By the time a Navy search team reaches the area where the El Faro sank off the coast of the Bahamas a week ago, it will have only two weeks to locate the data recorder before its battery runs out. During that narrow window, at a cost of $15,000 per day, searchers will try to find the device in hopes it will reveal how and why the 790-foot container ship sank.

Even if the wreckage is located, there is no guarantee that the 55-pound, suitcase-size data recorder is in a position to be retrieved by a remotely operated underwater robot, which must be able to access the bridge area of the El Faro, where the data recorder was attached.

It will take the Navy salvage crew at least seven days to prepare equipment and sail from Norfolk, Virginia, to the area off Crooked Island in the Bahamas where the El Faro is believed to have gone down sometime after Oct. 1, taking with it all 33 crew members, including four Mainers.

Specialists from the Navy, Coast Guard, the National Transportation Safety Board, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration are still determining where the search team will start its work, a crucial step, said Mike Herb, the Navy’s salvage director.

“The key to a search is how good is the starting point,” Herb said. “We kind of take every piece of info we can get and melt it down to a starting point.”

Herb estimated that the process could take two months and cost close to $1 million or more, paid for by the NTSB. Different technology would be used to search for the El Faro if the data recorder isn’t located before its battery runs out.

The tools used to find the wreckage will be nearly identical to those used in the unsuccessful search for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.

DATA RECORDER HOLDS CLUES TO SINKING

It is unusual for the Navy to search for sunken ships because it is rare for U.S.-registered ships to sink and result in such a heavy loss of life. Of the 33 aboard, five were graduates of Maine Maritime Academy.

The El Faro set sail from Jacksonville Sept. 29 bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico, carrying containers topside and trailers and vehicles below deck. At the time of its departure, Tropical Storm Joaquin had not been upgraded to hurricane status. The El Faro proceeded on its course until Oct. 1, when it lost propulsion, stranding the vessel in the path of what became Hurricane Joaquin, a category 4 storm that brought 50-foot seas and 130 mph winds when it reached the El Faro. Officials believe the ship sank northeast of Crooked Island in the Bahamas in roughly 15,000 feet of water.

The focus of the search will be locating and retrieving the voyage data recorder, which stores information about the ship’s speed, position, heading and communications. Once the data recorder hits the water, it stores 12 hours of audio recorded from the ship’s bridge, in addition to the navigation information, and begins emitting an emergency “ping” that lasts for roughly 30 days.

The emergency pings could have started as early as Oct. 1.

In an interview Thursday, Herb said the process of dispatching a search team will take at least seven days – roughly four days to transport equipment to the ship that will eventually carry the team to the search site, and another three days to get there.

That means once the searchers arrive in the Bahamas they will have about two weeks before the emergency beacon’s battery goes dead.

SEARCH TECHNIQUES AND CHALLENGES

To hear the ping, Navy contractors will drag a listening device at least 2 miles beneath the surface in a slow, methodical pattern.

The emergency pings are usually emitted at 37.5 kilohertz, out of the range of human hearing but readily detectable from a mile away underwater.

The search crew must steer its vessel in a back-and-forth pattern, as if mowing a lawn, with each search lane no more than a mile from the one before it.

Although the U.S. Coast Guard initially searched a surface area about as large as California looking for survivors, the underwater search will be orders of magnitude smaller.

At one point in the Coast Guard’s efforts, the focus narrowed to an area of roughly 300 square miles.

The ship that tows the listening device plods along at about 2 knots, keeping that pace around the clock as long as weather and conditions permit, Herb said.

Even if the wreckage is located, there is no guarantee the data recorder can be retrieved. Although the data collection system aboard the El Faro contained several pieces of equipment, search teams are focused only on the data recorder, a cylindrical, orange device that weighs about 55 pounds and is roughly the size of a large suitcase.

It was attached to the bridge of the El Faro, meaning that if the ship came to rest on the ocean floor upside down, recovering the data recorder would be significantly more difficult, Herb said.

If the data recorder is in a reachable location, the Navy will send down a remotely operated robot the size of a small desk that is equipped with lights, cameras and articulated arms that can cut, grab and manipulate objects underwater.

WINDHAM — About 200 friends, neighbors and family members gathered Thursday evening in Windham to honor the memory of Michael Davidson, the captain of the El Faro cargo ship that sank during Hurricane Joaquin last week.

As the sky darkened over the Fox Run Road neighborhood where Davidson’s family lives, people lit candles while one of his nieces released a cluster of 34 balloons into the night sky, one for each of the 33 crew members and one for the vessel itself.

The niece said each balloon contained the name of “the brave souls” who served on the container ship, including Davidson, a veteran mariner with more than 20 years of experience.

The search for survivors ended Wednesday, but investigators are continuing to look for the ship, which is believed to have sunk near the Bahamas in 15,000 feet of water.

“We can really feel the love,” Theresa Davidson, the captain’s wife, said during the gathering held on a grass-covered circle at the end of their cul-de-sac. “Thank you so much for coming.”

Davidson said she had not planned to speak during the vigil, but she used a microphone that had been set up near a full-size poster of her husband to thank the Windham community for its outpouring of support.

Thursday’s vigil turned emotional, especially after the balloon cluster seemed to hover momentarily over Davidson’s photo.

Shortly afterward, the hymn “Amazing Grace” began to play and the words “I once was lost and now am found” wafted through the crowd.

“We all stand here tonight not giving up hope because hope is all we have,” said Jessica Tooher, a friend and neighbor who helped organize the vigil.

The vigil attracted a diverse crowd. There were grandparents, children, police officers, state legislators, former employees of Casco Bay Lines where Davidson used to work, and several people who wore sweatshirts with the words “Davidson Strong.”

The University of Southern Maine girls’ soccer team has been using the Twitter hashtag #DavidsonStrong to show their support for Davidson and his crew. Davidson’s daughter, Arianna, is a member of the team.

Gary Plummer, a Windham native, former state legislator and former town councilor, spoke to the crowd. He said he was proud of the Windham community not only for the support it has shown the Davidson family, but for coming together during such a difficult time.

