Doubtless Mathias also keeps some portion of his mind on projects Rich Pusatere has going on below. As a licensed chief engineer, as a lover of machinery, Mathias thinks about the whole plant, the entire mechanical enchilada, whether it’s his direct responsibility or not, and El Faro’s forty-year-old machinery provides plenty of mysteries to worry at. Mathias is known, one could almost say famous, for being single-minded about his job. He was engineer on a ship running to Hawaii when his wife, Jenn, was pregnant with their first child; when news came through the ship’s email that Jenn had given birth, the captain called him up to the bridge; but Mathias, once assured that mother and child were well, replied that he would first finish the job he was engaged in, then come topside to celebrate.
His focus on work notwithstanding, like most mariners Mathias holds consciousness of his family ever present in the background, as if they were a favorite show playing on TV in the next room; all the more so because he’s scheduled to leave the ship after this trip, to help set up a maze/slide structure he designed for “Pumpkin Patch Weekend,” the series of autumn activities due to take place over Columbus Day on his family’s cranberry farm.
3
The swells build further, still out of the north. The troughs between get deeper, and the indigo and jade colors inside them darken. As the day progresses, the long northern waves take on even more of an easterly component. People often see their world in terms of overlapping stories, all marked and girdered by the convenient theories of sequence and causality, one event being triggered by a previous event and causing, in turn, a third, with all the time and miles of road between forgotten in the telling; and so they tend to miss the slow, often uneven progression of things, the budding of a flower, the turn toward evening, the rise or fall of tide, the building up of seas. From high up, through the windows of El Faro’s bridge, the waves look the same from minute to minute, even over the course of an hour. What sticks out, what makes the navigators notice, will be signals they are trained to observe, such as a greater number of whitecaps, the symptoms of wind speed as defined by the Beaufort scale: “Force 5, wind 17 to 21 knots, fresh breeze, moderate waves taking a more pronounced long form; many white foam crests; there may be some spray.”
They will notice, too, the unusual—when a tarpaulin is ripped off by wind from the bridge wing, or when the ship lurches unexpectedly.
Davidson is back on the bridge at midmorning. “Ship’s solid . . . ,” he tells Riehm. “. . . Just gotta keep the speed up so we can get goin’ down. And who knows, maybe this low will just stall—stall a little bit . . . just enough for us to duck underneath.”
It’s a scenario of wishful thinking in the skipper’s mind, uncomplicated by new facts; a scenario strong and plausible enough that it extrapolates trouble to a later time, when Joaquin has stalled and hung around, once El Faro is safely past and in Puerto Rico and her officers are prepping the trip back.
At 10:22 a.m. Davidson sends an email, transmitted by satellite via the Inmarsat device, from his office computer to Tote’s safety manager, John Lawrence. The email, noting that Joaquin is “erratic and unpredictable,” says Davidson expects to be safely on the storm’s back side by morning. It then asks for authorization, if Joaquin is still hanging around causing trouble in the area after El Faro loads in San Juan, to return to Jacksonville via the Old Bahama Channel route.
Lawrence doesn’t see the email immediately; he is busy attending the National Safety Congress convention in Atlanta, the biggest such event of the year for safety officers. At the convention—perhaps ironically, given the tension existing between crew and officers on El Faro—he may well have listened to one of the keynote speakers, a former US Navy commander named Michael Abrashoff, detailing the increase in safety that results at sea when a captain takes the time to interact meaningfully with his crew.
In Lawrence’s absence the email is fielded by another Tote officer, Jim Fisker-Andersen, who replies, “Understood and authorized.” But Fisker-Andersen does not send this for several hours, and in the interval Davidson will for some reason fret as nervously as a teenager waiting for a girl to accept his invitation to the prom.
“I have to wait for confirmation from the office, but I put it out there,” the captain says later. And later still: “That’s why, you know, I just said, ‘Hey, you know—I would like to take this [Old Bahama Channel] going northbound. I’ll wait for your reply.’ I don’t think they’ll say no. I gave them a good reason why, because if you should follow this down, then look what it does on the third [October]—fourth and fifth. And it’s right where we’re going. . . . So I just put it out there.”
