And the Sinking of El Faro - Thirty-Three Mariners

If you’re looking for the best take on the human side of this disaster, this is the one. Ms. Slade gives an intimate look at a number of the players involved; the mariners, the corporate employees and later, the investigative personnel. The bile will rise in your throat as you come to this conclusion: that, as usual in this country, it all comes down to money. Thirty-three lives were lost because the company exerted pressure on these merchant marines to get to their destination on time on a vessel that had seen better days and had been modified, causing some unforeseen (by the crew) difficulties in intense weather. The Captain also made decisions, perhaps based on his future employment with the company, that impacted the lives of the sailors. Run the Storm (another account in book form) is good if you want more technical marine information but for my money, Ms. Slade’s account is considerably more riveting because she made it about the humans aboard and wove a compelling narrative throughout. If you are only going to read one book about this event, make it this one.

I finally finished this book after sloshing my way through swamps of liberal tripe. The author leaves no leftwing stone unturned. Everyone is blamed for this tragedy except those that caused it. Mainly an inept captain. This read would have been so much more enjoyable if the author eschewed the liberal blame narrative that surfaces with every tragic event. Even climate change got in the act. Please, stick to the story, stick to the facts.

This book could have easily been a FIVE STAR because of the facts and research expended to write a novel of a disaster with no survivors for true inside information, but the author's Liberal/Socialist , anti republican and anti capitalism rants with her undisguised hatred for all things Southern barely makes an otherwise informative read a THREE STAR. Next book leave the politics out, unless it is about political scandal.

At first glance, Rachel Slade’s amazing book is a book about the unlikely sinking of an American shipping vessel, El Faro, during the first of what would become an increasing number of unpredictable megastorms, killing 33 mariners. But it is also one of the most detailed and significant allegories of what it means to be a part of the nation’s largely invisible working class — literally set adrift and set apart from the rest of us for many weeks and months at a time out of view and apparently, out of the reach of regulations that should, in fact, protect it.

I did not read nor watch A Perfect Storm and I generally view such stories as “Man vs. Sea” usually rendered, frankly, as White Man vs. Nature. Into The Raging Sea incorporates some of the male bravado, ego, the obsession with mettle and machismo that can be a part of predominately male environments as just part of her diversity of sources. Utilizing the transcripts from the black box nearly lost to history, Rachel recreates scenes from the last hours of the men and woman on the ship; it is heartbreaking, infuriating, and beautifully done.

Ultimately, this book will make you ask why it is not unlikely that El Faro is not the last major American vessel that will sink, and that the 33 people that died on it without any major repercussions for all of the parties and systems responsible will not be the last hardworking Americans to die because of companies and policies that place profit over integrity and humanity.

A very very sad thing this book is a political rag. Its tragic that the author took the loss of 33 lives and spun it to serve her own liberal agenda and leanings. it is nothing short of pathetic. There are better books to read that focus on the real tragedy not politics.

I have read many an adventure novel that wasn’t nearly as compelling as this true, tragic story. Once I started reading, I could not put it down, except when my sense of despair and frustration as the story unfolded got the better of me, and I had to take a short break. This really is a must-read for anyone in a leadership role, as it is primarily a story of failed leadership, both at the corporate and team level, and the terrible (yet totally preventable) consequences of leadership failure. It is also a sobering case study on the cost our society pays when corporate profit trumps the safety and well-being of the workforce and the environment which we all have to live with. It’s one of the best, and most thought-provoking, books I’ve read all year.

Thorough review of what happened to the El Faro. I agree with another reviewer that there are a few too many digressions. I am a stickler for correct spelling and even though the author was at the convention center for many days, she failed to get Prime Osborn right.

Slade’s Into The Raging Sea is that of instinctive impact. Through her narrative, the reader gains an insight and understanding into the lives of the El Faro crew, disclosing the flawed and misguided passions of people against the power and majesty of the ocean. Through her inconceivable uncovering of details, Slade is able to build a very complicated tale filled with intrigue, adventure, truth and heartbreak; a true page turner!

After reading Ms. Slade’s page turning account of the tragic story of the El Faro, I wanted to help promote the telling of this disaster which could have been prevented had it not been for corporate greed, incompetence, and hubris on the part of so many involved in the events that took the El Faro and her 33 crew members to the bottom of the Atlantic. Ms. Slade not only gives a gripping account of what happened on the El Faro based on personal interviews and recordings from the ship’s black box, she explains the background of the maritime industry, the challenges facing the national weather forecasting service, the bravery of members of the Coast Guard, and most importantly what can happen when efforts to cut costs, lax regulations, and inexperience combine to create a force powerful enough to override the training, skills, and knowledge of experienced mariners.
By the time I finished reading, I was in tears over the tragic and completely avoidable loss of life but also enraged at the lack of corporate responsibility, oversight, and government funding needed to support and protect the dedicated men and women of the maritime industry who serve us in so many ways and who deserve so much better.