“I want you all to remember that this doesn’t end tonight,” Plummer said. “We need to make a commitment that we will be there for each other, the (Davidson) family, tomorrow, next week, next month and for years to come. We needed this.”

A fifth crew member of the sunken El Faro cargo ship was a graduate of Maine Maritime Academy.

Mitchell Kuflik, of Brooklyn, New York, graduated from the Castine-based school in 2011, the academy’s president, Bill Brennan said Thursday.

His full statement is below:

Dear MMA Community,

The list of the crew of the El Faro was released yesterday by TOTE Maritime and I regret to share with the Maine Maritime Academy family that another friend, colleague, and alumnus, Mitchell Kuflik, Class of 2011, was a member of the El Faro crew. The extended Academy community is grieving the loss of another mariner and our thoughts are with his family and loved ones. The complete list of Maine Maritime Academy graduates who were aboard El Faro includes Mike Davidson, Class of 1988; Danielle Randolph, Class of 2005; Mitchell Kuflik, Class of 2011; Mike Holland, Class of 2012; and Dylan Meklin, Class of 2015. Our hearts are heavy. The outpouring of fellowship and support of the entire maritime family is felt here in Castine.

With Sadness,

Dr. Brennan

This story will be updated.

The U.S. Coast Guard ended its search for survivors of the El Faro container ship at sunset Wednesday, shifting the focus to the hunt for the wreckage and clues to what caused the deadliest U.S. shipping disaster in more than three decades.

Families were informed of the decision about 1 p.m. Wednesday, ending six days of intense waiting since the Coast Guard learned last Thursday that the vessel was in distress.

“The decision to end a search is painful, and is based on the art and science of search and rescue,” Lt. Cmdr. Gabe Somma said during a news conference in Jacksonville, Florida.

The 33 crew members, including four Mainers, lost in the El Faro sinking eclipses the 31 people who died in 1983 when a bulk carrier sank off the coast of Virginia, prompting major changes in shipping safety standards and water-rescue techniques.

President Obama issued a statement Wednesday evening offering his condolences to the families of the crew lost on the El Faro, and emphasizing the importance of what they and other mariners do for Americans’ economic prosperity.

“The investigation now underway will have the full support of the U.S. government, because the grieving families of the El Faro deserve answers and because we have to do everything in our power to ensure the safety of our people, including those who work at sea,” the president said.

FOCUS ON SHIP’S DATA RECORDER

Federal investigators searching for clues in the El Faro disaster are expected to focus on the potentially difficult and costly task of retrieving the ship’s voyage data recorder from 15,000 feet below the surface.

The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the inquiry, and will coordinate with the U.S. Navy to find and retrieve information from the ship. The ship’s location is unknown, but it is believed to be resting more than 30 miles off the northern coast of Crooked Island in the Bahamas.

“Our investigation is well underway,” NTSB Vice Chair Bella Dinh-Zarr said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon in Jacksonville. “We will be here as long as it takes.”

The Navy’s Office of the Director of Ocean Engineering, Supervisor of Salvage and Diving will conduct the search using sonar-based equipment and listening devices to detect the emergency ping sent out by the data recorder, Dinh-Zarr said.

Anthony Chiarello, president and CEO of ship owner TOTE Inc., made a brief statement but didn’t take any questions Wednesday. Chiarello sent his prayers to the families of the crew, and vowed to cooperate fully with the NTSB investigation.

“I will tell you as a TOTE family, we too are grieving,” he said. “There will be many legacy learnings from the NTSB investigation.”

The Coast Guard released a list of El Faro’s crew, which was provided by TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico, the subsidiary that operated the 790-foot ship. The four Mainers were Michael Davidson, 53, of Windham, the ship’s captain; Danielle Randolph, 34, of Rockland; Michael Holland, 25, of Wilton, and Dylan Meklin, 23, of Rockland, who graduated in May. Most of the other crew members were from Florida, and there also were five Polish nationals aboard.

Investigators are focusing on two debris fields, one of which is believed to be close to where the ship sank.

The data recorder is designed to send out auditory pings for roughly 30 days after it hits the water.

If found, the so-called black box likely would have to be recovered by the Navy, which has robotic retrieval equipment capable of operating as far as 20,000 feet below the surface.

The model of the data recorder on the El Faro is not the most sophisticated in use, but probably would provide the ship’s last known position, speed and heading, as well as audio recordings from the bridge and from radio traffic.

At nearly 3 miles below the surface, the wreckage is at the outer limits of a typically feasible search operation. But because of the significant loss of life, it is expected that authorities will make every effort to locate the ship and find the data recorder that could explain how and why it went down, said David DeVilbiss, vice president of marine casualty response for Global Diving and Salvage Inc.

Locating the wreck will probably be the easy part, DeVilbiss said. Unlike a crashed airliner, which breaks up on impact, the wreck of the El Faro likely will be found largely intact.

Sonar equipment will be used to find the wreckage, and an acoustical ping locater will help identify the signal from the data recorder.

The operation will not be cheap, DeVilbiss said, and could require a full cadre of equipment at the Navy’s disposal.

“It all comes down to money, at the end of the day,” he said. “It’s very unusual to be mucking around with ships in 14,000 or 15,000 feet of water.”

The four Mainers aboard the El Faro all graduated from Maine Maritime Academy, whose students and faculty have been following news of the ship’s sinking with heavy hearts.

In a brief statement, MMA President William Brennan said the school community “will grieve this together,” and the academy will continue to offer counseling services to students.

“I have no doubt this will prove to be a learning experience for all of our students and all of our faculty and staff,” Brennan said. “We train for this.”

ANSWERS MAY TAKE 18 MONTHS

Lessons from the disaster are not likely to come any time soon, however.

The NTSB’s investigation could take up to 18 months, although critical facts learned before the investigation report is finalized could be released earlier at the NTSB’s discretion.

The El Faro left Jacksonville on Sept. 29 bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico, a journey of about 1,300 miles to the southeast. At the time, the storm gathering in the Atlantic Ocean was still classified as a tropical storm. On board the ship were 391 containers topside and 294 trailers and vehicles below deck.

