wanted to give you a heads-up before I push that—push that button.”

Lawrence was in his kitchen, scribbling notes. He was surprised at the mention of the button—an electronic distress signal—because the ship’s predicament, though concerning, did not sound so dire initially.

Lawrence knew about a hurricane brewing somewhere off the Bahamas, but it did not cross his mind that Davidson might have sailed right into it. Davidson said, “The swell is out of the northeast. A solid 10 to 12 feet. Spray. High winds. Very poor visibility. That’s the best I can give you right now.”

He did not know the wind speeds because the ship’s anemometer was in disrepair and had been for weeks; it is now believed that the winds were sustained at 115 m.p.h., with higher gusts. As for the waves, Davidson appears to have underreported them, perhaps as a matter of professional style. El Faro was in fact struggling to endure steep breaking waves 30 to 40 feet high, and was occasionally encountering waves still higher. These monsters were smashing over the ship, knocking containers overboard, and boiling across a lower second deck that by design was watertight below but open to the sea. That second deck was the location of the scuttle that had been opened. Three-hold was a cavernous two-deck space below it, just aft of midship.

Lawrence asked for a measure of the list. Davidson said, “Betcha it’s all of 15—15 degrees.” Fifteen degrees is steep. Lawrence said he would inform the Coast Guard. Davidson said, “Yup, what—what I wanted to do. I wanna push that button.”

Lawrence thought he should get out of the way by getting off the phone. He said, “You do your thing, captain.”

Davidson said, “O.K. I just wanted to give you that courtesy so you wouldn’t be blindsided by it, and have the opportunity. Everybody’s safe right now. We’re in survival mode now.”

II. Beyond Reach

Those were the last words heard from El Faro. One minute after the phone call ended, the ship sent out a distress alert by satellite. Thirty seconds later, El Faro sent the Coast Guard a security alert message, a signal that contained the ship’s coordinates as well as drift speed and direction. The ship also sent a similar message to TOTE, which arrived by e-mail on Lawrence’s phone.

At 7:38 A.M., a Coast Guard petty officer in Miami rang Lawrence in his Jacksonville kitchen. After some preliminaries he said, “O.K. Do you have contact or direct communication with the vessel?” Lawrence said, “I did. They called me. I was just actually trying to call them back, and I couldn’t. The satellite is dropping the call. I can give you the phone number.” He gave him the number, though it did not matter. It is now known that, sometime in the 39 minutes since Davidson left his message, El Faro had already sunk, and its crew was in the water beyond reach of rescue, at the center of an impenetrable storm.

By midmorning, people began to fear the worst. Having checked the latest dispatches from the National Hurricane Center, the Miami rescue-coordination center went into full-blown emergency action. It asked that Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters divert from their meteorological mission and look for the ship. Conditions in flight were so rough that the pilots were unable to descend below 10,000 feet.

By the third day, the storm had reversed course, as meteorologists had anticipated it eventually would, and was moving to the northeast, clobbering islands as it went but leaving room in its wake for a massive search to begin. Seven military aircraft covered 30,581 square miles of ocean that day and found two debris fields, including three life rings, one of which bore the stenciled name El Faro. On the fourth and fifth days, searchers found two empty life rafts and El Faro’s starboard lifeboat, which was floating vertically with only its bow above the surface. When it was recovered, it was found to have been mortally damaged, crushed on both the left and right sides. After an orange immersion suit was spotted in the water, a Coast Guard helicopter lowered a rescue swimmer down to investigate. The swimmer found human remains inside, in such an advanced state of decomposition that he couldn’t identify the gender. Before the body could be recovered, the helicopter was called off to investigate a report of a second immersion suit with a possible survivor. The crew was unable to find it, and when they returned for the corpse they could not relocate it, because a marker beacon they had left behind had failed.

On the morning of the fifth day, the Coast Guard announced officially what was already known: it was likely that El Faro had sunk. The search for survivors continued for another two days—ultimately covering more than 180,000 square miles—and turned up a couple of oil slicks, three empty immersion suits, three more life rings, and a 20-mile stretch of floating dolls from a container that had burst open.

Even before the search for survivors ended, two separate but collaborative investigations got under way, one by the Coast Guard and the other by the National Transportation Safety Board (N.T.S.B.), a small federal agency with no regulatory powers but authority that stems from its independence and prowess.

How could a catastrophe like this have happened? El Faro was 41 years old when it died—well past normal retirement age—but it was not a decrepit rust bucket. In port it was regularly visited by the American Bureau of Shipping, a private “classification society” whose services were engaged and paid for by the ship’s owners, and to which the Coast Guard, for want of manpower and expertise, has partially delegated inspection authority. The ship’s paperwork was in order. Admittedly, El Faro had sailed into an intense hurricane that no ship, no matter how seaworthy, should have tangled with—a move that would have to be explained.

It was unlikely that there would be a single cause or culprit, because there rarely is. Most significant aviation and shipping disasters, as well as industrial catastrophes, are eventually determined to be “system accidents”—the result of a cascade of small errors, failures, and coincidences. Absent any one of them, and the disaster would not have occurred—a truth that is not knowable in real time, only in retrospect. Much could be discovered through the Coast Guard’s public hearings and analysis of the reams of documentation that pertain to any U.S.-flagged ship. It was also essential to go out and find the wreck, survey it, and bring up the ship’s digital voyage data recorder. That task was arduous, but the ship was found resting upright on a sandy plain 15,400 feet beneath the surface, and the recorder—a circuit board barely 2.5 inches long—was eventually retrieved. It contained the final 26 hours of conversations among nine doomed people on the bridge. The audio quality was poor, but a technical team was able to extract most of the spoken words and produce a 496-page transcript, by far the longest in the N.T.S.B.’s history. The transcript is a remarkable document—an unadorned record of nothing more than the sounds on the bridge. The people involved are identified in the transcript only by their shipboard ranks, but the names of the officers are part of the public record, and in the time since the tragedy other names have been revealed. It is now possible to know with reasonable certainty what occurred.