Kudos to Rachel Slade for her thorough reporting and well constructed retelling of the sinking of the El Faro in 2015. Found it hard to put down. Slade does a wonderful job connecting the reader to the characters involved and explaining the forces that ultimately led to the disaster. Gripping and very informative. Highly recommend.

This book would have been great had Slade set aside her Progressive political agenda and stuck to the compelling story of a stricken ship and crew. Don’t waste your time and money. You can read the best parts of this story - minus Slade’s political agenda - in the article that she wrote for Yankee magazine. Search “El Faro Yankee Magazine” to find that piece.

First off, let me begin by saying that I went to school with some of these sailors, worked and sailed with these men, so I followed this closely. I didn’t gain any more knowledge from this book than I got from just reading the Coast Guard reports. In my opinion, the author merely tacked on some additional history lessons, and turned the VDR (black box recordings) into a slightly more entertaining read.

Now onto the crux of the matter, how to ruin a book 101... I bought this book to maybe glean some more insights as to what happened to my fellow classmates, instead, I was inundated with political agenda after political agenda from this author. It was to the point where I said aloud to myself ‘this author sounds like a smug self righteous journalist.’ So I looked her up, and yup, I was right. In a book about the tragedy that took 33 lives at sea, the author somehow manages to fit between the lines, attacks on the Catholic Church, insults at ‘preppers’, preaching the perils of global warming, sexism, racism, Trayvon Martin, more racism, how horrible the south is, digs at Strom Thurmond, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump (why is any of that even necessary?)For example, the author can’t even describe the building the coast guard conducted a meeting without going into how Jim Crow laws were used in that building (no &$@!, it was a building in Florida built in 1912, thanks for unnecessarily pointing out the obvious history lesson).
That the author then has the AUDACITY to launch petty little insults at 2nd Mate Danielle Randolph, because Danielle Randolph listened to Fox News is quite disturbing, especially since in my estimation, Danielle was 10 times the woman this ‘author’ could ever amount to.
It’s quite petty, pathetic, and wrong to exploit the tragedy of my classmates to push your agenda (an agenda no one from the El Faro I knew subscribed to).
The book could have been a 3-4 out of 5, but the constant bs in the pages completely turned me off. I showed the other officers on my vessel the highlighted pages in question, asking if it was just me, and they all replied the same... ’F—- That book.’ So yes, sailors agree...

One more caveat. I find it cute that the author studied the merchant marine for a few weeks or months or whatever she did to write her book and make a buck off the tragedy, but for those of us who have been in the industry for ages will tell you, that she’s pretty wrong on a lot of her conclusions, especially when it comes to the Jones Act.
On second thought, I think this ‘book’ was just a hit piece, so the author could hold her head high around her little social circles.

Author does a fine job of telling the complete story of the sinking of the El Faro, including the aftermath of recovering and transcribing the "flight recorder". Does not appear as if the owners were ever held to account for the mis-management of the disaster, other than to offer half a million dollars to family members.

Which should I start with,
Using first names with nearly everybody.
Sunk instead of sank.
Trump is white supremacist?
A whole state (Florida only, not everywhere) suffers tension because of the clearing of George Zimmerman?
He wasn't exonerated, he was acquitted.
This paragraph is supposed to be about Schultz, but it's about blacks.
Slade admits tariffs cost Americans a lot, but seems to think protectionism created all that's good about the shipping industry.

It's difficult to read a book about shipping anyway, but please. If you're going to sink it inch by inch while giving background information, don't zigzag as Slade does. "Case in point--" then she follows with a topic unrelated to the person of that chapter.
Especially while filling the pages with Jeremie, Jackie, John, Jack, John, Jack Danielle and Rich.
There are just too many lives to describe individuals, the officer/crew conflict in one novel. It reduces personal touches to wanting a keychain instead of a voodoo doll, and races through a seaman's sea life with cutesy names to boot.

Don't have a cast of characters like a play.

The dramatic opening will hook you. The cross-examination of the safety officer who didn't know about safety, and the CEO who was even worse are incredible. I am not finished with the epilogue. Perhaps the chapter on spirits, psychic experiences should follow it instead of the coldhearted Keller. The worst of all is when that person manages to guilt-trip Tom Roth Roffy! It's difficult for Slade to go wrong with such awful people. They paint themselves with their own words.
Overall, this is low scoring. Maybe it's the font, but it's hard for my eyes to follow the acronyms. 2-1/2 stars.

This book doesn't even deserve one star. I would have given it zero. Not possible on the store however. Way too much digression into the author's pet peeves as has been already documented by other reviewers.
Totally disrespectful in her cast of characters too by not bothering to identify by name EVERYONE not just the officers. What about the Poles who died? Not on her list of worthies at the start of her book.
Don't waste your money. I read.this as a hard copy from a friend whose Dad had been Coast Guard. Glad I didn't pay for it.