The National Weather Service issued an advisory upgrading then-Tropical Storm Joaquin to hurricane status while the ship was several hundred miles into its voyage. The vessel remained on its course through seven additional hurricane advisories over the next 21 hours. On Oct. 1, however, the El Faro lost propulsion and was unable to evade Joaquin, which grew to a Category 4 storm with winds that topped 130 mph, leaving the ship helpless to move from its location as Joaquin bore down.

Participating in the investigation are the Coast Guard, American Bureau of Shipping, TOTE Inc. and officials from Poland, whose five citizens were aboard to do work related to a pending retrofit of the ship’s engine room, said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree.

TOTE is cooperating with the investigation, Pingree said, and so far has provided the NTSB access to the El Faro’s sister ship, the El Yunque, which could help investigators learn about the characteristics of how the ship behaves during rough weather.

The hurricane that would ultimately sink the cargo ship El Faro was still a tropical storm when the vessel left Jacksonville, Florida, the night of Sept. 29.

The ship was hundreds of miles into its 1,300-mile voyage to Puerto Rico by the time the National Weather Service upgraded Tropical Storm Joaquin to Hurricane Joaquin, packing 75 mph winds, at 8 a.m. the following day.

But ship tracking data show that the El Faro appears to have stayed its course toward the storm’s predicted path even as the weather service issued seven more hurricane advisories over the next 21 hours – each warning of the storm’s growing strength – before the ship’s last known communication near the Bahamas.

Capt. Michael Davidson’s decision to stay the course in an apparent bid to outrun the storm will likely be a key part of the investigation launched Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board into what appears to be the United States’ worst commercial maritime disaster in decades. But as frequently happens immediately after such disasters, debate has already begun about whether the captain or the El Faro’s owner, TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico, made fatal calls or whether the ship fell victim to that “perfect storm” of bad luck and the unpredictability of Mother Nature.

Answers to some of those questions are likely months away, if they are ever known.

“They want to document thoroughly the investigation, and it will take time,” Marjorie Murtagh Cooke, who headed the NTSB’s Office of Maritime Safety from 1994 to 2005, said of the federal investigators. “Unfortunately, everybody wants to know what happened immediately, but … it’s a long, detailed process of getting the facts that will lead to not just (NTSB) conclusions and recommendations, but also information that can help make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”

There are plenty of known facts about the El Faro and its crew.

The 790-foot-long ship had been in service for 40 years – a long time for cargo vessels – but had been regularly maintained and updated. Davidson, of Windham, was a veteran captain with several decades of experience and a strong reputation in Maine and around the industry. At least three other Maine residents – 34-year-old Danielle Randolph of Rockland, 25-year-old Michael Holland of Wilton and 23-year-old Dylan Meklin of Rockland – were among the 28 American crew members plus five ship workers from Poland. All four Mainers were graduates of Maine Maritime Academy.

It’s also clear that Joaquin was still a manageable tropical storm when the El Faro set sail from Jacksonville, although forecasts already were warning that the storm would likely intensify. What isn’t known is exactly what went into Davidson’s decision to sail a route east of the Bahamas that would take the El Faro closer to the storm, rather than the longer but potentially safer route closer to the Florida coast.

DECIDING WHETHER TO SHIP OUT

TOTE officials said Monday that Davidson planned to bypass or essentially outrun Joaquin before the ship suffered a mechanical failure that disabled it and left it adrift in the path of the increasingly powerful storm. They also said TOTE Maritime “authorized the sailing knowing that the crew are more than equipped to handle situations such as changing weather.”

The website MarineTraffic.com, which uses data from automated location reporting equipment to track ship movements around the globe, shows that the El Faro proceeded in a fairly straight course from the Florida coastline to the Bahamas at speeds of 18 to 20 knots until the last ping was recorded just before midnight Thursday.

Although the families of Maine crew members have expressed strong support and confidence in the captain, some observers have questioned Davidson’s decision or wondered whether he was somehow pressured to stick to the quicker route.

Experts and seasoned mariners said that although captains frequently discuss their plans with ship owners, it is ultimately the captain’s call about when a trip should be made.

Bernie Marciniak, a retired captain with major global shipping lines who lives in Boston, said there is always pressure on a captain to keep to a schedule, but there also could be consequences for any captain who took a vessel into a storm that caused damages or injuries. Marciniak wondered why Davidson didn’t take another route as the storm reports grew more dire, or hole up in the Bahamas, but said there are many uncertainties about the El Faro’s situation.

“Nobody from the (main) office can ever tell you as a captain where to go because of weather or whatever. However, the pressure from the shipping office is intense,” Marciniak said.

Capt. Sam Stephenson, who teaches emergency ship handling at Resolve Maritime Academy in Florida, told the Miami Herald that Davidson “was going to cross the storm at some point” based on his route.

“In my opinion, it makes no sense to do that,” Stephenson told the paper. “When you’re a ship, you want to avoid the storm at all costs.”

SERIES OF ILL-FATED CIRCUMSTANCES?

But Capt. Harry Bolton, a veteran master aboard commercial vessels who is now commanding officer of the California State University Maritime Academy’s training ship, said there was “no way in hell” that Davidson or any other experienced captain would take a ship and its crew into harm’s way.

“No captain is going to take their ship into the eye of a storm” like Joaquin, said Bolton, who has more than 40 years of experience in maritime service. “Like most tragedies, it is likely a series of incidents that happened aboard the ship or in the environment that we often call the ‘perfect storm.’ … When you get the perfect conditions of a ship that has an engine casualty and a storm that explodes, that is a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

Bolton, who worked for TOTE in the late 1970s and actually sailed aboard the El Faro’s sister ship in the company, described TOTE as “one of the best in the United States.” He angrily dismissed any suggestions that the company would put its ship or crew at risk.

“The decision process rests with the captain, not with the company,” he said. And in the El Faro’s case, Bolton said he had no doubts that the ship would have outrun Joaquin had it not encountered engine trouble.