III. A Safety-First Man

The story begins with the captain, Michael Davidson. He grew up near the waterfront in Portland, Maine, and at age 16 got his first maritime job, on a local harbor ferry. He graduated from the Maine Maritime Academy, a state college overlooking the port of Castine, on Penobscot Bay, in 1988. He then began sailing on oil tankers between Alaska and West Coast ports. He stuck with the Alaskan route for the next 15 years, rising from third mate to the rank of chief mate. The Gulf of Alaska is notoriously rough, and Davidson sailed through countless storms, some of hurricane strength. He was by no means a cowboy. He was a by-the-book mariner with a reputation for being unusually competent and organized. By training and temperament he was a safety-first man. Eventually he switched to dry-cargo ships on the East Coast, and went to work for one of the big American shipping companies, Crowley Maritime.

He was a man at peace with himself. But then, in 2012, an incident rocked his career. Crowley Maritime asked him to take his ship down the Chesapeake from one port to another, and Davidson refused because a surveyor had found that the steering gear was unreliable and in need of immediate repair. For the sake of the ship, Davidson instead engaged two tugs to tow it to the destination. This cost money. It is said among merchant mariners that, yes, a captain has the authority to refuse orders he deems to be unsafe—but probably only once. Davidson went off on vacation, and when he returned was informed by Crowley that he no longer had a job. He signed on with TOTE as a lowly third mate, and had to work his way to the top again. Eventually he was given the San Juan run and El Faro to command. Had Davidson been affected by the punishment he had received? Safety was still first for him, but he may no longer have been the secure man he once was.

Another issue lurked in the background. El Faro and its sister ship, El Yunque, were soon to be sent to Alaska and replaced on the San Juan run by two new, state-of-the-art vessels. Earlier in the year, Davidson had sought a position as captain of the first of them but had come up short.

Having earned the highest marks on his latest annual performance review, he was holding out hope that he might yet command the second new ship. He was carefully courteous to the TOTE office personnel, including John Lawrence, whom he called before he pushed the distress button as he was about to drown.

In Jacksonville, the loading for the final run started at one P.M. on Monday, September 28, and continued on Tuesday until shortly after sundown. The weather was balmy, with light winds and mostly overcast skies. Far out in the Atlantic, a tropical depression had been defying forecasts for several days, intensifying rather than simmering down and stubbornly progressing toward the Bahamas on an unusual southwesterly heading rather than turning around and hooking harmlessly back to the northeast, as the meteorological models kept expecting it to do. A day before El Faro’s departure, the tropical depression had become a tropical storm named Joaquin.

Davidson had been monitoring the forecasts and knew of the difficulty the forecasters were having. He had two routes available to him. The first was a straight shot that would take him past the Bahamas through the open ocean for two and a half days and 1,265 miles on an unwavering southeast heading of 130 degrees, directly to San Juan. That was the normal way to go. The question was the hurricane. The second route ran south through the Florida Straits, then east along Cuba through a sinewy narrows called the Old Bahama Channel. This route would have placed a string of wave-breaking islands between the ship and the storm. The problem was that it added 184 miles and more than six hours to the trip. The schedule would be thrown out of whack.

Davidson opted for the straight shot. El Faro was a fast ship—superficially rusty but solid and powerful, the equivalent of a 1970s muscle car—and the timing of the forecast indicated that he could slip past the Bahamas before Joaquin moved in.

El Faro cast off at 8:07 on Tuesday evening. Six hours later Joaquin became a Category 1 hurricane, with sustained winds greater than 74 miles per hour. The eye lay 245 miles east-northeast of San Salvador, the outermost island of the Bahamian chain, and was slowly moving in that direction. Think of the storm as the right-hand stroke of a V, heading toward the point at the bottom. El Faro, the left-hand stroke of the V, was 550 miles to the northwest and also heading toward the point—though Davidson believed they would pass the bottom point well before the storm arrived.

IV. “A Good Little Plan”

That was the situation at 5:57 A.M. on Wednesday, September 30, the morning after departure, when the voice recorder first opens on the bridge. The chief mate, Steven Schultz, 54, was standing watch. Davidson was conferring with him at the chart table. An unlicensed seaman, Frank Hamm III, 49, was at the helm, monitoring the autopilot. He was the hand who always served with Schultz when Schultz was on watch. The ship was rolling in swells approaching from the left. Schultz said, “Got the swell,” and Davidson answered, “Oh yeah. Probably going to get worse.” They were discussing satellite images that showed Joaquin solidifying and growing. Davidson said, “Look. Remember how we saw this one the other day festering, and we talked about these are the worst?”

“Hard to predict.”

“Look at the total transformation.”

Schultz mentioned the possibility of heading farther out to sea, passing over the north side of Joaquin, and Davidson pointed out that the storm was expected to reverse course and move north. “That takes your option out to top it.”

Schultz suggested an alternative—widening slightly to the right to move south of the direct track line to San Juan, giving the storm a bit more space. He even mentioned the Old Bahama Channel. But then he said, “I would wait. Get more information.”

For the initial 24 hours out of Jacksonville, El Faro had television reception and therefore access to the Weather Channel. Broadcasters were closely covering Joaquin, but with emphasis on its potential landfall in three or four days on the Atlantic seaboard. For marine weather, the ship’s crew had multiple options but used primarily two. The first was an Inmarsat C satellite receiver that automatically fed National Hurricane Center reports to a printer on the bridge nearly as soon as they were disseminated. These so-called sat-C reports arrived in text form and required the plotting of Joaquin’s forecasted positions on a chart, whether paper or electronic. In the case of this storm, the forecasted positions were known to be unreliable, not because of human incompetence but because the Hurricane Center’s mathematical predictive tools were having an unusually difficult time getting a handle on Joaquin. The resulting uncertainty was expressed emphatically in the forecasts, and Davidson was aware of it.

