The US Coast Guard wasn’t always synonymous with safety. It took a massive movement to create laws that offered protections for the men and women working on America’s ships.
Wildly lucrative, economically necessary, and extremely dangerous, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century shipping occasionally ended in disaster, but the lives of sailors was not the young government’s concern. Under federal law in 1790, for example, sailors could be imprisoned for deserting a ship before the voyage ended, even if they had very good reasons to flee. That law stood fast for more than a century. Indeed, flogging aboard ships was prohibited by law only after 1850; corporal punishment was abolished in 1897.
A merchant could load his creaky wooden vessel until its gunwales lapped at the brine, yet no one refused him passage. Along the docks, sober sailors eyed the teetering ship warily. Plied with drink or plagued by creditors, however, many men preferred to cast their lot with the open waters rather than submit to life in prison, either behind bars or behind a desk.
If a ship sunk somewhere out there on the seas or sharp bluffs, if it stubbornly refused to appear at port at its expected time—its crew and cargo buried in a watery grave—insurance would reimburse the merchant for his troubles. Even in 1835, Americans’ boundless appetite for speed (and profit) did not go unnoticed. French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville observed:
“The European navigator is prudent when venturing out to sea; he only does so when the weather is suitable . . . [The American] sets sail while the storm is still rumbling by night as well as by day he spreads full sails to the wind; he repairs storm damage as he goes; and when at last he draws near the end of his voyage, he flies toward the coast as if he could already see the port.
The American is often ship-wrecked, but no other sailor crosses the sea as fast.”
Likewise, the US Coast Guard had an economic, not human, mission. Formed by Alexander Hamilton, it was established to enforce customs laws rather than protect the men and women aboard the ships. Its officers boarded vessels only to check manifests to ensure that the government collected duties it was owed; if they saw a man float by clinging to a mast, they had no obligation to fish him out.
With the advent of steam, a series of catastrophic boiler explosions within full view of women and children ashore spurred the industry to do something about its iron-bellied beasts. In a single year—1832—14 percent of American steam vessels, most on the Mississippi, were blown to bits by their own shoddily built boilers. Following the Civil War, a ship burst apart, killing all thirteen hundred veterans aboard. The merciless sea had once been the greatest threat to the pursuit of happiness; now manmade machines consumed people and ships with nearly as much fervor.
But dangerous ships increased everyone’s risk—financial risk, that is. Ship hulls were insured through industry-only clubs, such as Lloyd’s of London. Whenever there was a loss, all shippers got hit with higher premiums. Someone had to wrestle this risk under control. So shipping companies decided to regulate themselves. The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), a nonprofit founded in New York in 1862, was founded by merchants to establish design and construction standards for America’s seagoing vessels. Like its British cousins, the society eventually adopted the Plimsoll mark; published wood-, iron-, and steel-hull guidelines for naval architects; and provided inspection services to their members in an effort to ensure America’s merchant fleet adhered to high standards.
Throughout the nineteenth century, shipping was booming; the US population almost doubled each decade—from four million in 1790 to sixty-three million in 1890; concomitant with this unprecedented growth came unprecedented demand for boats and barges to move raw materials, manufactured goods, and people. But as the population spread inward from its coasts, opportunities on land superseded jobs on water. There are incredible photos of San Francisco Bay during the Gold Rush showing the harbor literally choked with skeletons of rotting sailing ships abandoned by mariners who’d seek their fortunes in the hills. Sailors on the East Coast had signed onto the ships in droves, rounded Cape Horn, and came up the California coast, only to desert their vessels as soon as they reached port.
Desperate for crews to hoist the sails or feed coal into steamships’ ravenous boilers, companies hired third-party agents to coerce sailors, by hook or by crook, into signing on. In major ports including New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore, shipping companies teamed up with “crimps”—boardinghouse owners who took advances on sailors’ wages in lieu of payment to cover their lodging and other expenses, including liquor and prostitutes.
