Run the Storm: A Savage Hurricane, a Brave Crew, and the Wreck of the SS El Faro

by George Michelsen Foy

In the bestselling tradition of The Perfect Storm and The Finest Hours, “an exquisitely written and dramatic book…a literary page-turner” (Doug Stanton, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Horse Soldiers)—the 2015 mysterious disappearance of the SS El Faro, a gigantic American cargo ship that sank in the Bermuda Triangle, taking with it thirty-three lives.

On October 1, 2015, the SS El Faro, a massive American cargo ship disappeared in Hurricane Joaquin, a category 4 storm. The ship, its hundreds of shipping containers, and its entire crew plummeted to the bottom of the ocean, three miles down. It was the greatest seagoing US merchant marine shipping disaster since World War II. The massive ship had a seasoned crew, state-of-the-art navigation equipment, and advance warning of the storm. It seemed incomprehensible that such a ship could sink so suddenly. How, in this day and age, could something like this happen?

Relying on Coast Guard inquest hearings, as well as on numerous interviews, George Michelsen Foy brings us “the most insightful exploration of this unthinkable disaster” (Outside), a story that lasts only a few days, but which grows almost intolerably suspenseful as deep-rooted flaws leading to the disaster inexorably link together and worsen. We see captain, engineers, and crew fight for their lives, and hear their actual words (as recorded on the ship’s black box) while the hurricane relentlessly tightens its noose around the ship. We watch, minute by minute, all that is happening on board—the ship’s mysterious tilt to one side, worried calls to the engine room, ship-to-shore reports, the courage of the men and women as they fight to survive, and the berserk ocean’s savage consumption of the massive hull. And through it all, the pain and ultimate resilience of the families of El Faro’s crew. Now with a new afterword, this “tour de force of nautical expertise” (Ocean Navigator) is a masterwork of stunning power.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Survival, Maritime, Audiobook, Adventure, Biography

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2018

About the author

GEORGE MICHELSEN FOY is the author of ZERO DECIBELS: The Quest for Absolute Silence, and twelve critically acclaimed novels. He is the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship in fiction. His articles, reviews, and stories have been published by Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Harper's, The New York Times, and Men's Journal, among others, and he has been an investigative reporter, writer, and/or editor for BusinessWeek, The International Herald Tribune, and The Cape Cod Register. He teaches creative writing at New York University and is married with two children. Foy divides his time between coastal Massachusetts and New York.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“[B]y studying what happened to the El Faro we are seeking to understand a quantum world, of details that are the smallest possible expression of, say, the molecules of silicon or synthetic rubber in a gasket that fails to seal a manhole in the deck. And this can only be apprehended by a discipline that takes into account not just the complexity of such systems but also a higher level of rules that must apply as breakdown occurs, as a chain reaction of quantum-level events begets a further cascade of accidents; until entities as large as a 40-foot container, a 30,000-horsepower engine, a 790-foot hull, or a human mind are dragged helplessly down in an ever-accelerating rush toward destruction…”
- George Michelsen Foy, Run the Storm

Run the Storm tells the story of a massive cargo ship that left port in the Twenty-First Century and ended up back in the Eighteenth. That ship, the El Faro, was equipped with satellite phones, global positioning systems, radar, email, and regularly-updated weather reports. Despite this, the El Faro sailed directly into a Category 4 hurricane that swallowed her whole.

The history of the sea is the history of lost ships. From the moment mankind first set off from safe harbors, they have disappeared without a trace. The twist in this age-old tale is that the El Faro was equipped with a voyage data recorder that captured wheelhouse conversations during the vessel’s final days. Even though technology somehow failed to keep El Faro clear of Hurricane Joaquin, it did allow a salvage operation that found the ship in 15,000 feet of water, and a recovery operation that brought the voyage data recorder to the surface.

A meticulous transcription of the interactions captured by the recorder gives us a gripping, excruciatingly taut glimpse into El Faro’s doom. It allows us to make educated guesses as to what went wrong, even though none of the thirty-three mariners survived.

Because of this unique primary source, the sad saga of the El Faro’s loss has been the subject of several books and articles since her 2015 sinking. Just recently, Rachel Slade gave a very creditable account in Into the Raging Sea. Even though this is a rather recent event, there are many places to turn if you want a solid telling of the last journey of the El Faro.

