An Unnecessary Tragedy

Thirty-three mariners, one mega-storm, blind ambition, and the sinking of the massive container ship El Faro. In her recently released masterpiece "Into the Raging Sea," Rachel Slade describes the macabre comedy of errors leading to the worst American shipping tragedy in 35 years. It was late September 2015 when a Captain engaged in a quiet war with his company and his crew set a course for Puerto Rico as Hurricane Joaquin barreled into the Bermuda Triangle.

Owned by a Global shipping company TOTE, El Faro was poorly run, technically outdated, and pressed to produce profit at a time when its time as a safe, viable ocean carrier had passed. As El Faro's skipper set a course from Jacksonville toward San Salvador bound for Puerto Rico, his anxious officers watched the developing hurricane form and then change course, putting their massive ship in the crosshairs. Since the sinking happened two years ago, you may recall the media's growing awareness as crisis calls began to come from crew members, while the captain isolated himself in his cabin until the last 24 hours. In Slade's harrowing account of the tragedy, all conversations among crew members and captain were recorded by the ship's voice-activated system as the crew dutifully tried to execute increasingly bizarre commands from the captain.

No one could later fathom how a massive, albeit, outdated vessel -- though equipped with satellite communications, a sophisticated navigation system and cutting-edge weather forecasting -- could suddenly vanish. But it did, drowning its entire crew as the nearly thousand-foot ship set a course into the eye of the killer storm.

For days El Faro's first officer attempted to convince the ship's master Michael Davidson he was reading outdated, inaccurate weather models, and that current models showed the storm's course had changed. Davidson refused to listen, motivated by the pressures of profit and razor-thin margins between gain or loss caused by late arrivals in today's cutthroat global shipping environment. Painfully, knot-by-knot and mile-by-mile, Davidson sailed into the maelstrom until it was too late. As El Faro rolled and pitched, cargo broke loose; including cars and containers filled with tons of contents. With wave heights of 40 feet and wind speeds in excess of 150 miles per hour, in last-minute desperation Davidson put out emergency calls to anyone who'd respond, but down-flooding caused by severe roll took the ship into an unrecoverable plunge.

Ironically the company (TOTE) was unaware of the ship's peril and had virtually no one monitoringEl Faro's plight until it was too late. Desperate radio calls did reach Florida Coast Guard stations that, in the final hours, made incredible attempts to find the ship with hope of lifting crewmembers off before the ship sank. Audio later recovered from several thousand feet in what can be considered a ship's equivalent to an airplane's black box, revealed the last hours' conversations and the last seconds of the ship's existence; a profound message about the power of nature and the fallibility of human judgment -- even in our digitized times.

"Into the Raging Sea"reminds us that command can be lonely and isolation from our leadership team and our "crew" while not a life-or-death proposition, can lead to its own kind of tragedy: failed plans, unfulfilled people with great potential, and a late arrival at our destination.

*Into the Raging Sea - Harper Collins (Rachel Slade is a Boston writer)