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Barbara Liston News

26 Feb 2016

US Coast Guard Wraps up First Phase of El Faro Disaster Probe

El Faro (File photo: TOTE)

The U.S. investigation into the deadly sinking of the El Faro cargo ship during a hurricane last fall shifted direction on Friday, as the Coast Guard wrapped up its initial public hearings on the accident that killed all 33 people onboard. The agency will now wait to see if key evidence can be recovered from the shipwreck. In April, searchers will make a second attempt at finding a voyage data recorder that could provide detail on the ship's sinking off the Bahamas. The recorder…

19 Feb 2016

Widow of El Faro Crewman Seeks Stronger Oversight of Ships

El Faro (File photo: TOTE)

The widow of one of the 33 crew members killed when the El Faro sank in a hurricane last fall called on Friday for stricter oversight of decisions by shipping companies and their captains to sail in adverse weather. Rochelle Hamm's husband, 49-year-old Frank Hamm of Baltimore, died on Oct. 1 when the El Faro went down off the Bahamas in the worst cargo shipping disaster involving a U.S.-flagged vessel in more than three decades. The U.S. Coast Guard began hearings this week to investigate the sinking.

16 Feb 2016

US Coast Guard Hearing Probes El Faro Sinking in Hurricane

El Faro file photo: Tote

The captain of the U.S. cargo ship that sank off the Bahamas in a hurricane last fall, killing all 33 people on board, was responsible for decisions that put the vessel in the path of the storm, a shipping company executive testified on Tuesday. Captain Michael Davidson, a veteran mariner from Maine, was at the helm of the 790-foot (241-meter) El Faro for its doomed cargo run between Florida and Puerto Rico. The ship disappeared on Oct. 1 after he reported losing propulsion and taking on water. U.S.

16 Feb 2016

U.S. Coast Guard's El Faro Probe Starts Today

The U.S. Coast Guard begins hearings on Tuesday to investigate whether misconduct or negligence were factors in the sinking of the cargo ship El Faro during a hurricane last fall, an accident that left the vessel's 33 crew members dead. The 790-foot (241-meter) El Faro went down off the Bahamas on Oct. 1 while on a cargo run between Florida and Puerto Rico. It was the worst cargo shipping disaster involving a U.S.-flagged vessel in more than three decades. The Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation will first trace the history of the ship by examining its inspection reports, crew qualifications and past operations. Officials from Tote Maritime Puerto Rico…

12 Nov 2015

Salvors Find Bridge of Sunken El Faro

File photo: Crews equipped with underwater search equipment, including a voyage data recorder locator, side-scan sonar and an underwater remote operated vehicle, search for missing wreckage of El Faro. (U.S. Navy photo by John Kotara)

A salvage team looking for the voyage data recorder for the sunken freighter El Faro said on Thursday it had located the bridge deck that separated from the wreckage, but the ship's black box was still missing. National Transportation Safety Board investigators said the search continues for the recorder, which normally is affixed to the bridge but appeared to have detached when the ship sank in a hurricane last month, killing 33 mostly American crew onboard. The bridge was located about one mile from the main wreckage, said Eric Weiss, an NTSB spokesman.

02 Nov 2015

US Navy Salvage Team Seeks to Confirm El Faro Wreckage

El Faro (File photo: TOTE)

A U.S. Navy salvage team prepared on Sunday to launch a remotely operated submersible to confirm that wreckage discovered near the Bahamas was that of the cargo ship El Faro, lost in a hurricane last month along with its 33 crew members. The team's mission is to document the shipwreck and any debris field, and to retrieve the sunken vessel's voyage data recorder - similar to an airplane's black box - as part of an investigation into its loss, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

14 Oct 2015

Family of Sunken El Faro Crewman Files $100 Mln Lawsuit

El Faro (File photo: TOTE)

A lawyer for the family of a missing crew member from the El Faro cargo ship, which sank off the Bahamas in a hurricane two weeks ago, said he filed a $100 million lawsuit on Wednesday against the owners of the ship. The lawsuit on behalf of the estate of Lonnie Jordan, one of the 33 crew members presumed dead, was filed in Jacksonville, Florida, court against Tote Services Inc and Tote Maritime Puerto Rico, attorney Willie E. Gary told reporters outside the Duval County courthouse, where he was surrounded by relatives of the crew.