What sets Run the Storm apart, what makes it a great book, is author George Michelsen Foy’s literary abilities. He is a writer. This is not only a work of journalism, well-researched, detailed, and plausibly reconstructed, but it is a work that demonstrates authorial craft. Foy takes care with his prose. To be sure, there are times when this might be a bit overwritten, times when Foy’s noticeable love of the semicolon creates unnecessarily long and ungainly sentences that you finish long after you forgot how they started.

For the most part, though, his style is evocative. Foy has spent time on the water, and he has a knack for conjuring the sights and sounds and rhythms of the sea. He is also very good at explaining the technical side of the sinking: how water poured through vents on the 2nd Deck and popped a scuttle leading to the 3rd Deck, where the free surface effect caused a list; how the list caused the intake pipe in the oil pump to suck air instead of liquid; how the loss of oil led to the loss of propulsion; and finally, unable to battle the storm, how she rolled over, until the last sounds we hear on the bridge is the captain trying to encourage his helmsman to climb across a room that is now impossibly slanted.

At no point does Foy lay blame on any one person or thing. Instead, he recognizes that while disaster is an orphan, it has many fathers and mothers. One of his themes is that it took a lot of things, both big and little, for this disaster to unfold as it did. There is blame enough to be passed around. For instance, Tote, the El Faro’s corporate owner, kept the ship at sea past retirement age, with lifeboats that would have looked familiar to passengers embarking on the RMS Titanic in 1912. The weather reporting system used by the crew, also had flaws, especially the way in which it badly miscalculated Joaquin’s initial strength. Responsibility also falls on the captain, who ignored his crew’s entreaties to take a safer route away from the storm. Foy digs down into the tiniest detail. He embarks, for instance, on what can best be described as a meditation on the nature of molecules in relation to the failure of a rubber gasket.

Foy is unflinching in his recreation of the sinking itself. He does not look away or lapse into vagaries Though the voyage data recorder provides an invaluable resource, it gives little indication about what happened on other parts of the ship. However, Foy does a good job teasing out the various possibilities regarding the fate of the crew, and in describing the unimaginably terrifying environment that closed around them like a wet noose:

Those who managed to pull a survival suit on will assume they’ll float off and maybe survive, because in water this warm they can live for days. And if the suit has been fastened correctly, it should keep them on the surface. The trouble is, “surface” is the term for a clear interface between water and air, and no such interface exists here with combers between twenty and fifty feet rolling and collapsing on top of you. And even on the waves’ summits, or in a brief calm between them, the mix of water and air whipped off by such winds is not something you can breathe; every time you draw breath you are taking in not oxygen but an emulsion of surf and wind, something that’s half-Atlantic and half-Force 11 and all Joaquin; it will fill your lungs and drown you almost as quickly as if you sank five fathoms under.

Even after the El Faro slips beneath the surface, Foy follows her all the way to the bottom:

Any last pockets of air left in the accommodation are blown out like burst balloons, and if any crew members have survived in there, the shock wave would have killed them at once…The explosion is strong enough to send waves of sound bouncing through the Atlantic, echoing along thermal planes of water defining the SOFAR channel (for “sound fixing and ranging”) between 1,200 and 3,900 feet deep, to be recorded as a series of thuds and screeches by hydrophone arrays the US Navy set up to listen for enemy subs…At 40 mph, even if her vector is diagonal, it would take El Faro less than eight minutes to reach the ocean floor…She hits bottom stern first, roughly a mile to the southwest of where she started to sink. Her rudder and prop assembly, the heel of her flat transom, drive deep into dozens of feet of silt composed of dead fish and amoebas, plankton and minerals, jellyfish and whale bone, seaweed and jetsam, broken ships, dead pirates; all accumulated there over centuries, over millennia…

Foy’s powers of descriptions, his nautical knowledge, his willingness to imagine what it might have been like to stand on those pitched decks amid a surging, tumultuous sea, the air whipped into a frenzy, snatching at breath and clothes, makes this an especially memorable entry in the annals of maritime lore. It is not simply a wonderful book on a ship and her crew and a storm; it is not simply a forensic deconstruction on failing systems and human fallibility; it is a potent evocation of the awe-inspiring power of the ocean, which despite all our technology and combined wisdom and best efforts, cannot be overcome, but only – if one is lucky – survived.

