My first foray into your stack, excellent work, well worth putting off sleeping for. Though being a former mariner, this incident is as heartbreaking as it was unnecessary. Regardless of whether the CEO is gone or not, a full and very public inquiry needs to occur.
This scandal is one reason I refer to most journalists as info-terrorists. Giving family and friends hope that their loved ones might possibly be alive, might possibly be saved when there was no hope left is a cruelty for which I have no words.
The US Navy sensors in that area were active from the early '60s. The navy is always secretive about its sensors. From the late 1950's through the 70's, the USN wired the continental shelves of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans for sound with secretly labeled cables of microphones. The test bed was in the Bahamas and the first operationally important line was across the Greenland Iceland UK Gap. The cable came up at NAS Argentia, Newfoundland, not far from St. Johns, Newfoundland where the recent search was based. Those cables are mostly used for whale tracking now, but they were used for tracking subs for decades. Whenever a sub went "crunch!" during the cold War, USN figured out where and when very quickly by comparing when the sound reached microphones all over the edges of the ocean. This program was designed to track Soviet Russian subs and make a new submarine war short, relatively inexpensive, and victorious without the massive losses experienced in WW I & WW II. It was a deep, dark, powerful secret until it leaked to the Washington Post in the 1980's.
I can still remember the day it leaked. My dad got a giant grin on his face and told me that now he could tell me what he had actually been doing in the Navy. He WAS a pilot, but that job a cover for his main function in running, setting up, and training others to run SOSUS stations starting in the Bahamas and at Argentia.
Secrecy about signal intelligence is natural to the USN.
Excellent. The Navy has had this technology for decades and kept it super secret. The P-3 Orion hunter-killer aircraft are localized searchers. They can locate an enemy sub inside a 10 mile circle so acoustic torpedoes can be launched to destroy it. But the P-3' did not get there for several hours so this implosion was detected by the underwater network first. My info is that the CG search commander was told of this Sunday. Do you suppose that he needed clearance from the commander in chief (US POTUS) in order to release that info to the public? Leaves one lots to ponder.
"Reasonable seamanship" - well said. That's why the whole event is so horrble, that someone would be that careless, that igorant and that disrespectful. It's mind boggling.
Great story, Trish once again you’ve nailed it. James Cameron was the first person who popped into my head on Sunday when the story broke on the CBC...I went into As it Happens mode wondering why he wasn’t on air immediately, but it took the CBC three days to run a clip of Cameron being interviewed by an Irish broadcaster when it was obvious that the tapping story was a red herring. It is sad that the CBC has fallen into such a state of incompetence that they couldn’t even get a primary and timely interview with Cameron who should have been the first on the list. It’s as if they didn’t want to be the first to tell. They have completely lost their mojo. Well we knew that didn’t we. It’s just hard to imagine that our publicity fined broadcaster has devolved into chirpy fluff. And Cameron? As a Hollywood director he’s learned that the truth lies in fiction. (Puns intended)
The CBC, like other mainstream outlets, dined for 5 days on the billionaire theme. This was the perfect story to tap into the envy and vitriol directed at the rich. That was not an insignificant aspect of the coverage. We once celebrated the most successful among us but it has become a useful deflection for government to point at the wealthy. Case in point, Galen Weston became the whipping boy for inflation vs the true cause - federal monetary policy.
It is important to remember that the purpose of the Media is not to inform, was it ever really? Media is certainly used to convey a message to the masses, but I am more skeptical every day of the underlying motives.
I would even go so far as to say that Substack is a better embodiment of what media should be, a forum open to discussion and sharing of sources and opinions.
The whole incident just emphasizes the disconnect between expertise and arrogance so often that appears when entrepreneurs push at the boundaries of what is commonly in practice. If nothing else, this will serve as a motivation for those who follow to spend less time observing their pursuit of fame and fortune through the proverbial navel porthole.
I'm glad you've taken up this story from a critical perspective since too few are asking the hard questions. We will never know why the obvious (my intuition was in sync with Cameron's from day 1) was ignored & the story strung out for a week with a fever pitch of media hype that was honestly, offensive. I say offensive because those who should have known better did nothing to stop it. Why? Well maybe because the story offered a convenient distraction for someone at an opportune time so let's hope a good investigative journalist writes a story connecting dots. Places to begin: the beginning of Biden impeachment proceedings in Congress (not a peep about this in media all week), the Wagner rebellion, events in Syria, and so on. Someone, somewhere seized on Oceangate for distraction & the media did what it was primed to do - ensure our collective gaze is here & not there ...