On three additional occasions, in the interval between sending the message and receiving the go-ahead, Davidson repeats these or similar statements, and all of them sound as if they’re coming from someone desperate for approval; all indicate a substantive worry on his part, that Tote might refuse. What is also clearly implied in how he frames the issue on the bridge is this: Davidson believes that if Tote disputes his request, he might feel pressured to take a route back that is close to a storm that could put his ship in danger.
Why Michael Davidson is so nervous about Tote’s approval of his change of course is relevant to what will happen later, but the tension audible in his worry is not new. Shipowners make their money by delivering freight safely and on time at the lowest feasible cost, and the consequent need to stick to schedule is thus a normal part of shipping. If a ship is delayed—if her captain, for whatever reason, takes a detour—the companies whose freight she hauls will receive, and deliver, their goods later, which in turn might cause them to lose money.V Sometimes, as in the case of Walmart, a client can penalize the transportation outfit for the delay, especially if spoilage (as in rotted foodstuffs) results. In all cases the possibility exists that recurrent delays will cause the freight owners to switch to a different, more punctual shipping company.
The result of all these factors is pressure: direct pressure, in the form of a shipowner’s schedules and the expectation, spoken or implied, that they be met; indirect, in the form of awareness on a captain’s part that if he is consistently late—if, for example, he acquires a reputation for excessive timidity in the face of weather that results in chronic tardiness and higher associated expense—he will find himself eventually without a job and blacklisted throughout the industry to boot.
Against these pressures has always stood the tradition of the all-powerful captain, of his, or her, status as ultimate authority on board ship; as the saying goes in the French merchant marine, “Sole master aboard after God.” The reason for this unitary authority is simple. It’s the same as for any other group of people, such as army commandos or astronauts, seeking to fulfill a specific mission in a risky, potentially lethal environment. For a patrol behind enemy lines, for a ship beset by storm, the ability to make swift and firm decisions in the face of fast-changing threats is paramount, because nearly any action ordered quickly and firmly is better than hesitation, and in such a situation it makes sense to delegate authority to a single experienced and decisive commander with the expectation that she or he will get the group out of trouble as swiftly as possible.
Two hundred, even seventy-five, years ago, while the commercial pressures on a captain always existed, their potency was far less because of the practical impossibility of second-guessing a captain’s decisions, or of changing them if one did. Before wireless radio became common on merchant ships after World War I, a seagoing ship had no contact with shore and the shipowner no possibility of knowing what obstacles—such as adverse winds, pirates, or storms—might affect a captain’s route. Even through the 1980s, when satellite navigation and weather observation were starting to come online, a ship’s master had to make decisions in good part based on personal observation and experience without real-time reference to land; it was up to him to weigh an eventual reckoning with the ship’s owner against his immediate duty to keep vessel, crew, and cargo safe.
It was th
is balancing act that Joseph Conrad, himself a former ship’s master, described in his novella Typhoon, in which Captain MacWhirr weighs whether to flee a hurricane, expressing his thoughts to the first mate much as Davidson does to Shultz:
“If the weather delays me—very well. There’s your logbook to talk straight about the weather. But suppose I went swinging off my course and came in two days late, and they asked me, ‘Where have you been all that time, Captain?’ What could I say to that? ‘It must have been dam’ bad,’ they would say. ‘Don’t know,’ I would have to say; ‘I’ve dodged clear of it.’ See that, Jukes? I have been thinking it out all afternoon.”VI
Over the last twenty years, MacWhirr’s dilemma has become somewhat anachronistic. To take an extreme example, it is now possible for a shipowner to operate, navigate, and command a fully automated ship, without captain or crew aboard, almost anywhere in the world, using real-time links to satellite images, weather forecasts, CCTV, radar, GPS, and engine and steering controls. Fully automated vessels, though prototypes already exist, have not been authorized to travel internationally, but the same technology allows company officers to hire routing services that will plot the most efficient route possible given weather, sea state, and other factors for an individual ship, and to ensure that the vessel’s systems capture that information. Having done so, the company will expect the master to go along with what the service recommends, and if the master does not, the shipowner will know and can demand explanations immediately, by radio, emails, and satellite telephone calls.