The second source for weather information was even more problematic. It was a subscription service called the Bon Voyage System (B.V.S.) that processed global weather data to produce its own forecast, primarily in the form of colorful weather maps which could be animated and over which a ship’s course could be laid. By the time the data was processed, it was up to six hours old, which in the context of Joaquin was obsolete. StormGeo, the proprietor of B.V.S., said during the N.T.S.B. investigation that “weather routing bulletins were sent to the ship, but not routing guidance, which was not ordered as part of the service contract.” (The Coast Guard report also noted that “El Faro crew did not take advantage of B.V.S.’s tropical update feature,” which would have provided hourly updates.) The B.V.S. map included a time stamp that showed when the processing had been completed, but gave no indication of the age of the raw data on which the forecast was based. Davidson knew that all the forecasts were uncertain, and that they sometimes disagreed. But how aware was he that when he looked at the B.V.S. maps he was looking into the past?

He went down to his stateroom after his conversation with Schultz, and when he returned to the bridge he said, “All right, I just sent up the latest weather. Let us clear everything off the chart table with the exception of the charts.” Schultz opened the B.V.S. program. As it happened, according to the N.T.S.B. report, because of a software glitch, the map that appeared was the very same map that had come in with the previous download, six hours earlier. The raw data on which it was based was at least 12 hours old.

Davidson and Schultz decided that the storm would be a little too close for comfort when the time came to cross its bow. Working with a G.P.S.-based plotter, they made a slight right turn with a new heading of 140 degrees, creating a gentle dogleg that would pass 10 miles outside San Salvador Island and put them 50 miles from the hurricane’s eye. The winds were forecast to be only 40 knots. Davidson said, “I think that’s a good little plan, chief mate. At least I think we got a little distance from the center.”

It was 6:40 in the morning, and the sun was coming up. Davidson yawned. He said, “Oh, look at that red sky over there. Red in the morning, sailors take warning. That is bright.”

Davidson instructed Schultz to make sure that the crew checked the security and lashings on the cargo, and left the bridge for a while. A fresh helmsman and the third mate showed up to relieve Hamm and Schultz and stand the next four-hour watch. The third mate was Jeremie Riehm. He was 46 but looked younger. Schultz briefed him on the weather and the diversion; he explained that the options were limited but that if worse came to worst they could turn behind the outer islands and escape through one of several deepwater gaps to reach the Old Bahama Channel. After Schultz left the bridge, Riehm continued to study the weather. He said to the helmsman, “We’re gonna get slammed tonight.”

The view from the bridge was of an endless ocean with no land in sight. Stacked high with containers, the massive ship rolled with a slow rhythm through swells coming in from the east. The sky was mostly clear. The wind was warm and slowly increasing. Davidson returned to the bridge. He engaged in some lighthearted banter, but his mind was on the storm. He said, “I mean, when we went through Erika this last . . . that’s the first real storm I’ve been on with this ship. Ship’s solid.”

Riehm said, “The ship is solid. It’s just all the associated bits and pieces. The hull itself is fine. The plant no problem. It’s all the shit that shakes and breaks loose.”

Davidson said, “Just gotta keep the speed up so we get goin’ down. And who knows? Maybe this low will just stall. Stall a little bit. Just a little bit. Just enough for us to duck underneath.”

But the opposite happened. At 10:35 A.M. a sat-C report arrived, and Riehm took it to the chart table to plot positions. The helmsman said, “It’s moving away fast.” Riehm didn’t understand that he was joking. He answered, “Uh, no. It’s not moving away, not yet. I’ll show you that whole time-step forecast if you want. I mean, we’re going that way, and it’s going to go that way, and we’re on a collision course with it, nearly—nearly.” In other words, that earlier turn was not going to provide the expected margin. It is not known what, if anything, Riehm did with the information.

V. Category 3

Shortly before noon, the second mate, Danielle Randolph, arrived with a relief helmsman to stand the next watch. The helmsman was Larry Davis, 63. Randolph was from Rockland, Maine, and like Davidson and three others aboard was a graduate of the Maine Maritime Academy. She was 34. Riehm briefed her on the navigation plan. Speaking of the captain, she said, “He’s telling everyone down there, ‘Ohhh, it’s not a bad storm. It’s not so bad. It’s not even that windy out. Seen worse.’ ”

Now alone on the bridge with Davis, Randolph returned to the subject of Davidson. She mimicked him. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing!” She backed off the mockery and said, “If it’s nothing, then why the hell are we going on a different track line? Think he’s just trying to play it down because he realizes we shouldn’t have come this way. Saving face.”

Davis said, “We’re getting sea swells now.”

The swells slowed the ship. Davidson was in his stateroom. He had paperwork to do—a mandatory noon report to the TOTE office. He gave an E.T.A. for San Juan of eight A.M. on Friday, 44 hours ahead. Then he came to the bridge and said, “Damn, we’re getting killed with this speed.”

Randolph answered him a little rebelliously: “Oh, yeah, I think now it’s not a matter of speed. It’s ‘When we get there, we get there,’ as long as we arrive in one piece.”

Davidson was not so willing to sacrifice the schedule. He said, “Yeah, well, we’re only doing 18.9 right now. I mean, we’ll pick up a little bit. Gotta get through this storm.”

Taking Randolph’s lead, Davis said, “Yeah, through it.” A gulf seemed to be opening between Davidson and the crew on the bridge. He may not have noticed it.