[Karen R · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating and sobering account of the El Faro cargo ship’s disappearance at sea with 33 crew members on board in October 2015. I was impressed by the author’s eye for detail and meticulous research, combing through a huge amount of documentation and data recordings to piece together the hours leading up to the disappearance of the ship. So many avoidable mistakes and regulation violations by the unsuitable and reckless captain who ordered the crew to stay their course and continue sailing towards a raging hurricane. Impressive chronicling of a devastating and avoidable tragedy.

[Namera [The Literary Invertebrate] · Rating 4 out of 5]

For some reason, I've really got into the El Faro sinking recently - I've always liked stories about the sea. I read Into the Raging Sea, which is also about this disaster, but is FAR more popular. That's actually a shame - this one is the better book.

Both detail the tragedy, but Foy's prose has a lyricism (strained at times, admittedly) which Slade, the other author, lacks. Her writing style is too much like a journalist's, while Foy lets his creative energies loose. I would have given this five stars, but was astonished to find that the book actually ends at only 67% is, the rest is taken up by the notes and index. This is particularly galling because the sinking itself is over at 62%, so Foy devotes only a few pages to the legal wrangling that followed the sinking. This is where Slade shines - she actually covered the courtroom drama with Tote, the NTSB, and the Coast Guard.

In short, you want to read both books to get a full picture - Foy's for the sinking, Slade's for what comes next.

[Kurt Bruer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I worked with George in giving details of my experience aboard S.S. El Faro. I last sailed El Faro February 9, 2015. George spent allot of time and research regarding the ship and crew. I hope everyone will read this book.

[Monical · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the second book I've read about the El Faro sinking. This book is very technical. The author has the "John Krakauer" disease --diverting to give you great detail about some technical issue or history about the general topic-- and in this case, doing it repeatedly on the same topics, which is extremely boring. He also is a big fan of weird sentence constructions, which are very hard to read and frequently make no sense. The graphics are dreadful and provide very little insight into the book (and are not referred to in the text, seems like they were a late addition). The good bit about this book is that he used quotes from the boat's black boxes so the dialogue among the crew (at least on the bridge) had a ring of authenticity. I really preferred "Into the Raging Sea" which provided a much better picture of the disaster. It is an incredible story but this book doesn't do it justice.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whoosh, did this book pack a sucker punch: by the last ten percent, the narrative- always engrossing and well-written - had turned so raw and so gripping that I almost felt I couldn’t bear to read it.

Foy is an excellent writer; his sentences flow and he knows the marine world well. He’s pieced together a great narrative and while he surmises in situations with little information, he does so with the needed caveats.

His portrayal of the final tragedy is understated. It’s a tragedy, ultimately, of people, and he does them credit in their time against the storm and the odds.

Up until fifteen minutes from the end, I would have given this five stars. However, the book ended with little analysis. Perhaps the narrative was intended to stand alone. I felt that without any final summation or analysis, though, the story felt unfinished. I was left wishing for closure. Perhaps that was the point, though.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting look into the events around the sinking of the El Faro. It also gives a huge knowledge dump on the Jones Act (which people may have heard of after the hurricanes hit Puerto Rico last year).

The author had access to the voice recordings from the ship, as well as extensive interviews with friends and family of the crew, and the access and information really shows up on the page. It's written very well, taking advantage of all the information to hand but keeping it somewhat linear and story like.

I would recommend this if you are an armchair adventurer!

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is excellent—it's a true-life tale of a maritime disaster. The book was well-researched and clearly and engagingly written. I was unaware (until recently) that a huge container ship, the El Faro—and its 33-member crew—was lost at sea in October 2015 on its regular run from Jacksonville to Puerto Rico. The essence of what happened is that this critically aging ship sailed straight into the eye of vicious Hurricane Joaquin, an immense and slow-moving Category 4 storm. Why this happened is what author Foy teases out: what combination of bureaucracy, lobbying, and corporate greed led to this decrepit ship still being on the water; what in the education, background, and psychology of the crew led them to make the decisions they made even though disaster could have been prevented; and how these things combined with this powerful storm to lead to tragedy. What's extraordinary is that the ship's voice data recorder box was recovered from the ocean floor, where the wrecked ship lay 3 miles below the surface. From that, and from interviewing hundreds of people, the writer was able to tell the nearly complete story. And it's a good (if horrifying) book. If you like this kind of subject matter, read this book!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I looove storm books. It’s an odd favorite sub-genre, but it’s mine. This one has lots of good stuff about it, and is very exciting at points. That said, the writing got a bit up my nose. The author is very, very fond of run-on sentences (one was 9 lines long with a jumble of commas and semi-colons), which made this very hard to read. There’s also an over-abundance of technical stuff about the motor, pumps, rotors, bearings, etc. that got pretty tedious. All that said, I don’t regret reading it, but I don’t know that that would be true of someone less fond of the genre.