And THAT is a surprise? Today's media have absolutely no idea how to write a "news" story. But by golly they are extremely clever, in both wording and timing, re spreading the propaganda promoted by those holding political power in America. I would have been thrown out of the University of Maine in my freshman year if I had written garbage like they run as "news" in the NYT and WaPo today.
Yeah, 20 somethings with worthless degrees and the minds of mush typical of college grads today, were just what were needed. You can see how well that worked. Anyone with a rational brain would want all the experience and expertise he could find. And all input, even if some critical, would have been welcomed. None of us, including me, know everything.
"What are the odds that the OceanGate submersible would go missing one day after I’d spent an evening down a YouTube rabbit hole researching diving accidents and what a high PSI (pounds per square inch) can do to a human body."
What are the odds that I would randomly pick a film about the Kursk to watch on Saturday night and that one of my readers would also? A film which documented the desperate efforts to save survivors of an underwater accident who DID actually communicate their survival to those on the surface by making actual tapping sounds, unlike the fake news story regarding the Titan?
It's all very weird. There's something very unsettling about the Titan, the failure of the US navy to alert the world that they had detected the implosion on Monday and the fake news media's subsequent attempts to craft a 'desperate race against time' to rescue the stricken passengers story which was entirely false.
I have read that the USN told the Coast Commander what they had heard, on Sunday. Why it was not spread from there nobody knows. It took them several days to get the undersea robots on site and deployed. Once there they knew right where to find it and they did. Contrast that for the search for Cargo ship El Faro in 15,000 ft of water in the Bahamas a few years back.
It took them a while to find that wreckage didn't it? A much larger target than Titan. The Captain, the Second mate and Third engineer were all Mainers like me and graduates of Maine Maritime Academy. The second mate was an excellent officer and held up well in what used to be just a man's world. I would have absolutely sailed with her anyplace. She knew they should have changed course. Sadly the Captain paid no heed to some else's valid concerns. Only a fool sails a ship into a storm like that one was.
It is not good to speak ill of the dead but the captain was a disgrace. His responsibility is always 1) The Safety of the ship's crew, 2) The safety of the ship and 3) The safety of the cargo.
The ship and crew were in grave peril, his place was on the bridge. You could ask a great uncle of mine and thousands of his comrades who captained and crewed the ships of the US Merchant Marine, especially on the north Atlantic runs to Europe in the early 1940's, many who paid with their lives. If the captain had lived he would have been held responsible and rightfully so.
Was there criminality or just negligence? I know with the Exxon Valdez which I covered as a reporter in Alaska, the skipper went to jail for drunkenness on the bridge. The Bligh Island Reef is an easy navigation.
I am a native of the Maine coast. Got sea captains in my family history. Worked over 3 decades in the commercial fishing industry. Lobster fisherman, fishing gear fabricator and more than a passing interest in the politics affecting the industry today. Long long tradition is that the captain is the "Master" of that ship. For all intents and purposes he is God! He always has the last word. Captains can marry couples, can charge those involved in a mutiny, and carry out sentence, can use deadly force against pirates, etc. This is a long tradition that everyone who ever went to sea knows in their hearts. In case of peril, the Captains rightful place is on the bridge, NOT in bed. I don't think this was criminal in any provable way, but surely grossly negligent in anyone's book.
What is going on is that this has become "corporate" shipping and control is no longer with the Captain of the ship...but with the corporate office. A prudent Captain should have been able to change course, for the safety of the ship, even though it might foul up corporate's agenda, or bottom line, god forbid! But he clearly wasn't as you could see. He was scared to suggest altering course, for fear of his job. This atmosphere, and the fact the vessel was unseaworthy, were the main causes of this tragedy. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 is a United States federal statute that provides for the promotion and maintenance of the American merchant marine. This act, known today as the "Jones Act" provides for the following: ......."It requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried on ships that have been constructed in the United States and that fly the U.S. flag, are owned by U.S. citizens, and are crewed by U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents".......
