STEERING THE SHIP
500 pages. That’s the length of the transcript journalist Rachel Slade had to wade through in researching her 2018 bestselling book, Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro. Assembled from 26 hours of audio pulled from a doomed ship’s data recorder—actual conversations between the crew and the Ahab-like captain—Slade had to sift through the transcription’s technical language to unveil these complex characters and their extraordinary situation, extracting quotes along the way.
The 790-foot-long El Faro was freighting 25 million pounds of goods between Jacksonville, Fla., and Puerto Rico when Hurricane Joaquin devoured the vessel in October 2015. The container ship was ripped to pieces and the entire crew perished, making it the deadliest American shipping disaster in 35 years. The catastrophe was covered by all the major news outlets, and much of the discussion distilled into a single question: How could a vessel equipped with modern technology, in an industry that’s so heavily regulated, suffer such a fate?
Slade took it upon herself to find an answer. Countless hours of rigorous reporting led her to conduct more than 100 interviews with officials, experts, and the families of those who’d been lost on . She attended live hearings by the National Transportation Safety Board in Jacksonville, and even traveled on a two-week voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to better
