Coast Guard ending search for crew members missing from cargo ship that

The agency’s investigation could take up to 18 months.

“We do think (the El Faro is) near that last-known position”, Fedor said. “Our prayers and thoughts go out to the family members and we will continue to offer support during this hard time”, read the statement.

Earlier, federal investigators said they still hoped to recover a data recorder from the ship.

The device preserves the last 12 hours of engine orders and communications from the bridge.

The data recorder is created to send out auditory pings for roughly 30 days after it hits the water. While crew members have not been officially identified, media outlets have reported the names of 18, with a few from Jacksonville, Cape Coral and others part of a close-knit mariner community in Maine, including the ship’s captain, Michael Davidson.

“TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico’s focus has been and will continue to be on the safety and well-being of the seafarers of the El Faro“, Horton said in an email.

Brennan noted that El Faro means “The Lighthouse”.

She said the probe promised to be hard given that the ship sank in an unknown location, possibly in 15,000-feet deep waters.

The storm swept across a large area of the Bahamas, and its eye passed over Samana Cay in the southeast portion of the island chain.

“Obviously this is a huge challenge”, said Bella Dinh-Zarr, vice chairman of NTSB. “We have good reason to believe we lost something”, Murray said.

“I know that the Coast Guard along with our brethren in the Navy and Air Force as well as the commercial tugboats that were out there helping us did all that they could…”, Foder said. “But we will find out what happened”. It was to sail to San Jose, Puerto Rico.

Laurie Bobillot saved the email she got from her daughter, a second mate on El Faro, as the ship was about to face Hurricane Joaquin. The U.S. Coast Guard says they are no longer searching for the ship as it is believed to be at the bottom of the sea.

The ship was crewed by 28 US citizens, as well as five Polish nationals who were contractors hired to perform repairs and maintenance. And was the mechanical trouble caused by work that was being done in the engine room at the time?

But officials have acknowledged there is scant chance of finding survivors given El Faro disappeared in ferocious winds and seas up to 50 feet high.

Meanwhile, TOTE Maritime, the company that owns the El Faro ship, says it is too premature to disclose exactly what may have gone wrong on the ill-fated ship noting that they “look forward to what the investigation reveals”.

On Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard found a body in a survival suit, in the water, within a 225-square-mile debris field consisting of life jackets, life rings, cargo containers and an oil sheen.

Joaquin (wa-KEEN) has sped up a bit as it moves away from the Bahamas, and remains a Category 3 hurricane. “That things such as this will never happen again”.

Philip Greene, who heads the ship management subsidiary Tote Services, told reporters that the crew’s work in the engine room was unrelated to the propulsion issue reported in the distress call.

The NTSB held a news conference in Jacksonville and they will be looking at operations of El Faro, engineering and human and survival factors.

(U.S. Coast Guard via AP).