The merchant marine union in the USA lost much of it's clout over 25 yrs ago. Officer jobs on American flagged vessels are extremely scarce in America today. The worldwide pay scale is much lower. Do you know that the captains and officers of those huge cruise ships are all foreign, even though they sail out of America ports? The Captain thought of himself as lucky to have a job. The corporate guys know they have the inside track on these shipping routes as they are American flagged. Therefore they are encouraged to use old vessels in poor condition, and not maintain them well, as the bottom line is all they care about. If you were writing a book about such an event, you have your outline right here! You could tell that in everything he said. He was very intimidated by the corporate higher ups that he served. Any knowing shipping company of the past would have expected him to make decisions on his ship that would involve the safety of the crew and ship, after all HE is there and the corporate bean counters are thousands of miles away. But he did not really have that. Knowing how corporate America works today I can't really blame him in some ways. I could NOT work in those circumstances at all.
One can say that the main cause for this disaster was the corporate organization and operations effectively took away from the ship's Captain his primary responsibility for the safety of his crew and ship. This is totally his responsibility yet the situation did NOT allow him to actually have that responsibility when it mattered. I love ships, this was a gift from my dad who was a great fan. I have long admired the ships built by Sun Shipbuilding in Chester, PA. The El Faro, as built, was a beautiful ship, I love that sheer line in profile. But it was never intended to be able to carry a deck cargo 4 shipping containers high and raising the center of gravity so much. Those large openings in her 2 nd deck allowed water to access the lower parts of the ship, until there was enough that the hideous high CG allowed it to roll over.
Here is a written transcript of the last 24 hrs on the El Faro's bridge. It's a lot of pages. I read it again last night. It is moving and heartbreaking at the same time. They were scared at the end and you can certainly understand that.
Sorry for the length but sense you want to really know why this happened and I hope this gives you some insight into that. "Corporatism" is not only causing these kinds of events but is bankrolling the Marxist takeover of America. I despise this and could write on it for days. My email: elnthnpitts@aol.com If this makes it easier to chat about stuff like this please feel free to do so. I love what you are doing and writing about. You are a fighter and America badly needs lots more of them.
I now want to know all about the Kursk, too. Will read your piece and find the film. Were the tapping sounds reported just wishful thinking from people who'd knew about the Kursk? And yes, there is something unsettling about it all. Did the navy withhold information from the CG? Why would they go along with it. Isn't in the DNA of those orgs. The plaintiffs lawyers will be demanding this information and navy might have to provide -- with security redactions of course.
This is a long video but fascinating to watch. The undersea search was intense. I still fee the company was 90% liable for that disaster, and the captain the other 10% for dereliction of duty.
I know the story of the Faro - caught in a hurricane and also bad navigation. I look forward to seeing this video and will watch it tonight. Thank you.
That video will give you tremendous insight into what an underwater search is, especially in the dark 2.5 to 3 miles down. You will realize quickly that the search that found Titan's wreckage was helped tremendously with knowing just exactly where to look when they got there.
Glad to know you love stories of the sea. Here is a tremendous read. I have read it several times. It is the story of the greatest submarine rescue in history......and happened in 1939! 33 men were rescued from the sunken USN sub Squalus after 39 hours trapped and facing certain death.
It is also the brilliant story of a man who is well known in USN history for all he accomplished in underwater search and rescue and diving methods. Commander Charles B (Swede) Momsen was one of the greatest naval officers in our history. I promise you will not be disappointed in that book.
Let's face it! Nothing is as it seems in today's crazy world. Why did the mainstream keep it going for so long and why did the coast guard and others keep silent. Then why did they finally 'release' the obvious? I trust nothing these days. Keep our critical thinking caps on, folks.
There have always been weird conspiracy theories about the sinking of the Titanic. Lately there has been conjecture about whether there was foul play involved with the Titan's demise in order to prevent an inspection of the Titanic's hull that could reveal it sunk from sabotage and not from an iceberg piercing the hull. Crazy conspiracy theory, I'm sure. https://spyscape.com/article/the-titanics-top-10-weirdest-conspiracy-theories
The story of Mr. Stanley somehow sparked an association with Virgil Grissom, the Apollo astronaut who died "in a fire during a pre-launch test at Cape Kennedy" in 1967. "Gruff Gus" had complained numerous times about technical problems with Apollo 1 and allegedly said while awaiting launch on the test, "How are we going to get to the Moon if we can't talk between two or three buildings."
So offensive, that that vessel took anybody on board and went anywhere! The carbon hull was experimental, for crying out loud. I think many people made the hubris link between the sub captain and the Titanic, such idiocy, such arrogance, such disregard for others, never mind one's self.
