JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Crew members trained regularly in calm waters to handle the lifeboats would instead likely have struggled against buffeting by huge 50-foot waves, a vessel taking on water and listing to one side and winds the Coast Guard estimated reached 140 mph. Life rafts can get torn apart. Lifeboats become impossible to drop into the sea.
The options would have quickly grown limited for the crew of the El Faro container ship last week as Hurricane Joaquin approached.
"Sometimes circumstances overwhelm you. You can do all the planning you want," said Steven Werse, a ship captain and secretary-treasurer of the Master Mates and Pilots Union in Linthicum Heights, Maryland. The union is not affiliated with the El Faro's crew or owners.
"Without power, the ship is really at the mercy of the sea," Werse said.
On Monday, four days after the ship vanished, the Coast Guard concluded it sank near the Bahamas in about 15,000 feet of water. One unidentified body in a survival suit was spotted, and the search went on for any trace of the other crew members. The search continued Tuesday.
A team from the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington was on its way to Jacksonville on Tuesday morning to study the El Faro debris, conduct interviews, and look at documents to find out what went wrong and how to prevent such incidents in the future.
"It's just a tragic, tragic situation," NTSB Vice Chairman Bella Dinh-Zarr told reporters before departing Washington. Asked whether she was surprised no survivors have yet been found, she said: "We have survival factors as a major part of our investigation."
Survival suits are designed to help seafarers float and stay warm. But even at a water temperature of 85 degrees, hypothermia can set in quickly, Coast Guard Capt. Mark Fedor said. He noted the hurricane had winds of about 140 mph and waves topping 50 feet.
"These are trained mariners. They know how to abandon ship," Fedor said. But "those are challenging conditions to survive."
The ship, carrying cars and other products, had 28 crew members from the U.S. and five from Poland.
Coast Guard and Navy planes, helicopters, cutters and tugboats searched across a 300-square-mile expanse of Atlantic Ocean near Crooked Island in the Bahamas, where the ship was last heard from while on its way from Jacksonville, Florida, to Puerto Rico.
A heavily damaged lifeboat from the El Faro was discovered, with no one aboard, Fedor said. Also spotted were an oil sheen, cargo containers, a partly submerged life raft - the ship carried five rafts, each capable of holding 17 people - life jackets and life rings, authorities said.
Phil Greene, president and CEO of Tote Services Inc., said the captain had a plan to sail ahead of the hurricane with room to spare.
Greene said the captain, whose name has not been released, had conferred with the El Faro's sister ship - which was returning to Jacksonville along a similar route - and determined the weather was good enough to go forward.
"Regrettably he suffered a mechanical problem with his main propulsion system, which left him in the path of the storm," Greene said.