[Lauren Brand · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know what it is about ships sinking but it DRAGS me in. About to go watch like 5 documentaries about the El Faro.

[Phil Deschaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoyed this. well written

[Bill Marsano · Rating 5 out of 5]

By Bill Marsano. The loss of a ship in a storm at sea is not an especially unusual occurrence in the ocean trade (we just rarely hear about them; they’re not headline news). But with no survivors? Not even bodies recovered? Without even an SOS? And an all-American ship—American-built, American-owned and registered, with an America crew and officers? And with a wealth of up-to-date communications and navigational aids aboard? Such was the fate of the container ship S.S. El Faro, bound from Jacksonville, Fla. to San Juan, Puerto Rico when she steamed head-on into Hurricane Joaquin on Oct. 1, 2105. Everything already mentioned was unthinkable about the disaster and one thing was unique: the black box she carried—the maritime version of the familiar cockpit voice recorder—recorded all of the conversations on El Faro’s bridge during the 26 hours that led up to being overwhelmed by Joaquin off the Bahamas, plunging to the bottom and striking the seabed at an estimated 45 mph—and that black box, or Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) was recovered after an exhaustive search effort from its Atlantic Ocean grave 15,000 down—deeper than the Titanic. Blending transcripts from the VDR with his considerable writing skills (more than a dozen books, fiction and non-fiction and the knowledge acquired during years as a seagoing officer, George Michelsen Foy reconstructs El Faro’s fatal voyage and explores the many and accumulating reasons that destroyed the ship and the 33 souls aboard. His is a riveting account of a stubborn, arrogant captain who relied on outdated weather reports and dismissed the warnings of his officers; of a worn-out ship poorly maintained; of shipowners who put profit first; of a dangerously erratic hurricane that behaved like no other and bewildered its observers; of the search for the VDR; and the official investigations into the tragedy. Amidst the steadily accumulating facts Foy does not neglect El Faro’s 33 overworked officers and crew: the dead come alive in his moving account. Published simultaneously, the journalist Rachel Slade’s “Into the Raging Sea” tells a somewhat greater length the same harrowing tale. I recommend both. It takes two books to bring home this tragedy and the larger tragedy of the American merchant marine, the world’s largest within living memory and now barely a shell of its former self, and make an impact on readers who assuredly know almost nothing of it. Of the fact, that 95% of American trade travels on foreign ships.—Bill Marsano is a veteran writer and editor who from age 12 spent three summers on tramp freighters in the Caribbean as an illegal and marginally competent cabin boy.

[Nancy Gilreath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Run the Storm was thoroughly researched, but that was diminished both by the irrelevant side comments and poor punctuation. When I came to a sentence informing me that the local bar had cold beer and hot women, I looked for a source. It seems just to be the author’s opinion. Such comments distracted me from the gravitas of the book. I also frequently found myself distracted trying to parse sentences. The run-on sentences, with unusual usage of semicolons and dashes, detracted from the narrative.

I was familiar with the El Faro tragedy, having read the contemporaneous newspaper coverage and because I have friends who work for Tote. I did learn a lot about the ship’s structure and inner workings. I would have liked more of the personal stories of the crew, particularly in the aftermath of the sinking. I understand that families are raw, and perhaps not forthcoming about their deeply personal grief. However, by humanizing the tragedy, the mechanics have more context, and the reader is more invested and more likely to insist that stricter standards apply in the future.

I will likely read the Rachel Slate book as well and am interested to see if together they will present a more complete telling.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not interesting enough to really keep my attention. The narrator made my attention wander instead of grabbing me into the narrative. I couldn't help but compare this to other "storm" or "disaster" nonfiction and it didn't hold up.