After he left, a man named Jeffrey Mathias showed up on the bridge. Mathias, 42, was one of El Faro’s chief engineers, but on this trip was serving as a supernumerary to oversee five Polish shipyard workers who had been aboard for weeks and were modifying the ship for Alaska service. When Randolph saw him, she said “Hi!” with a rising inflection. He said, “Look at you! All freshened up, huh?” She offered him a gourmet coffee, from freshly ground beans, and he said “Wow!” She laughed. She said, “We do not joke around up here when it comes to coffee!”

“I guess not. Damn.”

“Did you wanna see the storm? Did you wanna see the pretty pictures with the pretty, pretty colors?”

Meanwhile, Davidson was back in his stateroom writing another e-mail to the home office. It was addressed to John Lawrence, the designated person ashore, and cc’d to several other managers. The first part of the e-mail was advisory in nature: it reported the deviation under way, described the plan for moving south of the hurricane, and delivered a revised E.T.A. for San Juan. This was exactly what TOTE expected. But then the e-mail went further. Concerned about Joaquin’s forecasted position over the coming weekend, Davidson wrote:

Question I would like to transit the Old Bahama Channel on our return northbound leg to Jacksonville, Florida. This route adds an additional 160 nm to the route for a total of 1,261 nm. We will need to make around 21 knots for our scheduled 10/05 10:45 arrival time at Jacksonville pilot station. This precaution will take the uncertainty out of Joaquin’s forecasted track, and as you can see she really develops into a formidable weather pattern on 10/03 to 05 2015. I’m confident that Joaquin will track in a northerly direction once reaching the Gulf Stream current. I will await your reply before transiting Old Bahama Channel on our return leg to Jacksonville, Florida. Should you have any questions or concerns kindly contact this vessel. Best regards.

This e-mail emerged during the investigation after the sinking. At the time, TOTE was busy blaming Davidson by insisting that all routing and weather decisions were his alone to make, but here Davidson appeared to be asking permission for the Old Bahama Channel run. To make matters worse, it was answered by one of the cc’d managers, the director of ship management, Jim Fisker-Andersen, who was in San Francisco at the time. Fisker-Andersen wrote, “Captain Mike, diversion request heads up through Old Bahama Channel understood and authorized. Thank you for the heads up. Kind regards.”

Authorized? Was that what went on at TOTE? At the very least, the use of that word indicated a superior attitude by an armchair mariner toward a captain tangling with a hurricane at sea. Worse, it raised the possibility that Davidson had taken the straight-line course for San Juan because he had been ordered to do so. TOTE officials denied this vehemently. Fisker-Andersen told investigators that he wished he had used another word. The use of this one certainly added fuel to the wrongful-death litigation that ensued. (All 33 wrongful-death cases have since been settled at significant expense to the company.) But no evidence emerged in the investigations of direct interference in navigational decisions by any managers at TOTE. Davidson’s wife, Theresa, told the N.T.S.B. that her husband would have refused unsafe orders, whatever the consequences.

When Davidson finished sending the e-mail he returned to the bridge and instructed Randolph to start keeping hourly logs of the weather. Wind direction and force, barometer. The wind would have to be estimated because of the faulty anemometer. Both Davidson and Randolph apparently believed they would be dealing with a Category 1 hurricane, and at some distance from the eye. Neither they nor the National Hurricane Center suspected that the storm would increase to a Category 3 and accelerate that very night.

The wind was increasing, the sea was covered with whitecaps, and the swells from the east were rising. Davis said, “Knew it was going to start sooner or later.”

Around four P.M., the sky started clouding over. Schultz, the chief mate, and Hamm, his helmsman, came onto the bridge to take the next watch. Randolph briefed Schultz, then went down to her cabin to write a note to her mother. It was later sent along with a batch of others via the ship’s official e-mail.

At 4:46 P.M., Randolph and Davis returned to allow Schultz and Hamm to go to dinner. The sat-C printer delivered the latest weather, and Randolph took it to the chart table and began to plot it out. This was information from the National Hurricane Center only a few minutes old, and although it continued to contain forecasting errors, it got the current location of the eye about right. She said, “So at two in the morning . . .”

Davis said, “What?”

“ . . . it should be right here.” She indicated a position just outside of San Salvador Island. “Let’s see where we will be.” She did some calculations and began to chuckle. “We’re going to be right there with it. Looks like the storm is coming right for us.” She laughed in disbelief. “Ahhh, you gotta be kidding me.”

Davis said, “We’re going to get our ass ripped.”

Randolph was a Mainer. Salt of the earth. She said, “We’re going to go right through the fucking eye.”

VI. Staying the Course

Schultz and Hamm returned from dinner. Randolph and Davis left. Davidson showed up around sundown. The sky was heavy with clouds. To Schultz he said, “I just sent you the latest weather.” It was the B.V.S. product depicting a forecast based on old data, with additional errors cranked in due to forecasting models. It was not exactly a fiction, but it was a poor tool for attempting a close pass across the bow of a hurricane. They decided to turn the ship 10 degrees to the right, widening away from the storm for a second time. The new course would take El Faro to a point in the yellow outer fringes on the B.V.S. graphic, clear of the eye and the inner pink. It would also take them to the leeward or west side of San Salvador Island, which for a while would offer some measure of protection from the hurricane’s waves. Having plotted the new course directly on the B.V.S., they made the turn at 7:03 P.M.

With its engine running at maximum speed, El Faro was riding comfortably through large swells coming in from the northeast. Davidson was pleased. For the next 45 minutes, he and Schultz calculated G.P.S. waypoints and courses, and laid out a tidy plan for the rest of the trip, including a strong left turn in the open waters beyond San Salvador Island, and a straight shot across the bow of the hurricane directly for San Juan. They were not entirely complacent. Schultz mentioned the availability of a southerly escape route through a deepwater passage by Crooked Island, and Davidson suggested the alternative of sheltering behind San Salvador if need be. But neither man made a plan for such contingencies.