That people were led to believe that those five souls were still alive is appalling. I think you are so right - a scandal. I hope multiple law suits follow.
It is antithetical to any reasonable seamanship. Sailors and submariners are by necessity, careful people.Commercial fisherman take care of their boats and gear. They respect the ocean's power.
Media, MSM, yeah... I was watching a newscast about 60 years ago. It made my stomach churn for some reason so I shut it off. I have missed nothing ever since...
Oh boy were we ever anxiety ridden for days . We happened to have our sailboat anchored at Hope Island Georgian bay . Took our dinghy out to a wreck at the tip of Hope Island . We searched for the wreck of the Marquette sunk in the late 1800’s . Saw it clearly beneath us. Even that is unnerving.
We kept checking the news but then as in covid , something started to dawn on us. Something didn’t seem right . We felt that tinge of manipulation. The knocking , then the countdown of oxygen, what the people might be feeling . Horror , enough to keep us restless during the night. But that spider sense kicks in when you see the co ordinated effort . “ the bubble headed bleach blonde comes on at five to tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eyes “.
Can’t quite explain but we kept questioning the logistics of the whole thing but thinking “ well we don’t know enough”!!!
Intuition is a great thing. Trish wrote a great piece here. Seems the “critical thinking “ was on overdrive .
And the NYT is printing human interest stories about the demise of the titan without a whisper about the sound heard on Sunday. That whole episode is like an allegory for the last 3 years. Tragically shocking.
Good points, thanks. It should be "lessen" not "lesson".
My first foray into your stack, excellent work, well worth putting off sleeping for. Though being a former mariner, this incident is as heartbreaking as it was unnecessary. Regardless of whether the CEO is gone or not, a full and very public inquiry needs to occur.
This scandal is one reason I refer to most journalists as info-terrorists. Giving family and friends hope that their loved ones might possibly be alive, might possibly be saved when there was no hope left is a cruelty for which I have no words.
The US Navy sensors in that area were active from the early '60s. The navy is always secretive about its sensors. From the late 1950's through the 70's, the USN wired the continental shelves of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans for sound with secretly labeled cables of microphones. The test bed was in the Bahamas and the first operationally important line was across the Greenland Iceland UK Gap. The cable came up at NAS Argentia, Newfoundland, not far from St. Johns, Newfoundland where the recent search was based. Those cables are mostly used for whale tracking now, but they were used for tracking subs for decades. Whenever a sub went "crunch!" during the cold War, USN figured out where and when very quickly by comparing when the sound reached microphones all over the edges of the ocean. This program was designed to track Soviet Russian subs and make a new submarine war short, relatively inexpensive, and victorious without the massive losses experienced in WW I & WW II. It was a deep, dark, powerful secret until it leaked to the Washington Post in the 1980's.
I can still remember the day it leaked. My dad got a giant grin on his face and told me that now he could tell me what he had actually been doing in the Navy. He WAS a pilot, but that job a cover for his main function in running, setting up, and training others to run SOSUS stations starting in the Bahamas and at Argentia.
Secrecy about signal intelligence is natural to the USN.
Excellent. The Navy has had this technology for decades and kept it super secret. The P-3 Orion hunter-killer aircraft are localized searchers. They can locate an enemy sub inside a 10 mile circle so acoustic torpedoes can be launched to destroy it. But the P-3' did not get there for several hours so this implosion was detected by the underwater network first. My info is that the CG search commander was told of this Sunday. Do you suppose that he needed clearance from the commander in chief (US POTUS) in order to release that info to the public? Leaves one lots to ponder.
The Titanic didn't plow into an iceberg because of hubris. Search "Titanic" and "Federal Reserve." The real reason is there.
"Reasonable seamanship" - well said. That's why the whole event is so horrble, that someone would be that careless, that igorant and that disrespectful. It's mind boggling.
Great story, Trish once again you’ve nailed it. James Cameron was the first person who popped into my head on Sunday when the story broke on the CBC...I went into As it Happens mode wondering why he wasn’t on air immediately, but it took the CBC three days to run a clip of Cameron being interviewed by an Irish broadcaster when it was obvious that the tapping story was a red herring. It is sad that the CBC has fallen into such a state of incompetence that they couldn’t even get a primary and timely interview with Cameron who should have been the first on the list. It’s as if they didn’t want to be the first to tell. They have completely lost their mojo. Well we knew that didn’t we. It’s just hard to imagine that our publicity fined broadcaster has devolved into chirpy fluff. And Cameron? As a Hollywood director he’s learned that the truth lies in fiction. (Puns intended)
A revealing few days. Now they have found the little Titan and they say some human remains which is pretty shocking.