[Sally Fouhse · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, so good. Extremely detailed, which some may find tedious, but I enjoyed all the explanations of how merchant shipping works. This tragedy is a textbook example of a failure cascade, but that is only clear in hindsight. I hope a movie is made from this book.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember the 2015 sinking of the container ship El Faro when it got caught in Hurricane Joaquin in the Caribbean, and wondered how and why a U.S. ship with modern navigation devices and availability of accurate weather forecasts would have been caught in the area of the storm. Trying to understand how that happened led me to pick up several books dealing with that maritime disaster. Each was based on the Coast Guard inquest hearings, the ship's voice recordings recovered after the sinking, as well as numerous interviews of family members, rescue team members, and corporate employees familiar with the incident.

The first of the books I found was Tristram Korten's "Into the Storm: Two Ships, a Deadly Hurricane, and an Epic Battle for Survival". The second was titled "Into the Raging Sea", by ​Rachel Slade. The third book was this one, "Run the Storm: A Savage Hurricane, a Brave Crew, and the Wreck of the SS El Faro", by George Michelsen Foy.

All three describe in graphic detail how a huge American container ship found its way into the eye of a hurricane and was sunk with all hands in October, 2015. The ship tracked the storm for several days, and should have easily managed to sail around the worst of the hurricane. Yet it did the opposite. The books detail how the path of the hurricane was difficult to predict, how it diverted from the expected path, and how the ship's captain failed to understand that the shipboard storm data he was receiving was not as current as he believed. He also appeared to be overconfident in the ability of the ship to ride out the storm, expecting to be on the edges of the hurricane heading FROM the storm instead of INTO it. It's also quite probable that the captain was feeling pressure from the home office to deliver his cargo on schedule and without wasting valuable fuel and time by steering an alternate path.

While there were no survivors of the sinking of the El Faro, the authors were able to reconstruck the events by making use of voice recordings recovered after the sinking. Like black boxes on commercial aircraft, the SS El Faro ​had a voice recording system ​on the ship's bridge which recorded the conversations of the Captain and deck officers as the storm developed and worsened. The recordings continued ​from just prior to the ​development of the ​storm, right up until the time the captain order​ed​ "abandon ship" as the ship was going down. The recordings give a sense of building tension as the storm worsened, and as some of the ship's officers tried to talk the Captain into navigating a longer but safer path. The books also identify problems with the ship beyond the misunderstandings associated with the hurricane path and speed. Cargo shifted during the storm, faulty deck coverings allowed water to flood certain compartments, a poor design resulted in loss of the ships propulsion engines due to loss of suction on lube oil pumps ​caused by the ship's port side list, the lifeboats were outdated, the ships anemometer, or wind gauge, had been broken for years, etc., etc., etc.

I would not hesitate to recommend any of these books for readers interested in maritime stories. Tristram Korten's book, "Into the Storm", includes a gripping description of how the Coast Guard responded to the sinking of ​the SS El Faro as well as the successful rescue of the crew on another ship caught in the effects of the hurricane, the MV Minouche. The heroism of the Coast Guard rescue helicopter team and especially the elite Coast Guard swimmers is must reading.

Rachel Slade's book "Into the Raging Sea", uses ​a ​more ​​dramatic writing​ style​. It contains less information about the Coast Guard rescue teams sent into the storm to try to​ find and​ rescue survivors, ​but goes into more detail about the ​search and ​recovery of the audio recording ​"black box" ​from the El Faro. She's also a little more critical of the ship's Master, Captain Davidson, and the decisions he made as the storm sailed into the hurricane. She also pays ​a more complete ​tribute to each member of the crew by including each crewman' name, place of residence, and position.

George Michelsen Foy, in his book "Run the Storm", doesn't include all the details of the Coast Guard rescue efforts that Tristram Korten described, nor the details of the recovery of the "black box" as in Rachel Slade's book, but gives a good description of the ship's details, it's workings, and insights into the normal jobs of the ship's crew. His writing is clear and descriptive, and makes the book an easy read. While not quite as critical of the Captain as Rachel Slade was, Foy still leaves you with the feeling that the Captain's insecurity about his job with the Company played a role in his decision to challenge the storm in order to avoid giving Corporate management another reason to be critical of his performance.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

“That serious trouble might be in the cards for a ship located near the Bahamas on this particular morning should have surprised no one, because of Joaquin.”