Third Mate Jeremie Riehm appeared on the bridge for his eight-P.M.-to-midnight watch. He was joined by his helmsman. Schultz indicated the B.V.S. and said, “See the weather? We have the latest.” But the latest was old news. The map showed Joaquin as a Category 1 hurricane crossing their course well after their passage. It predicted an encounter with 50-knot winds.

In reality, at that very moment Joaquin was morphing into a Category 3 hurricane, about three days ahead of schedule.

Schultz gave Riehm a quick briefing. Riehm had been listening to a Weather Underground broadcast on the Weather Channel. He said, “I just hope it’s not worse than what this is saying, because that Weather Underground, it’s a lot. They’re saying it’s more like 85-, not 50-knot, wind.”

Hamm handed steering over to Riehm’s helmsman. He was not due on the bridge again until four A.M. Riehm kept sounding a caution. “But what they’re sayin’ . . . They’re saying this is much more powerful than what this is saying right now.” He meant the B.V.S. forecast. No one reacted.

Schultz and Davidson went below. For the next 20 minutes there was no conversation on the bridge. The ship was heaving and rolling moderately, and vibrating as usual with engine power. The lights had been dimmed, but all was black outside. The ship was sailing on autopilot. Riehm said, “This thing might hit us pretty hard in the morning.” From his position the helmsman said, “Oh yeah?” Riehm invited him over to look at the B.V.S. They talked about it for a while. Riehm expressed his concerns about the Weather Channel broadcast. He said, “Let’s see how this thing goes. We can’t outrun it, you know. It’s more powerful than we thought. This is supposed to hook right here. It’s supposed to make this stop. Getting any closer, it’s gonna turn to the north. What if it doesn’t?” the helmsman asked. “What if we get close? We get jammed in those islands there, and it starts comin’ at us?” Riehm responded, “That’s what I’m thinking. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being a Chicken Little. I don’t know.”

Later Riehm said, “I have a feeling like something bad is going to happen. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe it’ll just be all nice.”

At 10:54 P.M. the sat-C printer delivered the latest from the National Hurricane Center. The intensity of the storm was now officially registered. Joaquin had exploded into a Category 3 with maximum sustained winds of 115 m.p.h., and gusts to 138. Its current position was accurate to within 17 miles. It was moving south-southwest at six m.p.h. By eight in the morning, it was expected to be sustaining winds of 126, with gusts to 155.

Riehm got on the ship’s internal telephone—the house phone—and rang Davidson. The recording microphones picked up only the bridge side of the conversation, but Davidson’s responses can be surmised. Riehm wanted him to come to the bridge. He said, “Hey, Captain, sorry to wake you. . . . Naw, nothing, and, uh, the latest weather just came in, and thought you might want to take a look at it. So yeah if you have a chance . . . Just looking at the forecast and looking at our track line, which way it’s going, and, uhhh, thought you might wanna take a look at it.” Davidson seems to have asked him to explain. Riehm gave him the numbers and said, “So I assume it stays on that same—moves in that same direction for, say, the next five hours. And, so, it’s advancing toward our track line and puts us real close to it.” Davidson replied for nearly a minute, during which time Riehm said, “O.K. . . . yeah, yeah . . . O.K. . . . O.K.”

After he got off the phone Riehm plotted the storm’s predicted position and looked at the escape route, which would involve a strong right turn to the south into the passage past Crooked Island and on to the Old Bahama Channel beyond. He called Davidson back. He said, “So at 0400 we’ll be 22 miles from the center, with max 100 and gusts to 120 and strengthening.” Those speeds were in knots. He said, “So . . . the option that we do have—from what I can see—is at 0200 we could head south, and that would open it up some.” Davidson dismissed the plan with a thank-you and did not come to the bridge. Evidence suggests that he was still showing a preference for the animated B.V.S. graphics, which indicated the storm progressing more slowly.

The swell was growing; the ship was moving more heavily now. At one point Riehm said, “We don’t have any options. We got nowhere to go.”

The helmsman said, “Jesus, man, don’t tell me anymore. I don’t even wanna hear it.”

Riehm laughed. “Oh.”

Stuttering like Porky Pig, the helmsman said, “Th-th-th-th-th-these are ba-ba-ba-ba-big waaaves! Jesus—it’s a hurricane!”

VII. The Wrong Way

Just before midnight, Randolph arrived with Davis to stand watch. They were entering the partial shelter offered by San Salvador Island, about 20 miles to the east, and the ship was moving more easily now. Riehm explained the situation. As always, Randolph tried to keep things light. She said, “This is the second time we changed our route, and it just keeps coming for us.”

The ship was gently pitching up and down, not rolling side to side. The radar picked up San Salvador Island on the left and Rum Cay on the right. At 1:18 A.M., the ship took its first big roll. Davis said, “Whoa!” Randolph said, “Oh! O.K.!” Davis said, “Biggest one since I’ve been up here.” Randolph said, “We’re right between the islands. Sooo, wondering why we’re rolling.” The answer was that the hurricane was not where the B.V.S. showed it would be, and as a result the ship was emerging early from the shelter that San Salvador Island had provided.

Pitching more violently, the ship was starting to pound. Davis recommended slowing down. They were approaching the waypoint where Davidson’s route plan called for the significant turn to the left, taking the ship, as the captain believed, across the path of the hurricane in its yellow zone, a safe distance from the eye. Randolph did not want to do it. She called Davidson on the house phone and told him that the hurricane was now a Category 3. He knew that already. She proposed the escape route to the south and a smooth sail on to San Juan. He rejected her suggestion. Despite the uncertainties in the forecast, he was so convinced of his strategy that he was able to sleep. He had not yet even downloaded the latest B.V.S. package, e-mailed to his computer at 11 P.M. the previous night. He finally downloaded the package at 4:45 in the morning, when the data it was based on was 11 hours old.

