Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking…

Very well researched and reminiscent of 'A Perfect Storm' in terms of how the story is told. It took a little bit to get absorbed into the book, but hard to be critical of it in any way. ( )

Shortly before dawn on Thursday, October 1, 2015, an American merchant captain named Michael Davidson sailed a 790-foot U.S.-flagged cargo ship, El Faro, into the eye of a Category 3 hurricane near the the Bahama Islands.

This book was a riveting sea story of a horrible disaster. Many readers will enjoy it purely for that reason, but it's so much more. It details the struggles and challenges faced by mariners making a living on the sea, and the impact our society has on people when it makes decisions and laws based on economics, without also considering safety as equally important.

I was completely oblivious to the difficulties and risks facing the men and women who deliver our goods across the sea. The chapters alternate between the crew profiles and the more dry statistics of the ship, computer systems, and history of sea shipping. But I did find that history much more interesting than I expected I would.

I found this book to be a gripping narrative of a cargo ship’s tragic voyage. This is a well written book, and when the author sticks to the main narrative is quite compelling. I prefer not to have to read every author's political opinion, so I could have done with less social commentary. However, it's full of fascinating detail for anyone remotely interested in ships or shipping.


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A heavily padded magazine article, but still good. Did Slade really need to go into the history of the American Revolution? There are hundreds of capsule portraits of characters who disappear by the next page—fortunately, Slade doesn't draw them out too far. Slade constantly misuses the word "exponential," as in:

"Wind speed and force have an exponential relationship, meaning that as the wind notches up, its force doubles, then triples, and then quadruples, and so on. It’s based on a simple formula: wind pressure per square foot = 0.00256 (wind speed)^2."

This makes me wonder what other basic facts she gets completely wrong.

Another flaw is that the narrative is strongly biased, especially against the corporate owner of the El Faro. To me, it seemed like most of the blame fell on the captain for heading right into the hurricane (based partly on mistaken weather reports), and some of what Slade assails as corporate doublespeak sounded completely reasonable. I'd like to know the truth, but we mostly get one side here.

Also, despite all the padding elsewhere, the chapter on recommended safety improvements following the investigation is too brief. I am glad it is there. Also, not the author's fault given the publication date, but I would like to know whether these recommendations have been adopted or not.

Despite these criticisms, the story is definitely spellbinding, and it reads quickly. Recommended. ( )

This is an excellent recounting of the horrifying wreck of an American container ship in a 2015 hurricane off the coast of Puerto Rico. Since the "black box" recorder on the ship's bridge was retrieved (at great peril and expense), the author is able to document the hour-by-hour combination of human hubris and mechanical failure that caused the deaths of 33 mariners. And since she attended the post-accident inquest, Slade is also able to pin the tail on the corporate donkey. There's plenty of neglect and avarice to be spread around.

Quote: "The word "experienced" often refers to someone who has gotten away with doing the wrong thing more frequently than you have." ( )

It was an incident nobody expected to have happen in the 21st century: on 1 October 2015, an American-flagged cargo ship called the El Faro was lost at sea after it sailed directly into the path of Hurricane Joaquin. In an era with GPS, sophisticated weather forecasting, and satellite communications, it was thought that ships could not be lost without trace like that. What happened on board, and why?

This book tells the story of what happened—as reconstructed from interviews and the conversations recorded by the ship’s voyage data recorder — and the context in which the crew operated—as revealed by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation. It’s not just about one captain and his ship: it is an indictment of an entire industry, where profits are slim and safety is first on the chopping block. This is a must-read if you’re interested in nautical disasters, accident investigation, or human performance issues. ( )