So writes George Foy early in his excellent book about the sinking of the cargo container ship El Faro. I was dumbfounded by this accident when it happened because the track of the ship basically showed it steaming straight into the teeth of hurricane Joaquin. Why would a captain do that given modern access to forecasts and radar plots?

We find out in the book that there were extenuating circumstances: the forecasts for Joaquin were wrong until about the last 24 hours; the captain was trying to skirt the edge of the hurricane not drive directly into it. Despite all that the responsibility for the sinking of El Faro lies directly at the feet of the captain. He could have gone much further south, and indeed at least two of his mates asked him to, but he refused to do this. Had he done it, the ship would not have sank. As they approached the hurricane, in the most critical hours for decision making, he remained in his stateroom, even when the 2nd mate asked him to come up and check the latest hurricane forecast. They could even have turned and run from the storm, but nope. By the time the captain realized he needed to do something different, because the ship was already listing, their only recourse was to turn straight toward the very center of the hurricane, where they finally sank.

The Coast Guard found the bridge recorder which adds to our understanding of the decisions taken in the last 24 hours of her journey. This is the dramatic moment when the captain realizes the ship is lost and he must order abandon ship, which given that the wind was 100-130 knots was hopeless:

“All right,” Davidson yells back. “All right, let’s go ahead and ring it—ring the ‘abandon ship.’ ” For the first time in her life the second mate does what no mariner ever wants to do: she smacks the brightly colored button that signifies the ship is lost. A shrill bell, different from the general alarm, starts to clang, seven times in a row, then another seven—and keeps on clanging. “Tell ’em we’re goin’ in!” Davidson calls. “Can I get my vest?” Randolph asks the captain. “Yup,” Davidson says. “Bring mine up, too, and one for Frank.” “I need two,” Hamm says—is the big AB actually joking in this? “Bow is down,” the captain remarks; and El Faro begins to die.”

And so she does with 33 souls onboard.

[Aimee Massey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books are so bad they are hard to read. "Run the Storm" is hard to read because it is so good.
This book tells the story of the container ship El Faro, which sank off the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin with the loss of all thirty-three crew aboard. I knew about the tragedy before I ever heard of the book; I remember it being in the news a lot when it happened, back in 2015.
But Foy, who is himself a former sailor, tells this nonfiction tale in such a way that it could almost pass for fiction. Many times while reading, I caught myself thinking that "This time, they'll be able to make it safely to port" forgetting that this is nonfiction and they didn't make it to port.
The sinking of El Faro was totally and completely preventable. The shipping company's cost-cutting, regulation-bending and their general non-responsiveness to complaints; the captain's apparent unwillingness to go against the company's advice; lack of accurate weather forecasts; a ship full of weak points, below-par safety features and the lack even of an onboard anemometer; all these factors combined into a cascade that once it got started, made the preventable accident inevitable, and inevitably unsurvivable.
The ship was equipped with a voice-data recorder on the bridge, and Foy makes extensive use of transcribed conversations between the captain, his mates, and the AB's (Able Seamen) on various watch shifts. These serve not only to tell the story, but to humanize the people involved.
And in the last pages before the post-sinking analysis and wrap-up, Foy includes a transcript of the last words ever spoken on El Faro, between Captain Michael Davidson and AB Frank Hamm, after the Abandon Ship alarm has been sounded. The reader is made aware that most of the crew have probably already met their end, and Davidson and Hamm must know that they are about to meet theirs as well, but Davidson still encourages Hamm to "get to safety, follow me!" The transcription ends by noting "A yelling starts and continues till the termination of the recording."
I have read tons of disaster and true-crime books, but few have left me feeling as sad and drained as "Run the Storm." And the even greater tragedy is the avoidable human error, corporate indifference and failure to learn from past tragedies.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three years ago Hurricane Joaquin destroyed a huge merchant marine container ship, El Faro, traveling from Jacksonville, Florida to Puerto Rico, killing all 33 crew and officers on board. The remains of the ship are now 3 miles below the ocean surface. The reader begins the first page of the book knowing these facts.

