Two years after El Faro sinking, a mariner’s widow perseveres
Two years after her husband’s death at sea, Katie Griffin said she felt no anger over the finding released Sunday that decisions by Captain Michael Davidson were responsible for the sinking of the cargo ship El Faro.
“No matter what they say, it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t bring my husband back. It doesn’t bring anyone back,’’ she said by phone from her home in Laconia, N.H. on Sunday.
Her husband, Keith Griffin, a Winthrop native and Massachusetts Maritime Academy graduate who served as first assistant engineer on El Faro, was one of 33 crew members on board when the ship went down near the Bahamas on Oct. 1, 2015, in what a Coast Guard report released Sunday called “one of the worst maritime disasters in US history.’’
On its final voyage, El Faro was traveling from Florida to Puerto Rico, when Davidson guided it near the erratic path of Hurricane Joaquin, then a Category 3 storm.
Davidson “misjudged the path of Hurricane Joaquin and overestimated the vessel’s heavy-weather survivability, while also failing to take adequate precautions to monitor and prepare for heavy weather,’’ Coast Guard Captain Jason Neubauer, chairman of the El Faro Marine Board of Investigation, said a press briefing in Jacksonville, Fla., Sunday.
If Davidson had survived, he said, “we would have pursued a negligence complaint against his merchant marine credential,’’ according to a video of the briefing.
Relatives of Davidson, a Maine Maritime Academy graduate who lived in Windham, Maine, could not be reached on Sunday.
Three other crew members were graduates of the Maine Maritime Academy and lived in that state: Danielle Randolph and Dylan Meklin, both of Rockland, and Michael Holland of Wilson.
Also on board were Mariette Wright, whose mother, Mary Shevory, lives in Brockton, and Jeff Mathias, of Kingston, who also graduated from Mass. Maritime. Their families did not respond to messages left requesting comment on Sunday.
Rather than blame the captain, Katie Griffin, 35, expressed sympathy with his family over their shared grief.
“I really don’t want to speak on someone else’s family’s father,’’ she said.
Instead, she is focused on raising her 18-month-old fraternal twin daughters, who were born after their father’s death, and making sure that Keith is a presence in their lives.
“They see his picture; they know who he is, and they say, ‘Dada,’ ’’ she said. “One looks just like him, and every day I look at her, and it’s like looking at my husband.’’
The toddlers, Harper and Isla, share a middle name: Keith.
“I always want them to know who their father is. I’ll never not have pictures of him around and tell stories of him,’’ Katie Griffin said. “I tell them every night I love them, and Dada loves them.’’
She was about five months pregnant when the ship went down, she said, and had been waiting for her husband’s return so they could find out the babies’ sex together.
“It was awful. I was supposed to be happy being pregnant, and it was miserable,’’ she said. For weeks, she rarely left home. “I’d go get food, and that was it. I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t see anyone. . . . I sat alone and went to my doctor’s appointments.’’
Instead of having her husband beside her when she learned that she would have daughters, she found out on the day the Coast Guard confirmed his ship had sunk.
Sometimes, she said, she comforted herself by imagining her husband wasn’t gone but simply at sea, as he so often was. The pretending helped “a little bit,’’ she said.
The Coast Guard’s investigation found that Davidson was primarily responsible for the ship’s sinking, but that its owner, TOTE Maritime Inc., failed to ensure that crew members got adequate rest and to recognize the danger the storm posed, Neubauer said.
TOTE pledged in a statement Sunday to make safety improvements based on recommendations in the report.
“The El Faro and its crew were lost on our watch, and for this we will be eternally sorry,’’ the company said. “Nothing we can do will bring back the remarkable crew, but everything we do can work to ensure that those who go to sea, serving us all, are in ever safer environments.’’
The investigation also found that the Coast Guard and the American Bureau of Shipping hadn’t ensured that the ship met safety standards, Neubauer said Sunday.
A spokeswoman for the bureau said in a statement that it “is dedicated to its mission of protecting life, property, and the environment and is committed to working with the Coast Guard and the US shipping industry in improving safety standards and applying lessons learned.’’
A survival expert said the crew might have survived if the ship had been equipped with closed lifeboats, which would have been required if it had been a newer ship, Neubauer said.
Though anger is not her focus, Katie Griffin said she is frustrated that the ship lacked better safety equipment.
“I’m mad that these ships can still have open lifeboats,’’ she said. “It’s the antiquated shipping laws [that] created this mess.’’
She hopes other ships, and other mariners, will be safer because of lessons learned from the El Faro.
“Some of Keith’s best friends still sail out,’’ she said. “I worry about them. I know it’s changed how they sail. They’re more cautious, and more well aware of what could potentially happen to them.’’
