By Rachel Slade
Labeled the worst American Shipping casualty since 1983, the sinking of El Faro, the merchant ship off the Bahamas during the Category 4 Hurricane Joaquin on Oct. 1 2015, killing all 33 crew members.
Rachel Slade takes a thorough and forensic approach in her writing to detail this casualty and provides a devastating critique of the repeated failure to learn lessons from previous tragedies.
The author draws on interviews with US Coast Guard officers, El Faro family members and hundreds of pages of audio transcriptions from the ship’s black box to provide real depth and understanding of exactly what happened, as well as explaining some complex issues to the lay reader without being patronising.
