The hearts of all maritime workers stopped earlier this month when news hit that the ship El Faro, a US-flagged cargo vessel with thirty-three crew members aboard, was dead in the water north of the Bahamas with no propulsion power and directly in the path of a rapidly intensifying Hurricane Joaquin.

At 7 AM on October 1, within thirty hours of departing Jacksonville, FL, the captain made satellite contact with TOTE, the ship’s owner. While that conversation has not been made public, apparently the ship had taken on water in a hold, listing her dangerously. And without a powered propeller, El Faro was helpless before waves that reached fifty feet and a counter-clockwise spiral of winds up to 125 miles per hour. It was sucked into the eyewall of a Category Four hurricane.

Within twenty minutes of the ship captain’s final communications with the ship’s owner, the US Coast Guard reported that El Faro’s signals from her Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beam had stopped. The Coast Guard immediately contacted the shipowner and was informed of its daunting conditions. But efforts by the Coast Guard to communicate with the El Faro were futile. The ship had disappeared into the deep. A quick, dark fate awaited the crew.