Crews return to shore with sunken ship El Faro’s ‘black box’

The ship’s voyage data recorder, similar to an airplane’s black box, was flown from Florida to the National Transportation Safety Board’s lab in Washington.

A key piece of evidence in the El Faro investigation is back on dry land.

The recorder has been considered a key piece of evidence for investigators trying to understand what happened to El Faro, a ship traveling from Jacksonville to Puerto Rico when it sank October 1 during Hurricane Joaquin. The NTSB official said his agency had never before made a recovery from so deep in the ocean.

The NTSB doesn’t have a timeline of when it might be able to share the device’s data, if it can be recovered.

The voyage data recorder is created to make digital recording of things such as travel data and conversations between crew members, which could be crucial to figuring out what exactly happened before the ship sank last October. Curtis says the VDR is created to operate at up to 20,000 feet and a visual inspection of the El Faro’s VDR device showed no damage. He could not say how long it might take to release a transcript.

Investigators hope to find Global Positioning System navigational data and crew communications on the recorder that will give them a clearer picture of the final hours before the ship’s sinking.

The El Faro was a 790-foot cargo ship that traveled regularly between Jacksonville, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

It’s just some of many questions raised in the investigation so far, which has also focused on the condition of the lifeboat systems and the ship’s boiler, what kind of work was being done on board to prepare El Faro to transition to Alaskan trade, and more. Investigators say they’re determined to do that.

“We owe it to those who perished, to the families, and loved ones to learn all we can from this tragedy and prevent accidents like this from taking more lives”, Curtis says. They will transcribe the recordings and make those public.