Since Tote does not subscribe to the BVS routing service, the company’s officials have no easy way to track El Faro’s route in relation to the elements. And those corporate officers in closest touch with the ship, probably dulled by the routine, back-and-forth tag team El Faro and El Yunque run on this short and mostly trouble-free route, are not in the habit of keeping close track by any other means of either ships or weather. Certainly they are not keeping track of either El Faro or Joaquin on this trip. Yet it seems clear that El Faro, her crew, and especially her master fall victim here to a peculiar dead spot in the evolution of ship management: before the advent of fully automated ships, but long after the era of fully independent captaincy.
This limbo is reflected in the well-demonstrated belief on the part of Michael Davidson that he must clear major detours—such as taking the Old Bahama Channel, a route that were he to follow it on the run south, as will be clearly suggested by his subordinates, would take El Faro out of Joaquin’s grasp—with the company beforehand. Tote’s officers later will vehemently challenge that assessment and state that they would never interfere with a captain’s judgment on safety issues; in the words of safety manager John Lawrence, “We don’t tell masters what to do.” Tote’s operations manual notes a captain must check any route change or delay with management, but does not state he must obtain permission for the change.
In later hearings, one captain will testify that his DPA, or “designated person ashore” at Tote, told him that if he did not reveal his route plans, the DPA would relieve him of command within two hours. But other captains who work for Tote will affirm that the practice of notifying the company of a route change does not mean they have to obtain company approval.VII And a company executive claims in testimony that Tote always implements a “safety first” policy for its ships and crews.
Still, Tote’s officers will never be able to explain away Davidson’s obsession with getting the company’s okay for his northbound detour, as demonstrated in the de facto request for permission Davidson makes at 10:22 a.m. on September 30 as El Faro heads south; and in repeated, informal statements by Davidson to the effect that he must await approval from Tote to plan the longer route.
Davidson has his own reasons for being particularly sensitive to the opinions of his employer. He told his wife he was forced to resign from his previous job with Crowley Maritime when the ship he was commanding developed steering trouble in the Chesapeake and, on his own initiative, he hired tugboats to escort the vessel out of the bay in case her steering failed. Davidson believed that this decision, which on the face of it was justified on safety grounds, cost Crowley money and Davidson his job.
Davidson’s sensitivity to safety decisions that might irritate Corporate was probably exacerbated recently when Davidson was passed over for a master’s position aboard one of the two new “Marlin” class ships, the LNG/diesel-powered Isla Bella and Perla del Caribe, that Tote has ordered built in San Diego for the Puerto Rico run. (Company officials initially recommended him for promotion, then changed their collective mind, and while they have not formally notified him as yet, Davidson seems to have got wind of the verdict before leaving on this voyage.) Though Davidson apparently was not given an explanation, the previous censure of his crew handling, and his reputedly hands-off command style, were cited internally in Tote’s decision to reject his application. Melissa Clark, the human resources officer, reported “dwindling confidence” in his leadership as one reason she and another manager counseled against posting him to a new ship. The ship-management director, Jim Fisker-Andersen, paid Davidson a left-handed compliment: while he was the “least engaged” of all four captains on the Puerto Rico run, Davidson was great at “sucking up” to office staff.