I can't stop thinking about this book. The author puts the reader right on the bridge, with a vividly drawn group of real people. So you can't help but feel the horror of degrading conditions, diminishing options, and the accumulation of errors both large and small. The other reason I can't stop thinking about this book is because the author carefully details the larger forces that combined to create the tragedy - it wasn't just people on a boat in a storm. It was an accident waiting to happen, with the convergence of economic pressure, political weakness, and corporate incompetence over decades. By focusing on the wider context, the book illuminates much more than the El Faro tragedy. It sheds light on what happens when globalism and weak worker-protections collide.

This book would have been a miracle if Rachel Slade managed to find diaries or CCTV footage with audio of the dramatic twenty-four hours before the El Faro sank on October 1, 2015 in the middle of Hurricane Joaquin headed for the Bermuda Triangle. Sadly, most of the conversations and actions recorded in these pages are based on what Slade images must have happened. It is written as a dramatic reenactment based on “hundreds of exclusive interviews with family members and maritime experts.” The first of these two categories could not have known much about the events from the ship as it could not even be found, so it seems unlikely that relatives could have reached those on board over the phone to learn what was transpiring there in these final hours. Experts definitely should have been able to explain the tragedy, and I would have preferred to read a book on this subject that relies fully on scholarly discussions with such experts. A crew of thirty-three died in this disaster. The mystery this fictionalization attempts to answer is how a ship with “satellite communications, a sophisticated navigation system, and cutting-edge weather forecasting could suddenly vanish.” Slade promises that this book has come up with definitive proof. She is sure the crew were terrified as they “struggled to carry out Captain Michael Davidson’s increasingly bizarre commands, which, they knew, would steer them straight into the eye of the storm.” Slade explains this lunatic trust in mad directions in that these men were suffering from “America’s aging merchant marine fleet,” as well as the shipping industry that has “razor-thin profits” while hurricanes grow stronger due to global warming. I believe that the promise of certainty is very much over-stated. The captain might have held the crew at gun-point to make them go into the storm for all we know. The ship might have been taken over by terrorists. It could have been an insurance scam, wherein the crew sunk the ship and retired on some island to recuperate the insurance money for the loss of their lives and vessel. Slade explains that there were transcripts discovered of what the crew were saying in these last twenty-four hours. Such evidence should have been the only evidence presented in dialogue between characters or as quotes from those on the ship. One of the conversations Slade recounts is with the parents of Rich, one of the youths that died in this incident. She describes his room, and the sadness felt by his parents (349). In the “Epilogue”, Slade mentions a problem that seems obvious to me: “The cargo insurers, however, relentlessly searched for ways to get their money back. In the spring of 2017, they launched a $7 million lawsuit against StormGeo… Lawyers representing the cargo insurers argued that the BVS software provided ‘outdated and erroneous’ data about the hurricane’s path, which led Davidson to his fateful decisions” (357). It’s not an awful account, but the back cover builds it up to be the grandest shipwreck non-fiction mystery solution ever written. If you are looking for a relatively laid-back read that is more fiction than fact, then you will enjoy this book. There is some truth, and there are some revelations about the shipping industry here, but a researcher cannot rely on these speculations as if they are facts.
Pennsylvania Literary Journal: Spring 2018 Reviews: Anaphora Literary Press

Terrifying. Not just what Joaquin did to the ship, but how bizarre captain Davidson was. He killed everyone & TOTE is with equal blame, understaffing and undermining the confidence of their employees. Would live to hear that TOTE went bankrupt with payouts after this disaster.

Ms. Slade made good use of the 26 hours of conversations recorded by El Faro's black box. However, there is a great deal more to Into the Raging Sea. All things maritime and all aspects of El Faro were expertly researched by Ms. Slade. The story of the loss of the ship and its 33 person crew is told compassionately and intelligently. Ms. Slade is quite a writer! I learned so much from this book.

I got tired of hearing the political views of the author. I got about 1/3 of the way through before I had enough. There are better books about the tragic story of the EL Faro than this one. Do your self a favor and skip this one

With the conversations crib the doomed ship preserved from the El Faro's black box, this book reads like a novel. A tragic novel where the ending is known and the players must play their part. It serves as a warning to the U.S. Shipping industry and citizenry as budget cuts and corporates greed replace compassion for the people working and running our economy.

Researched in depth and very well written. Part I covers the voyage f El Faro as she sails to her doom, while Part II is the investigation of same. Kindle tools make referencing acronyms and unfamiliar maritime terminology easy--as well as keeping straight the dozens of characters in the book.

Very poorly written. And has nautical terminology changed recently? Slade writes of an El Faro crew member going "downstairs"! What happened to going "below'?

And very awkward writing - graceless - I would rather read the transcripts themselves.