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 It said the search continued for at least 32 other people, most of
them Americans, who were aboard the ship when it vanished in what
maritime experts are calling the worst cargo shipping disaster
involving a U.S.-flagged vessel since 1983.
"We're assuming the vessel has sunk," Coast Guard Captain Mark Fedor
told reporters in Miami. He said search and rescue teams were no
longer looking for the ship, which sent a distress call early on
Thursday after getting caught in Joaquin's ferocious winds and seas
up to 50 feet (15 meters) high.
Coast Guard vessels and aircrews continued to search for the 28 U.S.
citizens and five Polish nationals who went missing with the ship,
Fedor said.
He acknowledged they faced steep odds against survival. But
officials later said three Coast Guard cutters would stay in the
general area where the ship was believed to have gone down to
continue searching through Monday night.
The five Poles on board were not members of the crew but part of a
so-called “riding gang” to conduct repairs on the ship while it was
at sea, the company that owns the ship, Tote Maritime Puerto Rico,
told Reuters on Monday.
Company spokesman Mike Hanson said he was unable to specify what
kinds of repairs were under way, but such ancillary crews are
commonly hired to perform repairs and maintenance.
Coast Guard crews were unable to identify the one body found so far,
discovered wearing a survival suit on Sunday, Fedor said. A lifeboat
found among other debris from the ship was one of two that it had
been carrying, each with a capacity for 43 people.
The ship was carrying 391 containers "so it had a lot of topside
height to it where the winds and waves could hit it," Fedor said.
There were also 294 trailers and automobiles below deck adding to
its weight, he added.
The ocean where it sank is 15,000 feet (4,572 meters) deep and part
of a heavily transited channel for large ships.
On Sunday, the Coast Guard spotted two large debris fields about 60
miles (96 km) apart littered with items identified as coming from El
Faro, including Styrofoam, cargo doors and 55-gallon (208-liter)
drums.
The 790-foot (240-meter) container ship had left Jacksonville,
Florida on Tuesday for San Juan, Puerto Rico.
In a distress call on Thursday morning, El Faro said it had lost
propulsion, was listing and had taken on water after sailing into
the path of Joaquin off Crooked Island in the Bahamas, according to
Tote Maritime Puerto Rico. It was never heard from again.
The National Transportation Safety Board will conduct an
investigation, in which the Coast Guard will take part, the Coast
Guard's Fedor said.
Tote Maritime has offered no official explanation as to how the ship
managed to get caught in the center of a catastrophic Category Four
hurricane, instead of taking evasive measures to move out of the
storm's projected path.
But Hanson said on Saturday that Joaquin was only a tropical storm
when El Faro set out from Jacksonville, but it later underwent a
rapid intensification.
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Records show that the U.S. National Hurricane Center issued a
warning about the likelihood of Joaquin becoming a hurricane at 5
p.m. EDT on Tuesday, however, nearly three hours before El Faro left
port.
Many of El Faro's crew were from Jacksonville, and there are signs
of deep-rooted anger there about what happened to the ill-fated
vessel.
"I blame the captain and the company," said Terrence Meadows, 36, a
merchant marine junior engineer from the northern Florida port city
who spoke outside the Seafarers International Union hall.
"That could have been me out there. Anybody in that union hall could
have been out there," Meadows said. "My heart is broken. I can only
imagine what those guys were going through. You don't sign up to die
like that," he added.
Seafarers International is the main North American union
representing merchant mariners.
John Kimball, who teaches admiralty law at New York University
School of Law, said it is premature to say what liabilities Tote
could face for the loss of crew and cargo.
But New York City-based lawyer Andrew Buchsbaum, who handles
maritime personal injury cases, said that since the ship was owned
by a U.S. company and sailing to a U.S. port, families of the
mariners could try to sue under a federal law called the Jones Act,
which holds shippers liable for negligence and if a vessel is not
seaworthy.
"It’s incomprehensible with the sophisticated weather routing
technology that’s available that an over 700-foot merchant vessel
can be caught in the middle of a previously forecasted hurricane,”
he said.
Tote Maritime's Hanson said he could not speculate when asked on
Monday if El Faro had a propulsion or engine room problem before it
was overcome by the hurricane.
"We look forward to what the investigation reveals," he said.
(Additional reporting by Susan Cooper Eastman and Barbara Liston in
Jacksonville, and Edward McAllister and Andrew Chung in New York;
Writing by Tom Brown; Editing by James Dalgleish, Cynthia Osterman
and Lisa Shumaker)
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