“If they had engines, we would not be talking right now,” Bolton said. “It would just be another thing mariners go through” and tell tales about later.

Laurence Wade, a merchant marine captain for more than 30 years and later master of the Maine Maritime Academy training ship, said he never likes to see people questioning a captain’s decision, particularly those with no experience at sea.

“Sailing in bad weather, even in hurricanes, is part of the way of life for mariners,” said Wade, 73, who is retired and lives just outside Bangor. “You do the best you can. You ride it out. If the (El Faro) hadn’t lost power, it would have been in San Juan by Friday and back in Jacksonville today.”

Similarly, Wade cautioned people not to speculate about whether the crew waited too long to abandon ship. He said in most cases, the cargo ship would be the most stable place to ride out a storm.

“It’s hard to speculate because we really don’t know what was going on out there and may not for some time,” he said, “but in general, you stay with the ship as long as you can.”

DATA RECORDER MAY HOLD ANSWERS

F. John Nicoll, a retired captain who spent years piloting the run to Puerto Rico, predicted the NTSB investigation will touch on whether the pressure to deliver the cargo on time played a role in the tragedy.

“Time and money are an important thing” in the shipping industry, Nicoll told The Associated Press. Emails or other messages between Davidson and the company could help answer that question, Nicoll said.

The NTSB investigation will delve into a lengthy list of issues, including the ship’s repair history and condition before leaving port, the experience level of the crew, maintenance records and any communications between the captain and TOTE officials.

Commercial shipping vessels are also equipped with a “voyage data recorder,” similar to the “black boxes” found on commercial aircraft, that is designed to activate if the ship sinks. The data recorder will “ping” for up to 30 days to help searchers find the lost ship. If found, the data recorder will provide investigators with information on what was happening to the ship mechanically, as well as recordings of ship-to-shore conversations and bridge conversations for 12 hours prior to activation.

Cooke, the former director of the NTSB’s Office of Maritime Safety, said that investigation will be even more complicated if the El Faro is not located. However, investigators’ first task will be to collect facts and then get agreement from the various parties – including TOTE and the U.S. Coast Guard – about those facts. Eventually, investigators will present a draft report and recommendations to the board, which will review them during a public process.

Cooke would not speculate about the case or offer opinions about the ship’s course, saying, “We don’t know what (Davidson) knew and when he knew it.

“However, in this case they lost the use of the main engine, and once you lose your main source of power at sea, you are at the mercy of the sea,” Cooke said. “You have no control of the vessel and no power to take the ship away from the path of the hurricane.”

Also on board the El Faro were five Polish workers preparing the engine room for a refit. On Tuesday, questions were raised about whether that work could have contributed to the loss of engine power. Many believe that is what ultimately doomed the ship, leaving it unnavigable in a storm with winds exceeding 120 mph and 50-foot waves.

The company did not provide details about the nature of the Polish crew’s work, but representatives said they didn’t believe there was a link.

“I don’t believe based on the work they were doing that they would have had anything to do with what affected the propulsion,” said Phil Greene, a TOTE executive, according to The Associated Press.

CASTINE — Hundreds of Maine Maritime Academy students were among those who gathered Tuesday evening at the campus for a candlelight vigil to express their hopes for the survival of four MMA graduates who are missing at sea.

All four were aboard the cargo ship El Faro when it sank after being overtaken at sea by Hurricane Joaquin. Efforts continued Tuesday to search for the 32 members of its 33-person crew who remain missing, even as the chances of their survival continued to diminish. Searchers spotted the body of an unidentified crew member in a survival suit Sunday evening.

The somber vigil included prayers, songs, and heartfelt statements by students, faculty and administrators.

“Look upward, and keep hope in your hearts,” MMA President William J. Brennan told the students, many of whom had broken down in tears.

A table was set up with photos of the four graduates and handwritten signs saying “MMA Strong” and “Mariners Forever.” Some gathered around it to share stories of their experiences with the lost crew members or console those who were struggling to cope with the burgeoning tragedy.

“The students united to have a gathering to support each other and maintain hope,” said Jennifer DeJoy, Maine Maritime Academy’s director of college relations. “It’s hard, day after day, to keep that going.”

Academy graduates aboard the El Faro included the ship’s captain, Michael Davidson, 53, along with crew members Dylan Meklin, 23, Danielle Randolph, 34, and Michael Holland, 25. All four are from Maine.

Many students said they knew Meklin, who graduated in May.

“He was funny and very bright,” said senior Kelsie Hilton. “He always made me laugh in class.”

Hilton described Meklin as a skilled and resourceful mariner, saying that she was still “100 percent hopeful” that he would be found alive.

“Knowing him, he could make it for sure,” she said.

Seniors Dina Bahloul and Alexi Galley cried as they described their friendship with Meklin. Although they said they were trying to remain optimistic, they also spoke of the need to be there in support of the loved ones of those crew members who may be lost forever.

“They’re doing all they can, and they’re holding out hope,” Galley said.

Alumnus David Gelinas attended the vigil and said current and former students at the academy share a special bond.

“All of the Maine Maritime grads throughout the country are feeling tremendous anguish toward this,” said Gelinas, a Penobscot resident who graduated in 1984.

Like the others, Gelinas said it was important to maintain a degree of optimism and allow the Coast Guard search-and-rescue crews to do their job.

In the meantime, he said, Tuesday night’s vigil was a way for friends and classmates of the lost crew members to come together in support of each other.

“I have to believe that it’s helpful at a time like this to be with others,” he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board has taken over as the lead agency investigating the sinking of the cargo ship El Faro and says it will focus its efforts and resources on locating the ship and retrieving its voyage data recorder.

“Recovering the voyage data recorder is our first priority,” T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, the NTSB’s vice chairwoman, said at a news conference Tuesday night in Jacksonville, Florida.

Dinh-Zarr said the NTSB’s mission will be to develop a “factual” account of what happened to the ship, not only for the sake of the crew’s families, but for the American public.