Other El Faro officers, particularly on the engine side—Pusatere, Griffin, Kuflik—have been tapped to serve on the Marlin ships, so it’s no surprise Davidson feels that he is not appreciated in this company. In an earlier email to his wife he writes of Tote, “I feel taken advantage of . . . but they pay real good.” Later today he will talk bleakly to Chief Mate Shultz about being “on [Tote’s] chopping block,” a sentiment Shultz shares regarding the mate’s own prospects at Tote. In such circumstances it makes sense to assume that Davidson’s state of mind when reaching decisions that affect El Faro’s safety will be influenced by what he apparently believes will be the punishment, even dismissal, he might expect if the company disagrees with those decisions. The captain’s two daughters are of college age—though both will go to Southern Maine University, a relatively inexpensive state school—and the watch keepers he has talked to say he’s concerned with the bills he must pay, and the need to hang on to a good job. He is fifty-three years old, competing now against younger officers, men more familiar with the automation technology that will eventually replace them all. He is truly, in the words of his fellow captain, Earl Loftfield, someone who’s “not going in the direction Tote is going in.”
4
If a ship is a complex world that in its detail and isolation starts to feel like a distinct form of life to her crew and passengers, a large corporation—if usually less attractive and unitary and certainly less seaworthy in aspect—can be at least as complicated and full of quirks as an aging freighter.
Enough has been written about bureaucratic pathologies to suggest that, just as a ship sometimes seems to adopt a distinct personality, a corporation too acquires idiosyncrasies and characteristics that build, memo by memo, email by email, conference call by conference call, rumor by rumor, a collective personality of sorts; and that personality ultimately affects the people within.
The transcript of the bridge recording makes clear that Tote, in its various guises concerning the Puerto Rico trade, worries the hell out of Davidson and Shultz. Davidson at least seems to take it for granted that he needs some sort of permission for a major course change, even if such a change is warranted by safety concerns; and even Randolph, who is very far from a complainer, while talking on the bridge to Larry Davis about an engineer who worked long unpaid hours in a shipyard, slags the company’s indifference toward employees. “Tote has its favorites,” the wife of another El Faro officer said recently; those not favored, in her view, could expect punishment in the form of piecework, arbitrarily assigned.
Former crew, including Jack Hearn, one of El Faro’s captains, as well as AB Bruer and oiler Hearman, have mentioned Tote’s slowness in addressing safety-related issues brought to the comp
any’s attention by mariners. Hearn, in public testimony, has drawn a causal link between his demands to report safety concerns on Tote ships to the Coast Guard, and his eventual firing on supposedly unrelated grounds. But all these judgments, while relevant, are based on symptoms. To find out the core reasons for Tote’s behavior one must scalpel deep into the tendon and bone of company personality, history, and ownership.
The company that would become known, on the waterfront anyway, as Tote was born in 1983 in Chester, Pennsylvania—a city with a long shipbuilding tradition—in the shipyard that built El Faro and her four Ponce-class sister ships. Sun Shipbuilding, also known as Sunships, went into the freighter-owning business, in partnership with individual investors, under the name Totem Ocean Trailer Express, running first a single freighter, the Great Land—Sunships hull number 673—and then in 1977 adding Westward Venture to the fleet. Totem, or TOTE—essentially a Jones Act outfit precisely engineered to shuttle cargo between Washington State and Alaska—was soon bought out by a consortium of eight individual partners, mostly men from Sun’s senior management. Their number included the director; a couple of lawyers, Michael Garvey and Stanley Barer; and another Sun exec, a World War II vet named Leonard Shapiro. TOTE Resources, as the new company was called, soon changed its name to Saltchuk Resources, borrowing the word for “salt water” from a trading jargon spoken by the Chinook tribe of the Pacific Northwest.
Saltchuk expanded steadily, focusing on niche markets similar to its original Alaska route, buying up Foss Maritime, one of the oldest Pacific Northwest tug companies, as well as Interocean, a ship-management corporation. Another Ponce ship, the Puerto Rico (Sun hull number 670), was renamed Northern Lights, lengthened by 90.9 feet in a Mobile, Alabama, yard, and assigned to Tote’s Alaskan freight run in 1993. In 1998 Saltchuk bought the Sea Barge towing operation, which transported freight between Puerto Rico and Florida, and renamed it Sea Star Lines.
Run the Storm Page 11