Shipping companies paid sailors’ wages directly to the crimps, creating a system of indentured servitude. The companies also offered bonuses, known as blood money, to agents who signed men up for voyages. This system rewarded criminal methods. Agents regularly disguised themselves as sailors, offering rounds of drinks to unsuspecting seamen who then awoke from a liquor-induced haze aboard a ship, their future earnings already spent. Sometimes agents shanghaied sailors by force—clobbering them on the head, forging signatures, and dragging them unconscious onto a ship while the captain conveniently looked the other way.
Mariners fought these nefarious practices for years but had little sway over a corrupt political system committed to supporting the moneyed end of the industry. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, crusading mariners, especially foreign-born seamen, began to organize. Joining miners, factory workers, and other workingmen and -women, they fought for safer working conditions, better pay, and better protections. Their efforts were hampered by historically entrenched racism, especially on the East Coast where white men refused to join together with their fellow black sailors, but organizers eventually gained traction on the West Coast where most seamen were white Americans or European immigrants.
This movement—paid for in blood, sweat, and tears—laid the foundations for America’s most resilient unions. The American Maritime Officers (AMO) union, the International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots (MM&P), the Seafarers International Union (SIU), and a handful of others continue to wield impressive power over the shipping industry a century later.
The sinking of the Titanic coupled with other major maritime tragedies in the early twentieth century, along with the successes of the organized labor movement, reinforced the need for a strong maritime regulatory agency. The volatile steam engine and its failings finally bound capitalism to workers’ welfare.
From the moment labor organized, America’s power brokers have hacked away at it. William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, used his tabloid papers to disparage all unions, but especially the maritime unions. He called organized labor anti-American at best, communism at worst. Case in point: conservatives loathed the fact that merchant seamen received medical care through a system of public health hospitals first established in 1789. Seamen’s hospitals were founded to prevent the spread of disease and, over time, grew to serve military dependents, coast guard personnel, and the poor. These hospitals were once financed by a tax on imported commodities, but as of 1884 that money went straight into the Treasury’s general fund rather than specifically supporting seamen’s health. After World War II, Republicans went to great lengths to dismantle the hospital system in support of their tax-cutting agenda. As president, Ronald Reagan finally succeeded in eliminating the hospitals from the federal books, and now the entire population those facilities once served, including America’s mariners, receive care at private hospitals at private hospital rates.
Labor is a tiny fraction of shipping costs—about 4 percent. Officers and seamen are paid according to strict union rules. They receive regular training through their union halls and are represented by union lawyers when there’s a dispute. They get their insurance and pensions through their unions as well and count on the unions to represent them in federal and industry negotiations.
Fuel is a major drain on shipping profits. To power a medium-sized ship across the Atlantic demands as much as $40,000 a day. Every penny counts.
Unable to cut salaries enough to please their shareholders, shipping companies have saved a few dollars by cutting staff. Watches on the bridge were once divided among four mates; now three people share the twenty-four-hour watch period, meaning longer shifts and increased risk of exhaustion. In the days of Morse code, a dedicated radioman handled all shipboard communication. That position is gone; now the on-duty mate must man emergency messaging, along with all of his or her other responsibilities. That’s how two full-time jobs magically become one.
Respected ship captains once retired ashore to become port captains—seasoned experts on land who advised captains at sea. They were well versed in the ways of the merchant marine, the weather, the ships, and the subtleties of staffing a vessel. Older mariners who worked with port captains say that in an apprenticeship industry like shipping, port captains’ experience was invaluable in running a vessel. They’d discuss weather and routing and use their prodigious experience to guide younger captains in all things, including managing their diverse crews.
The man who filled that role for TOTE’s ships, Bill Weisenborn, quit the company in 2012. He didn’t want to relocate to Jacksonville and didn’t like all this restructuring and downsizing. The port captain is a luxury of the past. Now port engineers—those trained on running the ship’s engines—are expected to do it all. If an engine fails, it’s catastrophic and impossible to ignore. An incremental breakdown of knowledge and leadership can go undetected for years.