09 Oct 2015

Collision Course with a Hurricane: How Doomed US Ship Met its End

El Faro (File photo: TOTE)

The ill-fated U.S.-flagged El Faro cargo ship sunk by Hurricane Joaquin was sailing at near full speed into the center of the storm before it lost propulsion amid mountainous waves and brutal winds, according to ship tracking data. The data on Thomson Reuters Eikon raises questions about the ship owner's assertion that the vessel's captain had chosen a "sound plan" to pass around Joaquin "with a margin of comfort" but was then thwarted by engineering problems. It shows that even…

06 Oct 2015

Search for Ship Lost in Hurricane a Big Challenge

Deep seas may complicate efforts to find the sunken U.S. cargo ship lost off the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin, a federal safety investigator said, as a search and rescue mission for 32 missing crew stretched into a sixth day. A U.S. National Transportation Safety Board team arrived on Tuesday in Jacksonville, Florida, the port the El Faro departed from last week en route to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The ship disappeared in what maritime experts have called the worst cargo shipping disaster involving a U.S.-flagged vessel in more than 30 years.

19 Aug 2015

Treasure Hunters Find $4.5 mln in Rare Spanish Coins

Photo: 1715 Fleet - Queens Jewels, LLC

Florida treasure hunters found a trove of $4.5 million worth of Spanish gold coins 300 years to the day after a fleet of ships sunk in a hurricane while en route from Havana to Spain, the salvage owner said Wednesday. The 350 coins found on July 30 include nine rare pieces, known as royal eight escudos, which were being transported to the King of Spain, according to Brent Brisben. His company, 1715 Fleet - Queens Jewels, owns the rights to the wreckage. Only 20 such coins were known to exist prior to the recovery of the nine royals, Brisben said.

30 Jul 2014

Family Finds Sunken Treasure Off Florida Coast

A Florida family scavenging for sunken treasure on a shipwreck has found the missing piece of a 300-year-old gold filigree necklace sacred to Spanish priests, officials said on Tuesday. Eric Schmitt, a professional salvager, was scavenging with his parents when he found the crumpled, square-shaped ornament on a leisure trip to hunt for artifacts in the wreckage of a convoy of 11 ships that sank in 1715 during a hurricane off central Florida's east coast. After the discovery last month, a team of Spanish historians realized the piece fit together with another artifact recovered 25 years ago. It formed an accessory called a pyx, worn on a chain around a high priest's neck to carry the communion host. The dollar value is uncertain.

05 Jun 2014

Florida Ship's Crew Arrested on Gun Charges in Honduras

The crew of a Florida-based shipwreck salvage company has been held for a month in a Honduras jail after authorities accused them of gun smuggling, a company spokesman said on Thursday. Stephen Mayne of the Tarpon Springs-based Aqua Quest International said the company had a contract with a local municipality to do salvage work. Mayne said the company told port officials in advance they would be carrying guns for protection against pirates. "We didn't just show up out of the blue. This was all pre-arranged," Mayne said. Coronel Antonio Sanchez, a spokesman for the Honduran armed forces, said the crew was arrested because they did not have permits to possess guns in the country. "In Honduras, you can't carry guns without the appropriate documents," Sanchez said.

29 Apr 2014

Genetic Yacht Lab Maps Sea Life Looking for Cures

A team of scientists has begun collecting the genomes of sea creatures off the Florida coast in the hopes that unmapped species, some of which have the capacity to reverse disease and injury in themselves, may hold the key to new treatments for humans. Of about 250,000 marine species identified so far, scientists have sequenced the genetic material of only about three dozen, according to University of Florida neuroscientist Leonid Moroz. To speed up the process of making potential new discoveries, a team led by Moroz used a yacht loaded with a fully equipped genomic laboratory to do the sequencing on the ocean in real time. The scientists sequenced 22 organisms during two test runs off Florida's Atlantic coast near the Bahamas over two weeks ending in early April, Moroz said.