The CBC, like other mainstream outlets, dined for 5 days on the billionaire theme. This was the perfect story to tap into the envy and vitriol directed at the rich. That was not an insignificant aspect of the coverage. We once celebrated the most successful among us but it has become a useful deflection for government to point at the wealthy. Case in point, Galen Weston became the whipping boy for inflation vs the true cause - federal monetary policy.
*financed, not fined...might be a Freudian slip...😂
It is important to remember that the purpose of the Media is not to inform, was it ever really? Media is certainly used to convey a message to the masses, but I am more skeptical every day of the underlying motives.
I would even go so far as to say that Substack is a better embodiment of what media should be, a forum open to discussion and sharing of sources and opinions.
The whole incident just emphasizes the disconnect between expertise and arrogance so often that appears when entrepreneurs push at the boundaries of what is commonly in practice. If nothing else, this will serve as a motivation for those who follow to spend less time observing their pursuit of fame and fortune through the proverbial navel porthole.
I'm glad you've taken up this story from a critical perspective since too few are asking the hard questions. We will never know why the obvious (my intuition was in sync with Cameron's from day 1) was ignored & the story strung out for a week with a fever pitch of media hype that was honestly, offensive. I say offensive because those who should have known better did nothing to stop it. Why? Well maybe because the story offered a convenient distraction for someone at an opportune time so let's hope a good investigative journalist writes a story connecting dots. Places to begin: the beginning of Biden impeachment proceedings in Congress (not a peep about this in media all week), the Wagner rebellion, events in Syria, and so on. Someone, somewhere seized on Oceangate for distraction & the media did what it was primed to do - ensure our collective gaze is here & not there ...
I now understand why Rush didn't want experienced submariners on his team as they would have spoiled his delusion.
How sad that he refused help from people who would know because they were "old white guys". That part of the story was not told very much by the MSM.
And THAT is a surprise? Today's media have absolutely no idea how to write a "news" story. But by golly they are extremely clever, in both wording and timing, re spreading the propaganda promoted by those holding political power in America. I would have been thrown out of the University of Maine in my freshman year if I had written garbage like they run as "news" in the NYT and WaPo today.
Yeah, 20 somethings with worthless degrees and the minds of mush typical of college grads today, were just what were needed. You can see how well that worked. Anyone with a rational brain would want all the experience and expertise he could find. And all input, even if some critical, would have been welcomed. None of us, including me, know everything.
"What are the odds that the OceanGate submersible would go missing one day after I’d spent an evening down a YouTube rabbit hole researching diving accidents and what a high PSI (pounds per square inch) can do to a human body."
What are the odds that I would randomly pick a film about the Kursk to watch on Saturday night and that one of my readers would also? A film which documented the desperate efforts to save survivors of an underwater accident who DID actually communicate their survival to those on the surface by making actual tapping sounds, unlike the fake news story regarding the Titan?
https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/kursk-a-strange-and-unsettling-coincidence
It's all very weird. There's something very unsettling about the Titan, the failure of the US navy to alert the world that they had detected the implosion on Monday and the fake news media's subsequent attempts to craft a 'desperate race against time' to rescue the stricken passengers story which was entirely false.
I have read that the USN told the Coast Commander what they had heard, on Sunday. Why it was not spread from there nobody knows. It took them several days to get the undersea robots on site and deployed. Once there they knew right where to find it and they did. Contrast that for the search for Cargo ship El Faro in 15,000 ft of water in the Bahamas a few years back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BNDub3h2_I
Took several days to find the wreck, once they got onsite
Just watched the video. The captain was negligent beyond words. And I guess it was also a rust bucket.....
It took them a while to find that wreckage didn't it? A much larger target than Titan. The Captain, the Second mate and Third engineer were all Mainers like me and graduates of Maine Maritime Academy. The second mate was an excellent officer and held up well in what used to be just a man's world. I would have absolutely sailed with her anyplace. She knew they should have changed course. Sadly the Captain paid no heed to some else's valid concerns. Only a fool sails a ship into a storm like that one was.
It is not good to speak ill of the dead but the captain was a disgrace. His responsibility is always 1) The Safety of the ship's crew, 2) The safety of the ship and 3) The safety of the cargo.