As for regulation of a dangerous yet vital industry, all eyes eventually turned to the fifth branch of the armed forces, the coast guard. Over its two-hundred-plus-year history, the US Coast Guard fell under the auspices of various departments—the Treasury, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Transportation, and most recently, the Department of Homeland Security.
Conflicting masters have led to conflicting allegiances. Since 1942 the US Coast Guard has been responsible for creating and enforcing laws to ensure that America’s fleet—fishing vessels, ferries, pleasure boats, tankers, and container ships—remains safe and that its mariners are trained to deal with shipboard emergencies.
But under George W. Bush following 9/11, the coast guard shifted focus yet again from vessel inspection and lifesaving to defense. Armed to the teeth, prepped for battle against innumerable enemies, the US Coast Guard now fights America’s eternal war against drugs, terrorism, and illegal immigrants on the wide open seas.
When the coast guard became America’s waterborne policing unit, spending much of its energy on drug interdiction rather than safety, the American Bureau of Shipping stepped in to take over the job of monitoring the commercial fleet. As a result of its growing responsibilities, ABS has grown exponentially to become a rich, politically powerful entity.
SITTING IN HIS WASHINGTON, DC, OFFICE ON OCTOBER 1, 2015, CAPTAIN JASON Neubauer of the US Coast Guard thought his service had much to be proud of. As chief of the Office of Investigations and Casualty Analysis, Neubauer was charged with probing major marine accidents to unearth their root causes, then suggest changes, if any, to the coast guard’s myriad regulations in an effort to prevent future casualties. He was one part of the mechanism that ensures the safety of America’s fleet.
Teutonic by way of California—tall and intimidating from a distance in his sharp navy blue uniform, at the other end of a handshake, warm and empathetic—Neubauer had eschewed his father’s navy for the coast guard. His family gave him a hard time for joining the “puddle pirates,” the derogatory term the navy uses for its coast-hugging cousins. But as Neubauer climbed the ranks to reach captain, a notch below rear admiral, at the age of forty-three, the teasing stopped.
The US Coast Guard’s DC headquarters maintains a thick file of marine accidents, more than fifty-four hundred each year of varying magnitudes—from a tugboat engine explosion that killed the chief engineer aboard; to a giant oil drilling rig that broke free from its towlines in thirty-five-foot seas, beached on an island in the Gulf of Alaska, and threatened to dump 150,000 gallons of diesel onto the coastline; to the sinking of the three-masted HMS Bounty, caught in Hurricane Sandy, that took the life of Robin Walbridge, the ship’s captain, and a crew member.
Among the cases in the coast guard’s file, Neubauer knew of just three major American ship casualties in peacetime; none of those losses involved cargo ships like El Faro. One was the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sunk in a storm on Lake Superior in 1975. The second was the SS Poet, a bulk carrier which mysteriously vanished in the Atlantic in 1980.
The third casualty was the SS Marine Electric—a World War II–era bulk carrier loaded with coal that went down in 1983 when she sailed through a storm off the coast of Virginia, killing thirty-one of the thirty-four crew aboard. The ensuing Marine Board investigation was a massive undertaking and the final report detailed serious flaws in the ship inspection process.
The Marine Board found that the Marine Electric’s hatches and decks were so profoundly compromised by age, bad repair jobs, and neglect that they proved helpless against the Atlantic storm’s pounding waves, yet the shipping company had faked inspection paperwork year after year to keep her sailing.
That 154-page Marine Board report became a seminal work, setting shipping regulations and standards for the next thirty-two years. Among industry changes that emerged from the report, the coast guard required that all ships begin carrying immersion suits for its crew when sailing in the North Atlantic during the winter. The coast guard’s rescue swimmer program also emerged from the tragedy.
Perhaps most important, the Marine Electric report raised serious questions about the ABS’s role in ship inspections: “Basically, ABS surveys and visits are oriented toward protecting the best interest of marine insurance underwriters, and not for the enforcement of Federal safety statutes and regulations,” it said. “Since the cost of these surveys and visits is borne by the owners, or other interested parties, the attending surveyor is subject to the influence of such persons.”