When Randolph got off the phone with him, she said to Davis, “He said to run it.” She meant the course as planned. She said, “Hold on to your ass!,” and laughed.

El Faro entered a squall. Lightning flickered outside. Davis saw a series of mysterious bright flashes up at the bow—probably electrical connections shorting out in spray. Over the next hour, the conditions deteriorated, and the ship began to labor, unable to exceed about 16 knots. By now, the stresses on the ship were enormous. Objects exposed to the wind were banging, breaking, and flying away. On Deck 2, one deck below the main deck where the containers were stacked, water began washing in through openings on the sides, swirling around the wheels of the cargo trailers secured there and washing out just as fast. This was not uncommon for El Faro, and no reason for concern because the deck itself was designed to be watertight and sealed off from the engine room and the cargo holds below.

The ship kept smashing ahead. At 1:55 Randolph said, “Wooo! That was a good [wave]. Definitely lost some speed.” Davis said, “Damn sure don’t want to lose the plant.” He meant the ship’s engine. “Do a lot of things, but you don’t wanna do that.”

The captain wanted full speed in order to cross the storm a good distance from the eye. In the Northern Hemisphere, the circulation around hurricanes runs counterclockwise. The winds right now were northerly and coming at the ship from the left side. If the B.V.S. map was correct, the eye lay ahead and well to the left. According to that model, the winds would become northwesterly (directly astern) as El Faropassed abeam the eye, and would shift to southwesterly and then southerly (on the right side) as the ship steamed into improving weather beyond it. But this never happened—meaning that the ship was heading toward the storm, not away from it.

Up on the bridge at 2:42, Randolph had to sit to keep from falling down. She said, “Weeee! Look at that spray!” Then the first of the really big waves reared just ahead. Randolph said, “Oh, shit! Oh, my God! Ahhh!” She strained audibly as the wave hit.

Solid water—green water—was coming over the bow. At 2:54, El Farotook such a roll that Randolph said, “She’s righting herself,” as the ship came back. The ship kept getting knocked off heading. A steering alarm would sound, and the autopilot would slowly regain control. The helmsman said, “Just hold on, baby. We ain’t got but an hour to go.” He meant to the end of their watch.

At 3:20 a wave clobbered the stern. Randolph said, “She just got popped in the ass.” The steering alarm sounded. Randolph spoke to it. “Yes, yes, I know. We’re trying.” The ship veered briefly out of control. The helmsman said, “Hear that wind out there?”

Randolph said, “Yeah.”

He said, “We’re getting into it now.”

She said, “Hello, Joaquin.”

VIII. Rule of Thumb

Joaquin was wild. It was finding its way inside, whipping through the bridge. At 3:45, Chief Mate Schultz arrived for the next watch. He said, “So you can’t see a thing?” Davis answered, “Yeah. If anybody’s out there, they gotta be a damn fool.” The ship was drifting south of the track line. Schultz ordered a heading correction to the left. “It’s hard to tell which way the wind’s blowing, huh? We’re heeling to starboard. Must be blowin’ port to starboard.” Hamm showed up for his turn at the helm. Randolph and Davis went below. Schultz said, “Don’t like this.” A huge wave reared up. Hamm said, “Hold on!” The ship slewed when it was hit, and the steering alarm sounded. Schultz got a report that a trailer on the second deck was leaning, and that some of the cords feeding the refrigerated units had been cut. The waves were coming about every 13 seconds, and the autopilot was having a hard time keeping up. The steering alarm sounded frequently. Hamm said, “How much longer of this?,” and Schultz answered, “Hours.”

“What’s the gusts out there?”

“I don’t have any idea. We don’t have any instrument that can measure it.”

“Captain ain’t been up yet?”

“Haven’t seen him. The second mate said she called him.”

Not long afterward, Davidson entered the bridge. He said, “There’s nothing bad about this ride. . . . I was sleepin’ like a baby.”

Schultz said, “Not me.”

Davidson said, “What? Who’s not sleeping good? Well, this is every day in Alaska. This is what it’s like.”

Hamm said, “Those seas are for real.”

Schultz said, “That’s what I said when I walked up here. I said this is every day in Alaska.”

Speaking of the wind, Schultz said, “Can’t tell the direction. Our forecast had it coming around to starboard.”

“It will,” Davidson said. “Eventually.” He left to get his glasses. When he returned he said, “It’s probably better off we can’t see anything, chief mate.” He lingered for a while watching the storm, which continued to intensify.

Referring to the barometric pressure, Schultz said, “We’re at 970 now.”

“Now?”

“Nine fifty. Think it’s going to go down before it goes up.”

Davidson said, “That’s the eye.”

“Right.”

“We won’t be going through the eye.”

So that was that. But here’s a rule of thumb for the Northern Hemisphere: whether you are traveling by ship, airplane, car, or horse, if you have a wind from the left you are moving toward lower atmospheric pressure—and that means moving toward worsening weather.

Davidson left the bridge to check on the galley. Immediately afterward the sat-C printer spat out the latest missive from the National Hurricane Center. It contained a reasonably accurate report on the eye’s current position. Schultz retrieved the page but did not have time to plot the coordinates. The house phone rang. It is not clear who the caller was, but the conversation was about problems with cargo on the second deck—the one the seas were sweeping through. The ship was listing to starboard, which was mentioned as a factor. Schultz did not seem too concerned, and said he would inform the captain. No sooner had he hung up than the phone rang again. This time it was the chief engineer down in the engine room. The conversation was brief. Schultz said he would get through to the captain right away. He rang the captain in the galley. “Captain—chief mate. The chief engineer just called. . . . Something about the list and oil levels.”