The ship and crew were in grave peril, his place was on the bridge. You could ask a great uncle of mine and thousands of his comrades who captained and crewed the ships of the US Merchant Marine, especially on the north Atlantic runs to Europe in the early 1940's, many who paid with their lives. If the captain had lived he would have been held responsible and rightfully so.
Was there criminality or just negligence? I know with the Exxon Valdez which I covered as a reporter in Alaska, the skipper went to jail for drunkenness on the bridge. The Bligh Island Reef is an easy navigation.
I am a native of the Maine coast. Got sea captains in my family history. Worked over 3 decades in the commercial fishing industry. Lobster fisherman, fishing gear fabricator and more than a passing interest in the politics affecting the industry today. Long long tradition is that the captain is the "Master" of that ship. For all intents and purposes he is God! He always has the last word. Captains can marry couples, can charge those involved in a mutiny, and carry out sentence, can use deadly force against pirates, etc. This is a long tradition that everyone who ever went to sea knows in their hearts. In case of peril, the Captains rightful place is on the bridge, NOT in bed. I don't think this was criminal in any provable way, but surely grossly negligent in anyone's book.
What is going on is that this has become "corporate" shipping and control is no longer with the Captain of the ship...but with the corporate office. A prudent Captain should have been able to change course, for the safety of the ship, even though it might foul up corporate's agenda, or bottom line, god forbid! But he clearly wasn't as you could see. He was scared to suggest altering course, for fear of his job. This atmosphere, and the fact the vessel was unseaworthy, were the main causes of this tragedy. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 is a United States federal statute that provides for the promotion and maintenance of the American merchant marine. This act, known today as the "Jones Act" provides for the following: ......."It requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried on ships that have been constructed in the United States and that fly the U.S. flag, are owned by U.S. citizens, and are crewed by U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents".......
The merchant marine union in the USA lost much of it's clout over 25 yrs ago. Officer jobs on American flagged vessels are extremely scarce in America today. The worldwide pay scale is much lower. Do you know that the captains and officers of those huge cruise ships are all foreign, even though they sail out of America ports? The Captain thought of himself as lucky to have a job. The corporate guys know they have the inside track on these shipping routes as they are American flagged. Therefore they are encouraged to use old vessels in poor condition, and not maintain them well, as the bottom line is all they care about. If you were writing a book about such an event, you have your outline right here! You could tell that in everything he said. He was very intimidated by the corporate higher ups that he served. Any knowing shipping company of the past would have expected him to make decisions on his ship that would involve the safety of the crew and ship, after all HE is there and the corporate bean counters are thousands of miles away. But he did not really have that. Knowing how corporate America works today I can't really blame him in some ways. I could NOT work in those circumstances at all.
One can say that the main cause for this disaster was the corporate organization and operations effectively took away from the ship's Captain his primary responsibility for the safety of his crew and ship. This is totally his responsibility yet the situation did NOT allow him to actually have that responsibility when it mattered. I love ships, this was a gift from my dad who was a great fan. I have long admired the ships built by Sun Shipbuilding in Chester, PA. The El Faro, as built, was a beautiful ship, I love that sheer line in profile. But it was never intended to be able to carry a deck cargo 4 shipping containers high and raising the center of gravity so much. Those large openings in her 2 nd deck allowed water to access the lower parts of the ship, until there was enough that the hideous high CG allowed it to roll over.
Here is a written transcript of the last 24 hrs on the El Faro's bridge. It's a lot of pages. I read it again last night. It is moving and heartbreaking at the same time. They were scared at the end and you can certainly understand that.
https://www.dieselduck.info/library/09%20accidents/2016.12-ElFaro%20VDR%20Transcript.pdf
Sorry for the length but sense you want to really know why this happened and I hope this gives you some insight into that. "Corporatism" is not only causing these kinds of events but is bankrolling the Marxist takeover of America. I despise this and could write on it for days. My email: elnthnpitts@aol.com If this makes it easier to chat about stuff like this please feel free to do so. I love what you are doing and writing about. You are a fighter and America badly needs lots more of them.
I always think of that terrifying last breath as the end becomes inevitable.
I now want to know all about the Kursk, too. Will read your piece and find the film. Were the tapping sounds reported just wishful thinking from people who'd knew about the Kursk? And yes, there is something unsettling about it all. Did the navy withhold information from the CG? Why would they go along with it. Isn't in the DNA of those orgs. The plaintiffs lawyers will be demanding this information and navy might have to provide -- with security redactions of course.