Ultimately, the Marine Board report warned the coast guard not to cede something as critical as ship inspection work to third parties. “For the purpose of enforcement of Federal Statutes and Regulations, [inspections] should be conducted by an impartial governmental agency having expertise in that field, with no other interests and/or obligations other than assuring compliance with applicable requirements. By virtue of its relationship to the vessel owners, the ABS cannot be considered impartial.”
The report also questioned the depth of training US Coast Guard inspectors had received and recommended that the organization devote more resources to its inspections program. Mike Odom’s career path from coast guard rescue swimmer to traveling inspector was directly influenced by the aftermath of the Marine Electric case.
Another fact emerged from the tragedy: the officers and crew aboard the Marine Electric had been well aware of the ship’s horrible conditions but feared for their jobs “due to the lack of seagoing employment . . . they were content to sail the vessel.” Even as far back as 1980, lack of job security in the US Merchant Marine colored mariners’ judgment.
The Marine Electric investigation led to the scrapping of more than seventy elderly US-flagged vessels, and a much more robust system of checks and balances to ensure America’s aging fleet remained seaworthy.
Sitting in his office that October morning, Neubauer firmly believed that better technology and rigorous inspections programs had made American shipping safer. He felt sure that the industry had greatly benefited from advances in weather forecasting, bolstered by satellite photography, dropsondes, and supercomputer-based modeling; satellite communication and GPS; and AIS tracking to precisely locate vessels. The coast guard’s marine safety program had set strict deep draft vessel standards, most of which had been entrusted to ABS. All this was supported by the best maritime rescue force on the planet—the coast guard, assisted by the navy and the air force—powered by the world’s most sophisticated helicopters, planes, and cutters.
But at 10:00 that morning, Neubauer saw a notice about a search-and-rescue operation east of the Bahamas flash across his computer screen. He’d been tracking Hurricane Joaquin for the better part of a week and wasn’t surprised that a vessel had been caught up in its clutches. He called District 7 to find out more. That’s when he learned that the officers were trying in vain to reestablish communication with a 790-foot American vessel with thirty-three crew members aboard.
The fact that it was a large American container ship rattled Neubauer to his core. US-flagged ships may ground or collide with things, but they don’t sail into hurricanes and vanish.
Was it possible, he privately wondered, that El Faro and her crew had slipped through the cracks?
First, he called the National Command Center to get the most up-to-date info. They didn’t consider the ship lost, they told him, not yet, and were optimistic that it would pull through. Maybe the vessel’s antennas broke off in the storm, they reminded him. That happens.
Then the captain walked down the hall to consult with Rear Admiral Paul Thomas. If El Faro sank, it would trigger a massive investigation, and he wanted his superiors to brace themselves for what might ensue. He and the admiral discussed the magnitude of a case like this—it would take years to gather evidence, interview all parties, analyze the data, and produce a report. They might uncover malfeasance, or the investigation could result in a complete overhaul of the coast guard’s inspection program. It could be a generation-defining event.
Following protocol, Neubauer also called the head of Marine Safety at the National Transportation Safety Board located across the Anacostia River in central DC. The NTSB’s marine safety division often worked in parallel with the coast guard to untangle the cause of accidents. That agency would produce a separate report and its own series of recommendations.
And then, like so many others—the families of those sailing on El Faro, the people working for TOTE, the men and women in District 7, the reporters deployed to Jacksonville, and mariners around the world—Neubauer waited, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst.
By end of day on October 2, they’d found no survivors and no ship.
In search of someone to lead the investigation, Neubauer began calling other coast guard captains whose experience made them good candidates. No one with the right qualifications could commit the time to something this big.
On the fifth of October, just before eleven o’clock in the morning, the US Coast Guard officially designated El Faro a major marine casualty. The ship was lost, no survivors. Thus began a multimillion-dollar effort to find out what happened to the vessel and the thirty-three people who had vanished with it.
Compelled by the mystery of El Faro and personally offended that a tragedy of this magnitude could happen in the modern era, Neubauer volunteered himself to lead the Marine Board’s investigation. The admiral agreed.