El Faro had leaks, holes, other structural issues, former crew members say

(CNN)Three former crew members of El Faro, a ship that apparently sank during Hurricane Joaquin, told CNN the ship had structural problems and questioned whether it should have sailed with a major storm in the region.

The 40-year-old cargo ship never made it to Puerto Rico after it left Jacksonville, Florida, last week, and appears to have sunk near islands in the Bahamas.

The ex-crew members, who each last traveled on the ship at some point this year, said the ship had issues with taking on water.

"The chief cook's room was constantly leaking water," Kurt Bruer, a quartermaster who spent six months on El Faro, said. There were other problems. "The drainage didn't work well on the ship."

The company that operated the ship, Totes Maritime, said in an email to CNN that the ship met all standards and certifications regardless of its age.

"The El Faro was a well-maintained vessel, classed by the American Bureau of Shipping and regularly inspected by that classification society and the (U.S. Coast Guard)," Tote said.

El Faro disappearance: Who are the missing crew members?

But Bruer and the other ex-crew members said the ship was showing its age.

Chris Cash, whose last voyage on El Faro ended in January, said the company seemed interested in maintaining the ship but doing so at minimal cost.

"They were bandaging the ship with extra steel all the time," Cash said. "It seemed like they didn't want to put any money into the ship. When things would break they would just patch it up rather than really fix it."

Marvin Hearman, on the ship when it returned to Jacksonville in late August, said there was rust everywhere on El Faro and compared it to a 40-year-old car. He also said the cook's room leaked a lot of water. Bruer said the ship had holes in its deck.

While everything on the ship was old, everyone felt safe, Hearman said.

Still, he and the others were stunned the ship left while there was a big storm in its potential path.

Cash said: "I was very surprised when I heard about the ship leaving during a storm, but when I saw (the captain's) picture it all made sense."

Cash thought Capt. Michael Davidson was stubborn and cocky, but the other two disagreed that Davidson was to blame.

Bruer, who was terminated by Davidson for a reason he wouldn't disclose, said Tote was at fault for the old ship being permitted to set sail into stormy seas. Hearman said he thought Davidson likely was trying to prove a point to the company that he could do the job.

"He was a good captain," Hearman said.

The shipping company said it trusted Davidson to make the right decision.

"Tote Maritime has great confidence in its highly experienced officers," the company said. It added that it wouldn't comment on the ex-crew members' comments about the ship and the captain.

Captain's plan: Avoid the storm

Tote has said Davidson had a "sound plan" to avoid Hurricane Joaquin, a strategy that only unraveled when the ship's main propulsion stopped working.

The captain had current weather information when he left the port in Jacksonville for the four-day voyage and reported favorable conditions at the outset, Tote Services President Phil Greene told reporters earlier this week.

Given the weather system, the captain's "plan was a sound plan that would have enabled him to clearly pass around the storm with a margin of comfort that was adequate in his professional opinion," Greene said.

Company: El Faro skipper had plan to deal with storm

A friend of the captain agrees with the assessment, describing Davidson as a capable and experienced mariner.

10 photos: The search for El Faro

The plane passes over Eleuthera, another Bahamian island, located about 50 miles east of Nassau. The crew had been mildly concerned about weather before takeoff, but they called the conditions for Monday's search prime, explaining that with few clouds and no whitecaps on the smooth ocean surface, it was much easier to spot and identify debris.

The plane neared the search grid just after the sun rose. The crew timed its departure from Clearwater, just before 5 a.m. ET, to maximize the sunlight. But even with optimum conditions and a wealth of debris on the water, it was difficult to see each piece -- and more importantly, determine if anyone might be clinging to it -- so the plane often made multiple passes over anything the crew deemed possibly recoverable.

Majeska, one of the copilots, snacks on a cinnamon bun while flying the plane and keeping a close watch on the water below. The task of straining your eyes to see debris floating on the water up to a mile in the distance, doubling back and taking a closer look, for a period of about 10 hours is a grueling one, so everyone on board brought plenty of food -- pizza, breakfast burritos, salads, yogurt, bologna sandwiches, sushi -- to keep their energy up for the long mission.

When the HC-130 first took off, the cockpit was dark, the instruments on the control panel offering the only light. Here, the first rays of sun gleam into the cockpit as Lt. Janelle Setta, a copilot, left, and Fielder, the engineer, guide the plane to the search area.

The Lockheed HC-130 that took the CNN crew up is a modified version of the C-130 Hercules transport plane. This model is suited specifically for search-and-rescue missions, whether they be in combat or otherwise. Though Monday's search kept the plane in the air for 10 hours, it landed with more than 15,000 pounds of fuel. A Coast Guard pilot told CNN that in the event of an emergency or change of plans, the plane could have remained in the air several more hours.

From left, Petty Officer 1st Class Jim Fielder, the plane's engineer, Lt. Heather Majeska, a copilot, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Anders Forsberg, who operated the plane's communications, search for debris. Despite the wealth of technology involved in the search for El Faro survivors, eyes are still one of the most important tools in the search, and everyone is expected to keep a look out.

The plane makes a sharp bank to "orbit," or fly back over, a piece of debris that the crew wants to check. On the second pass, the cockpit crew gives it another look, as will the crewmember operating the onboard camera. Here, Petty Officers 3rd Class Chris LaBelle, left, and Mark Strock sit on the edge of the cargo door in hopes of getting a better perspective on the debris.

LaBelle, the navigator, points out the plane's planned grid en route to the search area. The land mass to the left is San Salvador Island, Bahamas, and the grid requires that pilots fly in a 44-mile lane in one direction, make a U-turn almost two miles wide, and then fly back 44 miles parallel to the previous lane. The total flight was about 700 miles, roughly the distance from Minneapolis to Denver.

The HC-130 passes back over San Salvador Island, Bahamas, on its way back to the base in Clearwater, Florida. The starting point for the more than 1,000-square-mile search Monday was just northeast of San Salvador Island, in the Atlantic Ocean. The Coast Guard announced while this plane was airborne that the search for the actual container ship was over and the focus was now solely on survivors.

This image demonstrates the difficulty of spotting survivors or recoverable items, even from the frighteningly low altitude of 500 feet.

"My guess is that he saw that he could outrun the storm, providing everything went right," said Larry Legere, of Maine.

But the ship's main propulsion failed, the ship's owners say, stranding the 33 people aboard in the path of the storm, which had become a Category 4 hurricane.

Authorities have found one body and debris, but have not seen the ship nor any survivors since the cargo vessel lost contact near the Bahamas on Thursday, just as Hurricane Joaquin was churning through the area.

Underwater search

A U.S. Navy salvage unit will join the search for the wreckage of El Faro, a source close to the investigation said.

The National Transportation Safety Board requested the vessel head to the search site and survey the area to pinpoint the ship's location.

The hope is to mobilize the salvage unit by the end of the week, the source said.

Crews found two debris fields -- one about 345 square miles near El Faro's last-known location (36 miles to the northeast of Crooked Island in the Bahamas) and one 81 square miles located 69 miles north of that position.

The U.S. Coast Guard called off its nearly weeklong search for the missing crew of the container ship at sundown Wednesday. LINK

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