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Before the ship sank in a hurricane off the Bahamas, its doomed crew talked of worse weather in Alaska

In their final hours, with winds and giant waves battering the 40-year-old TOTE cargo ship, the crewmen tried to reassure themselves, saying aloud that mariners routinely faced much worse conditions in the Gulf of Alaska.

"Well this is every day in Alaska. This is what it's like," Capt. Michael Davidson, 53, said when he arrived on the bridge of the 790-foot El Faro at 4:10 a.m. Oct. 1, 2015.

Winds were blowing about 70 mph and increasing, investigators later estimated, as the ship drew closer to the path of Hurricane Joaquin, near the Bahamas.

Davidson, who had worked for Arco for years on tankers hauling crude oil from Valdez to the West Coast, said he had been "sleeping like a baby" and there was "nothing bad about this ride."

One of the men on the bridge said something like, "Those seas are for real," but the chief mate said the captain was right.

"That's what I said when I walked up here. I said this is every day in Alaska." He repeated himself, "Exactly my words, this is every day."

"A typical winter day in Alaska," said Davidson. "We're not pounding."

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But it was not to be like a typical winter day in Alaska.

[Captain of doomed ship El Faro: 'We're gettin' conflicting reports']

The ship sank three hours later, killing all 33 people aboard, the worst disaster for a U.S. carrier in more than 30 years.

Built in 1975 and named Puerto Rico, TOTE  bought the vessel in 1991 and renamed it Northern Lights. For years, the ship supplied goods to Alaska, making regular runs from Tacoma to Anchorage, while it was later under contract with the military to support the wars in the Middle East. A decade ago, TOTE transferred the ship to its Puerto Rico route and changed the named to El Faro.

Six microphones on the ship's bridge recorded the haunting conversations of the last hours on the El Faro and preserved them in the voyage data recorder — a device about the size of a basketball — that sank with the ship in 15,000 feet of water. A Navy ship retrieved the device in August from the antenna above the bridge. Audio experts spent more than 1,100 hours deciphering the contents.

The National Transportation Safety Board published a 510-page account Tuesday of 10 hours of conversations relevant to the disaster, the longest transcript ever produced by the agency.

It said some of the sections had to be listened to more than 100 times to make sure the comments were correctly interpreted, a task made difficult by background noise and commotion on the bridge.

The agency has yet to complete a report on the sinking, which occurred after the ship began to take on water, develop a steep list and lose engine power. The investigation is likely focused not just on the mechanical condition of the ship, but also on the captain's level of awareness and response to updated weather forecasts. He rejected at least two requests from other officers to change course.

I was struck by how often Alaska was mentioned as the crewmen talked, even before they hit the worst of the weather — probably because some of the ship's crew, including Davidson, expected they would be going to Alaska with the El Faro later that year.

"I'm not gonna second-guess somebody," the third mate said the night before the sinking, apparently referring to the captain. "The guy's been through a lot worse than this. He's been sailing for a long, long time. He did it up in Alaska."

Earlier, Davidson had told second mate Danielle Randolph, 34, that the conditions would get worse, but the ship could take it and they would avoid the most severe weather.

"Yeah, they're built for Alaska," she said. "Exactly," he responded.

Hours later she told a seaman on the bridge,  "We're just breaking her in and getting it ready for Alaska," and then laughed, "Only difference is, this is warm."

Randolph complained the company did a poor job of communicating, but she thought she was going to Alaska later in the year.

"This ship can't handle this hurricane — sure as hell won't be able to handle Alaska," she said at 2:55 a.m. after a big wave hit. She said she couldn't see well enough to know the direction of the swells.

Her mother and friends later told NTSB investigators that she didn't like the captain and complained about him doing nothing and sitting in his office.

Her mother said she could imagine her daughter saying, "Hey captain, you do know we're headed right for this damn hurricane?"

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At 1 a.m., she had talked about the captain not being on the bridge. "I don't know if he can sleep, knowing all of this."

All talk of how things would be worse in Alaska ended when the ship began to take on so much water that the cars it was carrying below began floating back and forth. The ship began listing to the left, oil pressure dropped and the engines quit shortly after 6 a.m.

At 7:09 a.m., Davidson warned authorities ashore he was going to issue a distress call to the U.S. Coast Guard: "No one's panicking. Everybody's been made aware. Our — our safest bet is to stay with the ship during this particular time — the weather is ferocious out here. And … we're … we're … gonna stay with the ship."

But he realized the ship was going to sink. At 7:20 a.m., Davidson gave orders to abandon ship and get into the rafts.

Theresa Davidson, the captain's widow, later told investigators her husband was no stranger to bad weather because of his work in Alaska. She said it was hard for her and her daughters to hear comments about him taking risks because he wouldn't have done that. "Everything he did was by the book," she said.

The final minutes of the transcript show that Davidson and a seaman were the last ones on the bridge, which must have been tilted at a steep angle by then. The seaman said he needed a ladder, but Davidson said they had no ladder and he had to keep calm.

"Don't panic. Don't panic. Work your way up here," Davidson said.

"You gonna leave me," the seaman said.

"I'm not leaving you. Let's go," Davidson said.

Some of the audio experts who listened to the tapes said they heard the seaman say, "I'm gone. I'm a goner."

"No, you're not," the captain yelled back.

The last words on the recording were that of Davidson at 7:39 a.m., "It's time to come this way."

Columnist Dermot Cole can be reached at dermot@alaskadispatch.com. 

The views expressed here are the writer's and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@alaskadispatch.com or click here to submit via any web browser.

Dermot Cole

Former ADN columnist Dermot Cole is a longtime reporter, editor and author.

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