Why would someone want to read this story then? Suspense most of all! Odd, huh, when the reader already knows the outcome? Yes, the suspense is exquisitely crafted, fact by fact. What facts you might ask.? Foy had an incredible resource for understanding what happened on board the ship during the fierce storm: the documents made public in the inquests by the Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board, including every word said by staff in the bridge house during their last hours trying to manage the giant ship while it's being destroyed by a particularly fierce hurricane. (El Faro's "black box" was retrieved from the ocean floor and it's contents made public during the inquests.)

Not only does the reader learn the human and corporate reasons the ship is destroyed, but Foy introduces each of the 33 people on board and we know what they are doing and saying during their last hours alive on El Faro. Their photos are in the front of the book and I constantly flipped from the story to the photos of these 31 men and 2 women who made their livings on the sea, most for many years. I'm not likely to forget Able Seaman Frank Hamm, the helmsman, steering the massive ship in his and the ship's last hours.

Foy is not the only writer who tells El Faro's, story. There's another El Faro book, Into the Raging Sea, written by Rachel Slade. I'll be taking a look through it too. A third El Faro book by a Miami journalist is not in the same league as these 2 books.

[Recoco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Run the storm by George Michelson foy is about the tragic ending of El Faro. It tells about the chain reaction of events that inevitably led to the sinking of the el faro.
The el faro left Miami on a routine round trip to Puerto Rico. Even though it was built in the Cold War era, it still had all the modern equipment necessary for seafaring such as radar, SAV-C (for weather) anemometer (it was broken though). The ship was about 50,000 tons, and at top speed could travel almost 25 knots.
As the ship arrived around the Bahamas, reports came in that there was a tropical storm to the south of them. The seas began to churn and wind speeds began to pick up. This is where the small problems turned into big ones which eventually sank the ship. From faulty equipment to bad communication to arrogance, the ship was never heard of again. Later, the ship was discovered 15000 feet under the ocean.
The author obviously has done his research and has been in the sea a fair amount of times, so I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is even remotely interested in the sea and weather. It’s action backed and very detailed.

[Claudia Remenar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've long been drawn to books about shipwrecks. Usually my forays have been 19th Century Arctic wrecks and subsequent stories of survival. My son also likes this genre. So I was intrigued when he suggested Run the Storm about a modern major shipwreck that took place during Hurricane Joaquin in 2015. My takeaways:

I read this book almost in one gulp, my heart pounding in my chest knowing that it would sink and that everyone would die.

It lays out many of the personal stories of the 34 lives lost and what might have been done to prevent this, both by the corporation and the captain.

Sometimes it veered into very technical areas of engineering and physics, so I learned to let myself skim to get the general idea.

And lastly, about the commas and long paragraphs that are only one sentence: Again, I learned to look past it for the story. Also, at times when describing something like a hurricane, a long sentence feels right because it is all coming at you at once.

All in all, a GREAT read.

[LInda L · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great -- despite the fact that I could not remember when it happened. And it wasn't that long ago!! Anyway, all those lives lost partially because "corporate" was too stupid and cheap to listen to anyone. And the captain was way too hardheaded for his own good. The disaster was, of course, somewhat his fault, but that storm -- aptly named "the assassin", was more than an old ship could handle. I kind of skimmed some of the technical parts, but the rest of it was so exciting, so thrilling, so sad...……….. Imagine being on that ship and KNOWING there was no way to survive. And the descriptions of how they probably died was horrible -- did not need to know that. The writing was great -- will check the library for other books. I kept thinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald and he even mentioned it a couple of times.

[Bonita Braun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unsure of what this book wanted to accomplish. Questions about this sinking remain for me. Why was no one on shore observing where the ship was going not even the owners. And those on shipboard seemed more passive than I thought they might have been.

The take away from reading this for me, there was a terrible shipwreck in a big hurricane and no one except family members really cared. Minor (ineffectual) improvement and regulations followed.

Lots of research, lots of backstory, little about the time from 12:00 am until 7:30 when the ship finally sunk. And why was Hamm struggling so much at the end, not explained well although I believe I know why.

I do not think this book honors the losss of life sufficiently although I applaud the author for extensive research.

[Nabil Alanbar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Run the Storm is a harrowing story about how the accident chain is both longer and shorter than we tend to think it is in any loss of life accident.