She said the El Faro’s VDR, commonly referred to as the black box, stores data from the ship’s sensors and could provide investigators with a record of the ship’s movements and transmissions during the 12 hours before it sank.

Information such as a ship’s position and speed, audio from the bridge, ship alarms, hull openings and hull stress readings, wind speed and direction, and radio communications are just some of the data that can be stored in the black box.

Locating the ship, which the Coast Guard said sank near the Bahamas in 15,000 feet of water, will be challenging, but Dinh-Zarr said the VDR emits a “ping” or signal once it touches water. The device’s battery life is usually about 30 days, she said.

“No pinging has been heard, ” she said.

If the El Faro is found, the NTSB will then team up with the Coast Guard and the Navy to determine the best way to reach the vessel and recover the VDR.

Though Dinh-Zarr said there are “methods” available for such a deep-sea recovery, she declined to speculate on what those might involve.

In the meantime, she said the NTSB’s team of investigators will look at all facets of the ship’s engineering and navigation systems and its marine logs, and they will interview the ship’s owners. The team will remain in Florida for up to 10 days.

Dinh-Zarr said she met with the crew members’ families earlier in the evening Tuesday. She would not elaborate when asked how that meeting went.

“Our sole purpose is to figure out what happened and why it happened,” she said.

‘NO INTEREST IN NEGATIVE ENERGY’

Relatives of two Mainers feared lost at sea after the sinking said they are remaining positive about the search, and they aren’t second-guessing the decisions made by the ship’s captain.

“We have absolutely no interest in negative energy. We have no interest in looking at blame,” said Deb Roberts, the mother of Michael Holland, 25, of Wilton, one of 32 crew members who are still unaccounted for. “We have interest in finding my son and the rest of the crew alive, and the only thing I blame in this is Hurricane Joaquin.”

Danielle Randolph

Laurie Bobillot, the mother of Danielle Randolph, 34, of Rockland, had no doubts about the abilities of Capt. Michael Davidson, 53, of Windham, who was piloting the 790-foot container ship when it lost power and was left stranded in the path of the gathering hurricane.

“I have all the faith in the world in the captain,” Bobillot said in an interview Tuesday morning with WCSH-TV in Jacksonville, where family members of the crew have gathered to await news of the search. “He’s been sailing for over 20 years now. He has a tough call, a real tough call to make, but I’m convinced he would not put his life or his crew’s life in unnecessary danger.”

When the El Faro left Jacksonville for Puerto Rico on Sept. 29, Joaquin had not yet been upgraded to hurricane status, and the decision whether to depart would have been Davidson’s.

But setting sail in tough conditions was not uncommon, Bobillot said.

“I’ve gotten so many emails from my daughter in the past, ‘Hey, we’re going into a tropical storm,’ or ‘Hey, the winds and the seas are really rough,’ or ‘Hey, Mom, we’re going for another rough ride,’ ” Bobillot said. “They have to do it or nothing would ever get delivered. The danger’s always there, and I have all the faith in the world the captain did what he thought was best.”

The search for survivors continued Tuesday off the coast of the Bahamas, where vessels and aircraft from the Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force scoured several debris fields consistent with the cargo ship’s contents.

“They’re finding things, but what we’re not finding are survivors,” Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Gabe Somma said in a phone interview Tuesday morning. “With every passing hour there is a heightened sense of urgency.”

Capt. Michael Davidson

Three Coast Guard cutters and multiple aircraft equipped with specialized search-and-rescue equipment are focusing on a roughly 300-square-mile expanse of ocean where rescue crews have spotted concentrations of debris from the sunken ship.

Rescuers haven’t seen signs of any of the ship’s crew since searchers spotted, but were unable to recover, the body of an unidentified crew member in a survival suit Sunday evening.

“We believe that they still could be alive,” Somma said.

RESCUE MISSION REMAINS ACTIVE

The ship’s crew members have strong ties to Maine.

Davidson, Randolph, Holland and a fourth crew member, Dylan Meklin, 23, all graduated from Maine Maritime Academy. Counselors at the school have been made available to students, and a vigil was held Tuesday evening at the Castine campus.

A full list of the crew members has not been released, and a spokesman for the ship owner said that every effort has been made to contact the family members of everyone on board. The company said 28 of the crew are American citizens and five are Polish nationals.

Tim Nolan, president of TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico, which owns the vessel, said in a statement Tuesday evening that the company is cooperating fully with the NTSB investigation, and will hire a third-party firm to perform an independent safety assessment of TOTE. Nolan said the company will release that assessment once it is complete.

Dylan Meklin

The Coast Guard and TOTE will decide when to call off the rescue mission, said Mike Hanson, the TOTE spokesman.

In an earlier interview with The Associated Press, Phil Greene, the president and CEO of TOTE, the parent company, said Davidson conferred last week with the El Faro’s sister ship, which had returned from Puerto Rico to Jacksonville along a similar route, and he determined the weather was good enough for the El Faro to depart Jacksonville.

At the time of the El Faro’s departure, the storm had not been upgraded to hurricane status.

On board were 391 containers topside and 294 trailers and vehicles below deck. It was bound for San Juan, about 1,300 miles to the southeast, but ran into the hurricane less than halfway into the trip.

On the third day of the journey, the crew reported engine problems that left the vessel powerless to evade Hurricane Joaquin, a Category 4 storm that blew into the Caribbean region with winds that topped 130 mph, or maneuver once it was in the storm’s grasp.

“We do not know when his engine problems began to occur, nor the reasons for his engine problems,” Greene told AP.

‘AT THIS POINT … PRAYING FOR A MIRACLE’

The ship had more than enough lifeboats and rafts for its crew to escape the sinking vessel, but maritime experts say the high winds and 50-foot waves during Hurricane Joaquin would have made getting off the ship extremely difficult.

The ship had two lifeboats capable of carrying 43 people each, five life rafts and 46 water survival suits, according to the Coast Guard and the ship’s owner. One lifeboat has been found, badly damaged and empty.

Michael Holland

The last known communication from the El Faro was received Thursday morning, when crew members made a satellite distress call about 35 nautical miles from Crooked Island to report that the ship had lost power.