The time was 4:41 A.M. The hurricane was raging. Davidson returned in less than a minute. Schultz was trying to measure the list by looking at the ship’s inclinometer. He said, “Can’t even see the bubble.” Davidson got on the phone to the engine room. After he got off he said, “Gonna steer right up into it. Wants to take the list off. So let’s put it in hand steering.” He intended to feel his way upwind until the aerodynamic pressures were sufficiently reduced that the ship would come closer to level. Beyond the windows all was blackness and driving spray. He did not know the wind’s direction except that it was coming from the left.

Hamm started a slow turn into the wind. Davidson had been on the phone again with the engine room. When he got off, he said, “Just the list. The sumps are actin’ up. To be expected.” Schultz said, “Yeah, the oil sumps, I understand.” The sumps had pumps that supplied lubrication to the main engine, the plant.

They had turned 35 degrees to the left. Hamm was now doggedly steering to the northeast through enormous unseen seas. The wind was still on the left. Schultz said, “Hangin’ in there?” And, “Still on course. You’re doin’ great.”

The sea conditions were by now atrocious. They were no longer normal for Alaska. Schultz apparently volunteered to open a new B.V.S. package. Davidson said, “By all means, take a peek, bring up the weather again. You said the barometer’s coming back up?” Schultz said, “Yes,” and then corrected himself. “Six-zero, it’s still 9--6-0.” Again this was simple: so long as they had winds from the left, the barometer would not rise. Schultz may or may not have tried to open the B.V.S. package—the record is unclear. It was too late for such details, anyway. Though the officers did not know it, they were about to enter the eye wall of the hurricane, where the storm would be at its worst.

The ship was pointed almost directly into the wind, but Davidson had no way of knowing it. On a clean upwind heading any list caused by the winds should have come to an end; the list, however, continued and, if anything, was steeper than before, suggesting that something besides wind was causing it—such as flooding.

Mathias was now on the bridge. He had been checking conditions on the second deck. He said, “Cargo’s a mess.”

Davidson said, “I don’t even want to think about it.” Hamm was having a hard time keeping his place at the helm. Davidson said, “Stand up. Hold on to that handle. Just relax, everything’s gonna be just fine. Good to go, buddy. You’re good to go.”

“Yeah, O.K.”

Davidson said, “It sounds so much worse up here. When you go down below, it’s just a lullaby.” The recording was difficult to make out, but Schultz then appears to have reported the list at 18 degrees. Think of the angle of a wheelchair ramp and then multiply times four.

IX. Flooding in Three-Hold

It is unlikely that Davidson ever fully understood that he had sailed into the eye wall of Joaquin, but he must have realized by now that he had come much too close. As is usually the case, the catastrophe was unfolding because of a combination of factors that had aligned, which included: Davidson’s caution with the home office; his decision to take a straight-line course; the subtle pressures to stick to the schedule; the systematic failure of the forecasts; the persuasiveness of the B.V.S. graphics; the lack of a functioning anemometer; the failure by some to challenge Davidson’s thinking more vigorously; the initial attribution of the ship’s list entirely to the winds; and finally a certain mental inertia that had overcome all of them. This is the stuff of tragedy that can never be completely explained.

At 5:43 A.M., the seriousness of their predicament suddenly became clear. Up on the bridge the house phone rang. Davidson answered. “Bridge—captain.” He listened for 15 seconds. He said, “We got a prrrroooblem . . .” He hung up and turned to Schultz. “Watch your step. Go down to three-hold. Go down to three-hold and start the pumping right now. Water.”

Three-hold was a vast space below the second deck, just forward of the engine room. It was loaded with cars. The deck above it was awash in water—designed to be. The gaps in the hull that let water into the second deck just as easily let it out. The problem was a series of scuttles—heavy watertight hatches—that allowed access from the second deck to the cargo holds below. The crew had secured them the day before, in preparation for the storm. But if one had been overlooked or had failed, the flooding would be severe.

The house phone rang. Davidson answered. It was an engineer calling in with a report. The bilge pump was not keeping up—water was continuing to rise. The source of the water was unknown.

El Faro had a closed system of two interconnected ballast tanks—one on the left, one on the right—that were used to balance the ship during cargo-loading operations by means of water transfers. Davidson ordered the engine room to start transferring water from the starboard tank to the port tank in order to lessen the list, thereby distributing the flood waters more evenly.

Five minutes later the chief engineer rang with the news that the source did indeed appear to be an open scuttle on the starboard side. Access would be difficult unless the flood waters could be lowered. Davidson said, “O.K., what I’m going to do, I’m going to turn the ship and get the wind on the starboard side, get everything on the starboard side, give us a port list, and see if we’ll have a better look at it.” It was an audacious plan. In a badly wounded ship, he was going to use the hurricane itself as a tool for damage control. He said to Hamm, “Put your rudder left 20.” Hamm said, “Left 20.” El Faro began to turn. The winds had further intensified. The seas were mountainous.

The hurricane shoved El Faro into a port-side list. Water was now pouring out of the open scuttle. When it stopped, members of the crew would get it closed. Randolph showed up on the bridge. Davidson saw her and said “Hi!” with a rising inflection. He was obviously pleased to see her there. She must have been the best-liked person on the ship.

Before long, Davidson got word that the scuttle had been secured. He asked Randolph to tell the engine room. She got on the house phone and said, “Yeah, the scuttle has been shut.” She got tongue-tied. She said, “The shuttle has been scut.” She chuckled. But the ship continued to list badly—now to the left. Water must still be coming in from somewhere.