In this case, there are so many things that contributed to the sinking of the El Faro, and the death of 33 people; everything from a computer glitch causing a graphic to update 24 hours late, to an aged gasket, to fear of losing one's job, contributed to the tragedy.

But there are also some very clear, specific moments and decisions that, had they gone even slightly differently, the El Faro and her crew would have taken a beating, but almost certainly lived through the storm.

In the end, I enjoyed this book, and if you have any interest in a very human discussion about how bad things happen to good people, this is the book for you.

[Clarke Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

One might be forgiven for thinking that nowadays, ships do not sink that often, and while that might be true, it still happens. In this particular case, a large but relatively old cargo ship sailed right into a hurricane, with catastrophic results. This book provides a lot of useful information on weather, modern shipping, and the operation of steam-powered freighters. This book is in many ways an autopsy on a maritime accident, and it is interesting to see how a pattern of human error, corporate behaviour, and misinformation inexorably led to disaster, despite all our modern technology that previous sailors could not have imagined.

[Toni Stinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was written by someone who likes to hear himself talk. The author, a creative writing professor seemed to be driven by the motto, “Why use 5 words when you can use 25?” The sentence structure tended to long and run-on, the narrative was thick with similes and smugness. The sad thing is that the overblown writing kept the author from being able to adequately share his knowledge about boating. Sadly, where he could have used more words, he chose to skimp.

The event is compelling, sad and tragic, and the subject, not the style, kept me going. I’ve read all three of the books on El Faro published in spring 2018, and this one ranks lowest.

[Sara G · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one gets 2.5 stars. The final act kept it from a lower rating, when the full scope of the tragedy came into focus. The book does a good job detailing what contributed to this maritime disaster, doubling back over itself to make its points - but I feel it could have used an editor. I found the language overly ornate - some sentences were the length of full paragraphs and could have been cut down for clarity’s sake. I also did not like that the author made it seem as though Hurricane Joaquin sank El Faro on purpose - even after he immediately acknowledged that storms aren’t sentient, he continued to imbue Joaquin with mysticism and murderous intent, which I found disrespectful. The writing gave me the impression the author was trying to emulate Erik Larson. In addition, the author used a lot of nautical terms - perhaps drawing from his own maritime background - that weren’t explained and ended up confusing me. Again, I feel this muddied his thesis about the numerous way the El Faro’s sinking could have been prevented, and what steps the commercial shipping industry needs to take now. I was looking forward to reading this book because I’d covered the El Faro disaster at the Florida TV station where I work - but for those who want to go in-depth on the tragedy, I feel reading news coverage of the NTSB hearings may be more insightful and fruitful.

To end on a more positive note, I did come away with so much respect for people who work in the maritime industry, who subject themselves to great risk to transport the products most of us take for granted in our everyday lives. A friend of mine who works on an oil tanker picked this book for our book club, so I’m looking forward to talking with him about it.

[Linda Chrisman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much, much better book in all ways than the other book on the same subject. Better written, much more concise, the focus is on the people who died in this tragedy. The photos of the crew, the focus on their lives make them not just numbers in a tragic shipwreck but highlight the fact these were real people with real lives. I criticized the other book for not even mentioning the names of the Polish riding crew until they were included only in the list of the dead. This book shows them as people with personalities and families. The people who died on this ship were ultimately the victims of corporate greed. I hope the company shareholders remember this one day.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it was certainly and interesting read, I think that the author could have used a bit more fact presenting and a lot less flourish. He spent so much time trying to embellish events and positively gushing about the "perfection" of the storm that it got a great deal irritating. There were also parts where he clearly was a lot more interested in spreading political claptrap than anything else, though at least he had the decency to admit that it didn't have much to do with events on the ship and little to do with the sinking. He was just making political statements in order to spread his opinion to the readers for the sake of doing so.

[Gary Detrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

It really picks up in dramatic effect just after midpoint in the book. Well written and an exceptionally detailed account of all the entities involved. Foy expands on the documented information, organizatonal negligence and possibilities, and is vived in his writing style... "occasionally, a wave will reach close to fifty feet, the height of a five-story building, a dark mass of water streaked like a rib-eye steak, only instead of fat veining the liquid flanks, these are white tendons of water fury stretched by the massive energy of wind".