Why the doomed El Faro cargo ship sailed right into a hurricane before sinking in the Bermuda Triangle with all 33 souls lost

REVEALED: Why the doomed El Faro cargo ship sailed right into a hurricane before sinking in the Bermuda Triangle with all 33 souls lost
Keith Griffith and Jennifer Smith and Snejana Farberov 20 May 2018

The author of a new book about the sinking of the El Faro has offered insights into why the ship sank and what could have saved the 33 crew members who died at sea.

Journalist Rachel Slade, the author of Into The Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm And The Sinking Of El Faro, says that both 'hubris' and the 40-year-old ship's age were key factors.

The 790-foot cargo ship sank in the Bahamas on October 1, 2015 in the midst of Hurricane Joaquin while on a cargo run from Florida to Puerto Rico.

'We don’t have 40-year-old cars anymore on the road. They’re considered antiques,' Slade said of the El Faro's age in an interview with Maine Public. 'You can no longer order parts for that ship. The guys were actually using scrapped pieces from scrapped ships to fix the engine, to fix parts. This was a desperate situation.'

Slade said that the ship was not originally designed to carry containers above deck, but instead to carry weight low, with trailers driving into the hold.

'When containerization took over in the mid ’70s the El Faro was modified. Now she’s carrying weight differently — she’s got containers up high, she’s got trailers down below, but she still has that profile that’s quite narrow,' Slade said

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