Jordan Biscaro, a spokesman for the Seafarer’s International Union, said the union hall in Jacksonville has been the gathering place for families of crew members waiting for news of their loved ones.

Now, more than five days after the El Faro’s last communication, the feeling among the families has shifted, Biscaro said.

“From Sunday night on, I think the tone’s changed, and I think we understand that at this point we’re praying for a miracle,” Biscaro said.

Matt Byrne can be contacted at 791-6303 or at:

mbyrne@pressherald.com

Twitter: MattByrnePPH

A massive air and sea search off the coast of the Bahamas on Monday revealed no signs of survivors from the missing cargo ship El Faro, which is believed to have sunk in the path of Hurricane Joaquin with four Mainers and 29 other crew members on board.

The body of one crew member was found in a survival suit floating in the debris field near the Bahamas but was not identifiable, according to the Coast Guard. Empty survival suits also were found, along with one of the ship’s two lifeboats, empty and heavily damaged.

Crew members’ families and Coast Guard officials were not giving up hope of finding survivors.

“We are assuming that the vessel has sunk,” said the Coast Guard spokesman, Capt. Mark Fedor. “We’re still looking for survivors or any signs of life.”

More than 200 people gathered for an emotional vigil Monday evening in Rockland, the hometown of two of the missing mariners. The mood was somber, a mix of hope and sadness that two of their own might be lost at sea.

The ship was carrying mixed cargo from Florida to Puerto Rico as Hurricane Joaquin moved toward the Bahamas. Its crew reported Thursday morning that the ship had lost power and taken on water, and was listing to one side. The call came as the hurricane paused east of the Bahamas, gathering strength and crossing the path of the ship as it turned to the north.

While maintaining hope that crew members may still be found, Fedor was sober about the odds of success.

If someone had been able to get off the sinking ship, he said, “They would have been abandoning ship into a Category 4 hurricane. So you’re talking up to 140 mile-an-hour winds, seas upwards of 50 feet and visibility basically zero. These are challenging conditions to survive in.”

The El Faro was equipped with 46 survival suits, more than enough for the 33 crew members, but Fedor said that mariners could survive for only four or five days even in warm water. The average water temperature around the Bahamas this time of year is 78 to 80 degrees. If crew members went into the water Thursday, then Monday would have been the fifth day.

The vessel’s owners said Monday that Capt. Michael Davidson of Windham planned to bypass Hurricane Joaquin, but the ship suffered a mechanical failure that disabled it and left it adrift in the path of the powerful storm, The Associated Press reported.

Phil Greene, president and CEO of TOTE Services, the ship’s Puerto Rico-based owner, told the AP that Davidson had conferred last week with El Faro’s sister ship, which had been returning to Jacksonville along a similar route, and he determined the weather was good enough for El Faro’s trip.

“Regrettably, he suffered a mechanical problem with his main propulsion system, which left him in the path of the storm,” Greene told the AP. “We do not know when his engine problems began to occur, nor the reasons for his engine problems.”

The captain, who has 20 years of experience on cargo ships, told company officials that the crew was removing water, the AP reported. He also told officials that the El Faro was listing 15 degrees in strong winds and seas, and that some water had entered through a hatch that popped open.

SHIP DEEPLY CONNECTED TO MAINE

The cargo ship has significant ties to Maine. The company has not released the list of El Faro’s crew, but family members have confirmed there are four missing Mainers: Davidson, the ship’s 53-year-old captain, and crew members Michael Holland, 25, of Wilton, Danielle Randolph, 34, of Rockland and Dylan Meklin, 23, of Rockland. All four graduated from Maine Maritime Academy in Castine.

Deb Roberts, Holland’s mother, wrote on Facebook that despite Monday’s grim news, she was holding out for a miracle.

“As you all have probably heard by now, we received word this morning that the Coast Guard and Tote Services believe that the SS El Faro sunk in Hurricane Joaquin,” the post read. “The hope we hold onto now is that they will find survivors today. Evidence is showing that the crew put themselves in the best possible position to survive by getting into their immersion suits. Miracles happen. Keep the faith! Prayers needed more than ever today.”

Gov. Paul LePage released a statement saying he has not given up hope.

“The First Lady and I are praying for all those aboard, including our four Mainers. During this very difficult time, our hearts go out to the families and friends of our fellow Mainers, as well as the other 29 crew members,” LePage said.

The 790-foot El Faro left Jacksonville, Florida, on Sept. 29, carrying 391 containers topside and 294 trailers and cars below deck. It was bound for San Juan, about 1,300 miles to the southeast, but ran into the hurricane less than halfway into the trip.

Crew members made a satellite distress call Thursday morning from about 35 nautical miles northeast of Crooked Island in the Bahamas to report the loss of power. That was the last communication from the ship.

Randolph wrote an email to her mother just before the ship began taking on water.

“Not sure if you’ve been following the weather at all,” she wrote in an email to Laurie Bobillot, as reported in The Washington Post, “but there is a hurricane out here and we are heading straight into it. Winds are super bad and seas are not great.”

INTENSE SEARCH TO CONTINUE

Fedor, the Coast Guard spokesman, said officials were not giving up hope. Three cutters were in the water Monday morning, and search planes were flying overhead.

“We are not going to discount somebody’s will to survive,” he said.

Capt. Nathan Gandy, Maine Maritime Academy’s commandant of midshipmen, said it is possible to survive abandoning a ship in a Category 4 hurricane.

“Our cadets spend four years learning safety and survival skills that would come into play in an event like this,” Gandy said in an email Monday night. “Things like basic lifeboat skills, ocean survival and survival equipment courses with practical labs, and drills conducted onboard our training ship are all used to develop the cadets’ ability to operate in a crisis or emergency situation.”

A trained crew member can put a survival suit on in 60 seconds or less, Gandy said.

Lt. Cmdr. Gabe Somma, a Coast Guard spokesman in Florida, said the discovery of one body in a survival suit gave searchers hope.

