Run the Storm: A Savage Hurricane, a Brave Crew, and the Wreck of the SS El Faro

In the bestselling tradition of The Perfect Storm and The Finest Hours, “an exquisitely written and dramatic book…a literary page-turner” (Doug Stanton, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Horse Soldiers)—the 2015 mysterious disappearance of the SS El Faro, a gigantic American cargo ship that sank in the Bermuda Triangle, taking with it thirty-three lives.

On October 1, 2015, the SS El Faro, a massive American cargo ship disappeared in Hurricane Joaquin, a category 4 storm. The ship, its hundreds of shipping containers, and its entire crew plummeted to the bottom of the ocean, three miles down. It was the greatest seagoing US merchant marine shipping disaster since World War II. The massive ship had a seasoned crew, state-of-the-art navigation equipment, and advance warning of the storm. It seemed incomprehensible that such a ship could sink so suddenly. How, in this day and age, could something like this happen?

Relying on Coast Guard inquest hearings, as well as on numerous interviews, George Michelsen Foy brings us “the most insightful exploration of this unthinkable disaster” (Outside), a story that lasts only a few days, but which grows almost intolerably suspenseful as deep-rooted flaws leading to the disaster inexorably link together and worsen. We see captain, engineers, and crew fight for their lives, and hear their actual words (as recorded on the ship’s black box) while the hurricane relentlessly tightens its noose around the ship. We watch, minute by minute, all that is happening on board—the ship’s mysterious tilt to one side, worried calls to the engine room, ship-to-shore reports, the courage of the men and women as they fight to survive, and the berserk ocean’s savage consumption of the massive hull. And through it all, the pain and ultimate resilience of the families of El Faro’s crew. Now with a new afterword, this “tour de force of nautical expertise” (Ocean Navigator) is a masterwork of stunning power.

• Into the Storm: Two Ships, a Deadly Hurricane, and an Epic Battle for Survival
• Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro
• Finding North: How Navigation Makes Us Human
• Until the Sea Shall Free Them: Life, Death, and Survival in the Merchant Marine (Bluejacket Books)
• Above and Beyond: John F. Kennedy and America's Most Dangerous Cold War Spy Mission
• A Speck in the Sea: A Story of Survival and Rescue
• Barons of the Sea: And their Race to Build the World's Fastest Clipper Ship
• Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro
• Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew
• Maritime Academy Graduate: Memoir of a Third Mate