Coast Guard searching for missing cargo ship El Faro

Capt MJ said:
but we will probably never know all the details.
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If they can locate and recover the VDR [Voyage Data Recorder] the 12 hours of bridge audio recording, before the ship sank, might help answer the question about why the Captain went the way he did..
 
Capt MJ said:
Yep - they have about 30 days, right?
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There are two types of VDR. Fixed and 'Float Free'. The fixed unit has an acoustic underwater beacon with a battery life of at least 30 days. The 'Float Free' unit only has a battery good for seven days. The fixed unit has a lower installation price but is built to more stringent specifications for shock, immersion and fire.
Not sure which unit the EL FARO had. I've been shipmates with both types.
 
The Navy thinks they have found the ship upright at 15k feet down off Bermuda. Owners (TOTE MARINE) have filed court procedures to prevent families from filing suit for wrongful death? Anyone with Maritime Law experience jump in.
 
AF6872 said:
The Navy thinks they have found the ship upright at 15k feet down off Bermuda. Owners (TOTE MARINE) have filed court procedures to prevent families from filing suit for wrongful death? Anyone with Maritime Law experience jump in.
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Actually it was found 36 miles northeast of Crooked Island Bahamas.. The VDR has still yet to be located..

This is from a book entitled 'Strandings and Their Causes' by Captain Richard A. Cahill. It might help answer your question as to why TOTE is filing the way they are.
It all has to do with what is call 'privity and knowledge'..

"In order successfully to invoke limitation of liability the owner must be able to prove that he was without "privity or knowledge of the cause of the loss." Hence he is not responsible for mistakes or errors of judgement committed by the master and his officers during the progress of the voyage. The question of particular concern here is who is responsible - or perhaps more to the point, not responsible - if those who select the master knowingly appoint a master defective in judgement and skill. The American authorities Gilmore and Black have said:

Where a vessel is held in corporate ownership, the imputation of "privity or knowledge" to the corporate owner will be made if a corporate officer sufficiently high in the hierarchy of management is chargeable with the requisite knowledge or is himself responsible on a negligence rationale . . . .

Another way of phrasing the problem of corporate "privity or knowledge" is to ask which duties resting on the shipowner can be delegated by the corporate owner to subordinate employees sufficiently down the line so that "the corporation" itself will go free. Some duties appear to be "non-delegatable," which is a way of saying that the corporation will be conclusively presumed to have "privity or knowledge" of the breach, or, more directly, that the corporation will not be entitled to limit its liability in such a case no matter what state of proof on actual privity or knowledge. The first of those "non-delegatable" duties lie within the province of all those things related to the provision of a seaworthy ship, or at least the exercise of due diligence in doing so. The second is the duty to provide a properly qualified master, officers and crew..."
 
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