There is some parallel between this and the undersea search for the sunken cargo ship El Faro in the Bahamas a few years back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BNDub3h2_I
This is a long video but fascinating to watch. The undersea search was intense. I still fee the company was 90% liable for that disaster, and the captain the other 10% for dereliction of duty.
I know the story of the Faro - caught in a hurricane and also bad navigation. I look forward to seeing this video and will watch it tonight. Thank you.
That video will give you tremendous insight into what an underwater search is, especially in the dark 2.5 to 3 miles down. You will realize quickly that the search that found Titan's wreckage was helped tremendously with knowing just exactly where to look when they got there.
Glad to know you love stories of the sea. Here is a tremendous read. I have read it several times. It is the story of the greatest submarine rescue in history......and happened in 1939! 33 men were rescued from the sunken USN sub Squalus after 39 hours trapped and facing certain death.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-terrible-hours-the-greatest-submarine-rescue-in-history_peter-maas/382304/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=us_dsa_general_customer_acquisition&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=593719095024&gclid=Cj0KCQjw7uSkBhDGARIsAMCZNJtVGzOjqGVdxcqbmMMtq8ysgGJ9vVYGrJCD4dksegtJJFDxFCIcuCwaArlwEALw_wcB#edition=2032619&idiq=17212
It is also the brilliant story of a man who is well known in USN history for all he accomplished in underwater search and rescue and diving methods. Commander Charles B (Swede) Momsen was one of the greatest naval officers in our history. I promise you will not be disappointed in that book.
I will order it. Can't wait! I still have nightmares about the Andrea Gail.
Let's face it! Nothing is as it seems in today's crazy world. Why did the mainstream keep it going for so long and why did the coast guard and others keep silent. Then why did they finally 'release' the obvious? I trust nothing these days. Keep our critical thinking caps on, folks.
There have always been weird conspiracy theories about the sinking of the Titanic. Lately there has been conjecture about whether there was foul play involved with the Titan's demise in order to prevent an inspection of the Titanic's hull that could reveal it sunk from sabotage and not from an iceberg piercing the hull. Crazy conspiracy theory, I'm sure. https://spyscape.com/article/the-titanics-top-10-weirdest-conspiracy-theories
The story of Mr. Stanley somehow sparked an association with Virgil Grissom, the Apollo astronaut who died "in a fire during a pre-launch test at Cape Kennedy" in 1967. "Gruff Gus" had complained numerous times about technical problems with Apollo 1 and allegedly said while awaiting launch on the test, "How are we going to get to the Moon if we can't talk between two or three buildings."
So offensive, that that vessel took anybody on board and went anywhere! The carbon hull was experimental, for crying out loud. I think many people made the hubris link between the sub captain and the Titanic, such idiocy, such arrogance, such disregard for others, never mind one's self.
That people were led to believe that those five souls were still alive is appalling. I think you are so right - a scandal. I hope multiple law suits follow.
It is antithetical to any reasonable seamanship. Sailors and submariners are by necessity, careful people.Commercial fisherman take care of their boats and gear. They respect the ocean's power.
Media, MSM, yeah... I was watching a newscast about 60 years ago. It made my stomach churn for some reason so I shut it off. I have missed nothing ever since...
Oh boy were we ever anxiety ridden for days . We happened to have our sailboat anchored at Hope Island Georgian bay . Took our dinghy out to a wreck at the tip of Hope Island . We searched for the wreck of the Marquette sunk in the late 1800’s . Saw it clearly beneath us. Even that is unnerving.
We kept checking the news but then as in covid , something started to dawn on us. Something didn’t seem right . We felt that tinge of manipulation. The knocking , then the countdown of oxygen, what the people might be feeling . Horror , enough to keep us restless during the night. But that spider sense kicks in when you see the co ordinated effort . “ the bubble headed bleach blonde comes on at five to tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eyes “.
Can’t quite explain but we kept questioning the logistics of the whole thing but thinking “ well we don’t know enough”!!!
Intuition is a great thing. Trish wrote a great piece here. Seems the “critical thinking “ was on overdrive .
"get the widow on the sent, we love dirty laundry"
And the NYT is printing human interest stories about the demise of the titan without a whisper about the sound heard on Sunday. That whole episode is like an allegory for the last 3 years. Tragically shocking.