“It’s an important point because clearly they had time to put on a survival suit,” Somma said Monday evening. “They were in a dire situation and recognized the urgency of putting on their survival gear.”

BODY HAD TO BE LEFT IN WATER

Somma said a Coast Guard rescue swimmer was lowered from a helicopter to the location where the body in the survival suit was floating.

“They had to make a gut-wrenching decision to leave the scene and try to find someone who was alive,” Somma said. The rescue swimmer and crew were running out of daylight and were receiving reports of other objects floating in the area. “That is our No. 1 priority, saving life at sea.”

Somma said the Coast Guard would continue to search through the night Monday and into Tuesday morning, with aircraft and cutters set to resume the search at first light.

“Our crews are still searching and holding onto hope that we will find someone,” Somma said.

The National Transportation Safety Board will be sending a team of investigators to Florida on Tuesday to lead an investigation, Somma said.

At the vigil in Rockland, with the harbor in the background at sunset, many were there to support Meklin, a multi-sport high school athlete who went to college just a little ways up the coast at Maine Maritime.

Josh Elwell was a classmate of Meklin’s at both Rockland and MMA. He’s now a merchant mariner.

“I just talked to him on Tuesday before he left,” Elwell said. “I’m still hoping for the best, hoping he’s out there somewhere. We train for this, so if anyone can come through it’s those guys.”

Deborah Dyer, Meklin’s aunt, organized the vigil. She said she was touched by the outpouring of support from her nephew’s friends and his longtime girlfriend, Jordan Dehlinger, also a Maine Maritime Academy student, who was in Florida awaiting any news.

Keenan Eaton, a former roommate of Meklin’s at Maine Maritime, said as long as there is a lifeboat and rafts unaccounted for, he’ll still believe his friend is alive.

“If he’s out there, I know he’ll be the one keeping everyone calm,” Eaton said.

Several family members, including Deb Roberts and Laurie Bobillot, went to Jacksonville to be closer to the search.

COLLEGE WORRIED FOR ‘SHIPMATES’

Maine Maritime Academy President William J. Brennan met with students and staff members Monday afternoon in the student center.

“We are all mariners and I know we are distressed by what we have heard today, but we are also encouraged that the search-and-rescue effort continues,” Brennan said in his prepared remarks. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the crew of the El Faro and their families and their loved ones – we are all shipmates.”

A vigil of hope will be held on the campus at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The ship was built in 1974 and originally named the Puerto Rico, according to TOTE’s website. It was renamed El Faro – “lighthouse” in Spanish – in 2006, and has been used primarily to carry groceries and automobiles between the United States and Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In addition to the survival suits, the ship had two 43-passenger lifeboats and five life rafts with a total capacity of 106 passengers.

Debris from the ship was found during searches over the weekend, including life jackets, wood, containers and an oil sheen. Based on information obtained during those searches, Fedor said, the ship is presumed to have sunk near its last known position.

The search for survivors is focused on the debris field near the El Faro’s last known location, which spans about 300 square nautical miles, and a smaller area about 60 miles to the north, Fedor said. The depth of the ocean there is nearly 3 miles.

Involved in the search are two Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules aircraft and an MH-60 Jayhawk from Air Station Clearwater in Florida, two Navy P-8 fixed-wing airplanes, two 210-foot Coast Guard cutters – the Northland of Portsmouth, Virginia, and the Resolute of St. Petersburg – the 154-foot cutter Charles Sexton of Key West, and three commercial tugboats, according to the Coast Guard.

Bad weather hampered search efforts Friday and Saturday. Sunday was the first day that Coast Guard officials could effectively search the area, Fedor said, and conditions Monday were good as well.

Asked why the ship made its trip, Fedor said mariners are warned about weather conditions. When the ship left, Joaquin had not yet been upgraded to a hurricane. The decision to leave would have been Davidson’s.

SUPPORT FROM MAINE DELEGATION

Maine Maritime Academy has arranged open counseling hours for students over the past few days, and the school’s director of counseling, Paul Ferreira, held open office hours Monday in Curtis Hall. The college will arrange additional counseling hours as needed, according to Brennan’s statement.

Members of Maine’s congressional delegation released statements offering thoughts and prayers.

“While it’s devastating to learn El Faro has sunk, we must continue to hold onto hope and pray that survivors will be located and reunited with their loved ones,” said U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin. “In English, El Faro means ‘The Lighthouse’ and it is my hope that our lighthouses will help guide our Mainers, and the crew, home.”

Added U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree: “Almost everyone in Maine knows someone who works on the water and knows the risks that involves. Our thoughts are with the brave men and women who go to sea and the Coast Guard and military personnel who have risked their own lives to conduct the search.”

U.S. Sen. Angus King said his heart goes out to the families.

“Like everyone in Maine, I continue to hold out hope that the crew members may be safely brought home,” he said.

U.S. Sen Susan Collins said in a statement that she had been briefed about the search by the leader of the Coast Guard and that those involved were doing everything humanely possible to find survivors.

“My heart goes out to the family members, some of whom I know well, and also to the Maine Maritime Academy community, as they await news about their loved ones,” Collins said.

 Staff Writers Ray Routhier and Dennis Hoey contributed to this report.

Some naval architects say El Faro’s design and cargo configuration could have played a role in its sinking.

The 40-year-old ship wasn’t a conventional container ship, but a “roll-on/roll-off” cargo vessel designed to carry trucks and other vehicles that are driven on and off the ship. When the El Faro departed Jacksonville, Florida, last Tuesday bound for Puerto Rico, it was carrying 294 cars, trucks and trailers below deck, as well as 391 containers on its top deck.

The El Faro, which one naval architect said was more than a decade older than the 25-year design lifespan of merchant vessels, was due to be replaced on the Puerto Rico route by a new ship later this year or early next year.

TOTE Services of Puerto Rico, the company that owns the El Faro, said the vessel was sound, well-maintained and passed its annual Coast Guard inspection in March.

Roll-on/roll-off ships have large external doors close to the waterline and open vehicle decks with few internal compartments. The El Faro had vehicle doors on the side of the hull rather than the bow and stern.