Then suddenly at 6:13 A.M. the ever present tremors of the ship’s propulsion stopped. Davidson said, “I think we just lost the plant.” Three minutes later, the house phone rang. It was the chief engineer. The problem was with lubrication-oil pressure at this angle of list. He said they were trying to bring the engine back online. Meanwhile, the ship had plenty of standby power for running the pumps and electrics. Davidson explained the situation to Randolph. A short while later, he asked her to prepare an emergency message for transmission to the Coast Guard and the company via the security alert system, but not to send it yet.

It was morning twilight, and the scene coming into sight was calamitous, with huge breaking waves, churning foam, and wind-driven rain and spray. The hull lay below the bridge, listing to the left, drifting without forward motion, and taking a pounding from the storm. There was a sound of multiple thuds in rapid succession. Davidson said, “That’s why I don’t go out there. . . . That’s a piece of handrail, right?” Randolph decided that this was the time to grind her gourmet coffee. She said, “Coffee? Cream and sugar?” She added, “Sugar is fine with the captain, right?” Hamm said, “Give me the Splenda, not the regular sugar.”

In reply to a question, Davidson said, “Should get better all the time. Right now we’re on the back side of it. O.K.?”

But they were not on the back side of the storm, and conditions were not going to improve. They were in the northern eye wall, and getting pushed to the southwest at twice the storm’s speed. Joaquin, meanwhile, was intensifying into a Category 4 hurricane.

Davidson called the engine room. The chief engineer explained that he would not be able to get the lubrication pumps going until El Farogained more of an even keel. When he got off the phone, Randolph asked, “They having trouble getting back online?”

“Yeah, because of the list.”

“Uh-oh.”

Davidson punched in the number for John Lawrence and left the voice mail. He then called the answering service and encountered the operator—“Oh, God!”—before getting patched through to Lawrence. By the time he finished the conversation with Lawrence, full daylight had come. The chief engineer called, and Randolph told him there was nothing more that could be done from the bridge about the list. Davidson instructed her to send out the electronic distress signals, and she did. Speaking of the outside world, he said in an urgent tone, “Wake everybody up! Wake ‘em up!”

Schultz had returned to the bridge. He said, “I think that water level’s rising, captain.”

“O.K., do you know where it’s coming from?”

“At first the chief said something hit the fire main. Got it ruptured hard.”

The fire main had a large-diameter pipe that led from an opening in the hull to a powerful pump at the aft bulkhead at the bottom of three-hold. The pump was protected from the cargo by steel barriers, but the pipe itself was not. It was equipped with a shutoff valve, as all through-hull fittings were, but that valve was now lying deep beneath the black waters of the flooded hold—and the cargo of cars was floating around and shifting wildly in the storm. Access to the valve was impossible.

There are problems for which there are no solutions. After 10 minutes of considering all possible improvisations, the crew collectively ran out of ideas.

X. “Everybody Get Off!”

El Faro had two lifeboats, but they were outdated—not enclosed and launched on stern rails as modern lifeboats are, but hung from davits on El Faro’s port and starboard sides, open to the sky, extremely difficult if not impossible to launch from a listing ship in hurricane-force winds, subject to shattering against the ship’s steel hull, and certain to capsize in breaking waves. El Faro also had five inflatable life rafts, four of which were packed in canisters near the lifeboats. The life rafts were easier to launch but more difficult to board, and nearly as vulnerable in the storm. The only hope was to take to the life rafts.

Davidson radioed to Schultz, who was somewhere on the ship trying to monitor the flooding. He said, “Hey, mate, chief mate. Just a heads-up. I’m gonna ring the general alarm. Get your muster while you’re down there. Muster all, mate.”

Schultz answered, “Roger.”

Davidson called the engine room and got a junior officer. He said, “All right, captain here. Just want to let you know I am going to ring the general alarm. You don’t have to abandon ship or anything just yet. All right, we’re gonna stay with it. Is the chief there? Yeah, all is fine. When he’s got a minute just let him know I’m looking to talk with him. But let everyone know I’m gonna ring the general alarm.”

When he got off the phone, Davidson said, “Yup,” as if to himself. Then he shouted loudly, “Ring it!” A high-frequency bell could be heard everywhere. Davidson said, “There you go.”

Schultz called him on the radio. Davidson said, “Go ahead, mate.”

Schultz said, “Everybody starboard side.” The starboard side was the high side, to windward.

Davidson answered, “All understood.”

Hamm was trying to climb the slanted deck of the bridge, but he was exhausted from steering, and it was too steep for him. He said, “Can’t come back over!”

Davidson said, “Hold on a sec.~Take it easy there.”

A radio call came in, possibly from Riehm. “Cap’n, you gettin’ ready to abandon ship?”

“Yeah. What I’d like to make sure everybody has their immersion suits and, uh, stand by. Get a good head count. Good head count.”

Hamm said, “Captain!”

Randolph and Davidson were apparently on the high side of the bridge.

The radio said, “Mustered, sir.”

Randolph yelled, “All right, I got containers in the water!”

Davidson said, “All right. All right, let’s go ahead and ring it. Ring the abandon ship.” The bell sounded: seven pulses followed by an eight-second ring.

Davidson said, “Bow is down. Bow is down.”

A transmission came in, someone yelling over the roar of the storm. Davidson yelled back. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get into your rafts. Throw all your rafts to the water.”

“Throw the rafts in the water. Roger.”

Davidson radioed, “Everybody! Everybody get off! Get off the ship! Stay together!”

Hamm said, “Cap! Cap!” He was having a hard time climbing the deck.

Clinging to the high side, unable to reach Hamm, Davidson kept urging him to try.

Hamm said, “You gonna leave me?”

Davidson answered firmly, “I’m not leaving you. Let’s go.”

A low rumbling began and did not let up. It was the sound of El Farogoing down. The last words heard on the bridge are Davidson’s. He is crying out to Hamm: “It’s time to come this way!”