The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed Monday that wreckage detected by sonar off the Bahamas on Saturday is from the El Faro. The cargo ship went missing on Oct. 1 during Hurricane Joaquin with 33 people on board, including four Mainers.
A Navy search team sent a remotely operated vehicle three miles below the ocean surface off the Bahamas on Sunday to examine the wreckage near the El Faro’s last known position.
The survey of the wreckage resumed Monday, with the vehicle, called CURV-21, continuing the work of inspecting and documenting the condition of the ship and the debris field. The main focus is on retrieving the voyage data recorder, the ship’s version of an airplane’s “black box.”
Neither the recorder nor any human remains had been retrieved as of Monday evening, spokesman Peter Knudson said.
If human remains are discovered, the team will try to retrieve them, but the ship will not be recovered, the NTSB said. The mission could take up to two weeks, depending on the weather.
The ship, captained by Michael Davidson, 53, of Windham, left Jacksonville, Florida, for San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 29 on its regular weekly run as Tropical Storm Joaquin was turning into a powerful hurricane near the Bahamas. As it neared the storm, the El Faro reported it had lost propulsion and was listing. Investigators say Davidson told the vessel’s owners that he planned to pass 65 miles south of the center of Hurricane Joaquin, but that the El Faro was just 20 miles from the storm’s eye 18 hours later when the Coast Guard received its final distress call.
Davidson reported that there was a breach in the hull, a type of hatch called a scuttle had blown open, and there was water in one of the holds, the NTSB said. He also said the ship had lost its main propulsion unit, and that the engineers couldn’t get it going.
The other Mainers aboard, all graduates of the Maine Maritime Academy, were Danielle Randolph, 34, of Rockland; Michael Holland, 25, of Wilton, and Dylan Meklin, 23, of Rockland, who graduated in May. The crew also included a member of Maine Maritime’s class of 2011, Mitchell Kuflik of Brooklyn, New York. Most of the other crew members were from Florida, and there also were five Polish nationals aboard.
Family members of the Maine victims did not return calls for comment Monday.
On Friday, El Faro owner TOTE Services Inc. filed a motion for exoneration from or limitation of liability in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, saying the company exercised due diligence to make the ship “seaworthy in all respects and properly manned, equipped and supplied.”
The company’s motion to limit to $13.2 million the amount it can be compelled to pay families of the 33 victims, based on the weight of the ship and its cargo, is a procedural step that is based on U.S. maritime law.
So far, the families of at least four El Faro crew members have filed wrongful death suits against the company and its captain.
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