Just finished it. 4 things struck me.
I 'm a lifelong sailor in small dingies to trans-oceanic, including some storms, so I listen to the pros. Also a lifelong business executive, so I listen to the suits. Also a voter, so I watch the government and the politicians.
One of the key principles drilled into me was amiss here: “A good navigator never relies on a single source of information.” Cross-check everything. Resolve differences. Evaluate risk. Davidson failed terribly. And the suits failed to provide the ships with the tools to do some of that cross-checking.
No business can mount a defense against problems, e.g loss of a ship and 33 lives, if it does not employ people who are qualified to make informed judgements about the quality of the people on the front lines. In this case, the company seems to have had no real understanding of the operations of its business. Fortunately, it was not in the business of nuclear arms manufacturing, not that that is any consolation. No one expects the CEO to be a sailor, but he remains fully responsible for insuring the company does have such skills in the right place. The book and the CG seem to be a bit weak on this principle.
3.Many of the problems described in the book arise from the tension of speaking to power weighed against the risk of adverse career effects. Slade speaks to the history of the absolute power of the ship’s master, but it also seems to be at work with the power of the company over the master. I finished the book wanting more analysis of the challenge and possible solutions to these organizational behavior issues. Culture counts.
Lots of government/political failures to define their role and stand up to the political winds. Business money before human safety. Foxes in the henhouse.
I don’t think many mariners fully trust the Coast Guard to conduct a objective investigation since as regulators they obviously have a dog in the fight. But I think what Slade says here is accurate:
I felt that those representing the private interests—the shipping company and ABS—had considerable fire power. Their legal teams were well paid and vast; they had a prosecutorial fervor about them. In great contrast, the NTSB and USCG were represented by government-paid investigators. These people are not lawyers and consequently, they don’t think like lawyers. They were there to untangle the details of the case.
The biggest difference between the Deepwater Horizon hearing and the El Faro where the legal teams representing parties of interest. The teams in both hearings where, as Slade says, well paid and vast but… the civil claims BP, Transocean and Halliburton faced where enormous and unsettled which caused them to fight amongst themselves.
Often during the DWH hearing I’d be disappointed with the USCG’s cursory questioning of a witness but, to my relief, the BP or TOI lawyers would sink their teeth in to get us answers.
And in that hearing a couple of the families of victims (and even on rig worker was not killed) got to cross examine the witnesses. Some of those lawyers where bulldogs.
Conversly, at the El Faro trial, the parties of interest mostly (not everytime) seemed to agree on wanting to move on as wuickly as possible.
That said the witness tampering (as I call it, Slade calls it “time prepping witnesses in order to control the conversation”) was highly pernicious in both cases!
The other big difference was that in the El Faro investigation several parties in interest were actually members of the various panels, which I still find astonishing.
John,
I made a formal request to the Commandant of the Coast Guard to be included as a “party of Intrest” for the MBI hearings. My request was denied. As the father of the CE. I did not have financial intrests. My concern was a families concern to ask pertinent questions.
So Sad
At one of the El Faro hearings that I attended there was a previous crew member there and all he did was talk about other crew members that got bought off and they all showed up with a Lawyer and were wearing a brand new suit.
This guy kept saying that he hoped that he could even sail anymore after what he was going to say about Tote and the El Faro. He was afraid of being Black Balled!
Well, when it came time for him to testify, he had a Lawyer and a Brand New Suit and all that he said was not even close to what he said to me. He did say that the El Faro had problems but never said a word about Tote. I tried to talk to him on a break (we had spent quite a lot of time talking during previous breaks), he would not even talk to me!
I really wish someone would looking into the DPA’s testimony and compare what he said during the earlier hearings to what he said at the last one. So much of what he testified to during the first hearing did not match with what we learned once the found and retrieved the Recorder. I was so waiting for someone to call him out on it but NO one did!
Hi, I recently read the findings and was disappointed. My Background I worked at Sun Shipbuilding where the ship was built, it was a different name when delivered. My job was in the Test/Op gang as shift engineer.
The Chief Eng and I would inspect main Eng Lube oil sump before closure. My memory of Lube Oil suction pipe was that it was on centerline and aft end of sump. It was explained to me that was to ensure positive suction under listing conditions (port or Stbd)
We would stop on numerous occasion on Sea trials and the ships were extremely tender. The ship had very flat bottoms, and in hurricane once propulsion was lost the ship motion doomed vessel
When building vessel the economic life was 15to20 yrs, Ships that old are disasters waiting to happen
I will continue to say prayers that the deceased are at peace
I don’t know how I missed this post but I find the above kind of sadly amusing. The CEO of General Dynamics made that much last year alone. If it took Somerville almost 11 years to make that much he is grossly underpaid by American executive pay standards. No wonder ABS did such a miserable job on El Faro, it’s a low budget, low class outfit.
I think it was a 6 year period and not 11. Apart from that it is hard to compare ABS (Total Revenue $765,380,672) as a rather small local player with GD ( 30.9 billion in 2017) which is a massive global player. Salaries depend largely on revenue and profits made as well as risk of operation. Also GD pays taxes while ABS contributes 0 dollars to the US economy as they are exempted from paying tax.
I am so sorry to hear this. One of the big differences between the Marine Electric MBI and this one was the lack of adversarial pressure. Officers unions provided top attorneys. Here, no one fought the side of the officers, engineers and crew.
You might want to check out the book that came out. This is a magazine feature she wrote earlier. Rachel turns up a lot of new facts in the book – and hits some of the points you are raising here.