What caused the El Faro cargo ship disaster?

Even huge container ships cannot withstand sustained 50-foot waves and 140 mph winds.

That may be the lesson of El Faro, which went down in Hurricane Joaquin-whipped seas off the Bahamas, with 33 crew members and hundreds of cars and cargo containers aboard.

Why did the captain steer into a Catagory 4 category hurricane?

“I was surprised, but I’m sure the captain had his reasons,” says journalist Rose George, author of Ninety Percent of Everything. Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car and Food on Your Plate.

“It’s a very complicated job. It’s a very expensive piece of equipment that you’re in charge of, not to mention in charge of a crew. The thing to say is that El Faro was a pretty old ship, and from what I've read, it seems to have suffered mechanical failure, so if you're in that kind of weather with mechanical failure, then anything can happen.”

But consider that there are upwards of 100,000 cargo ships now plying international waters at any point and that the number of accidents at sea is actually coming down, according to George. Last year, 75 ship losses were recorded, or about 1.5 ships per week, she says. “It sounds like a lot, but that’s actually a 50 percent reduction since 2005 so shipping is getting safer.”

Does that improving record and sheer mass of the ship lead to overconfidence? Was there intense pressure to deliver the cargo on time, no matter what?

George says this: “We have this idea in the modern world, that modern humans are not invincible but that we have conquered so many things so many things, and I think we think we’ve conquered the sea but really the sea is often going to win and the sad truth is big ships still sink.”

It’s not easy to forget ship disasters.  The Costa Concordia wrecked off the coast of Isola del Giglio in Italy in 2012. The South Korea ferry accident. Here’s a list of maritime disasters in the 20^th century.

“Big ships sink. That’s the very sad truth,” says George.