During extreme weather, such as the 30- to 40-foot waves the El Faro encountered as it approached the eye of Hurricane Joaquin near the Bahamas on Thursday, sea water can pour through an improperly secured or damaged loading door, said Richard Burke, professor of naval architecture and marine engineering at the State University of New York Maritime College.

Such ships require large open spaces, like the hangar decks on aircraft carriers, he said, and when water gets inside, it will “slosh” around the entire deck, making the ship unstable, he said.

This sloshing is known as the “free surface effect,” and a surprisingly small amount of water can cause a ship to capsize, said Rick Spilman, who has worked as a naval architect for 30 years and writes a blog about ships.

That’s why critics of the design call ships like the El Faro “roll on/roll over” ships.

In 1987, when a bow door was left open on the passenger ferry MS Herald of Free Enterprise as it left dock in Belgium, water on the vehicle deck caused the ship to capsize in 90 seconds, Spilman said.

In 2006, a fire broke out on the Egyptian ferry MS al-Salam Boccaccio 98. Water from fighting the fire collected on the vehicle deck and caused the ship to capsize and sink with the loss of over 1,000 lives.

Spilman said roll-on/roll-off ships are popular for the route between Florida and Puerto Rico because they provide an efficient way to move cargo short distances, and there’s a large volume of vehicles shipped on the route.

However, he said roll-on/roll-off ships are less safe than conventional container ships because they are much more likely to flip over.

When a conventional container ship is in rough weather, he said, containers can tumble off the deck and lower the ship’s center of gravity, making the ship more stable because the containers inside the hold are more likely to remain secure than something that has been driven on. A conventional ship is more likely to sink slowly rather than capsize, giving the crew time to escape in life rafts, he said.

The crew of the El Faro reported Thursday morning that the ship had lost propulsion and some water had entered through a hatch that had popped open. The ship was listing 15 degrees. Radio contact went dead at 7:20 a.m.

‘PRELUDE TO DISASTER’

The ship’s emergency beacon sent out a signal briefly and then stopped. The beacon is designed to float away from the ship and continue sending a signal.

If the El Faro had capsized, the beacon could have been trapped underneath the ship, Spilman said.

“It appears that something very sudden happened,” he said.

In addition to the sloshing water in the trailer deck, trucks can become unsecured in heavy seas and slide to one side, causing the ship to list even more. That’s what happened when the Korean ferry Sewol capsized in 2014.

“Once cargo starts breaking loose, very bad things start to happen,” Burke said.

If water got into the El Faro’s hold it also could have affected its fuel-oil fired steam engine. Once a ship loses power, it loses maneuverability and waves will begin crashing into the ship broadside, causing it to roll violently. “Losing the power is often the prelude to disaster,” Burke said.

He said the age of the El Faro, built in 1974, also may be a factor. Cargo ships are usually designed to last 20 to 25 years, although older ships often operate on shorter routes, Burke said. He added that old ships are like old houses in that they need more maintenance.

The company had planned to replace the El Faro with a new ship, either later this year or next spring, and put the El Faro back to service in Alaska after being refitted and updated. From 1993 to 2003, the ship, then called the Northern Lights, carried cargo between Tacoma, Washington, and Anchorage, Alaska.

The San Diego shipbuilder NASSCO is now in the final construction stages of building two new container ships for TOTE. Both will be powered by natural gas and operate between Jacksonville and Puerto Rico for the TOTE subsidiary Sea Star Line.

Both of the new ships will be conventional container ships.

WINDHAM — From the time he was growing up on Casco Bay, Michael Davidson knew his career would be on the water.

Raised in South Portland, he spent summers on Great Diamond Island, where the ocean is part of the neighborhood. As a teenager, he signed on as a deckhand with Casco Bay Lines, and took to the work like he was born for it, becoming a captain before he enrolled in Maine Maritime Academy.

“It points to Mike’s experience level and commitment to being a professional mariner,” said Nicholas Mavodones Jr., operations manager at Casco Bay Lines, who has known Davidson since they were children and worked alongside him when they were young men. “He has always taken the job very seriously.”

Davidson’s family kept a grim vigil Monday, waiting for news from the Coast Guard, which was searching an expanse of the Atlantic Ocean the size of California for survivors of one of the worst maritime disasters in decades. While Davidson’s wife, Theresa, was in Jacksonville, Florida, with relatives of El Faro crew members, other family and friends gathered at the Davidson home on Fox Court in Windham, where about a dozen cars were parked in the driveway.

Meanwhile, a wide circle of mariners with whom Davidson, 53, has served also waited hopefully, even though that hope dwindles with each passing day.

“We’re watching this very closely,” said Doug Lamson, a South Berwick native who is fleet operations manager for ConocoPhillips, where Davidson once worked. “Myself and many of our mariners here know Mike very well and find this very upsetting.”

Davidson worked for Casco Bay Lines as a deckhand in the 1970s and 1980s, for some of that time under the command of Larry Legere.

“He was a very energetic, enthusiastic worker. He did his job well, moved up the ranks and got his captain’s license very quickly,” said Legere, now an operations agent with Casco Bay Lines.

After graduating from South Portland High School, Davidson enrolled at Maine Maritime, graduating in 1988. He worked for Arco and ConocoPhillips, before going to work for TOTE Maritime.

Legere said he spoke with Davidson a few weeks ago, when Davidson was headed out to Peaks Island to visit his mother-in-law. He was in great shape, as usual, Legere said.

“He looks a lot younger than his age, which is a pretty tough thing to do when you’re a mariner,” Legere said.

Pat Wetmore, a neighbor on the Davidson’s quiet cul-de-sac for the past 20 years, said Davidson was exceptionally nice, offering help if she had anything heavy that needed moving. When a large branch fell off an oak tree in her front yard, Davidson cut it up for her.

When Davidson wasn’t at sea, he was home with his family, two college-age daughters, Ariana and Marina, and his wife.

“He’s very devoted to his family and his children especially,” said Mary Emmons, a neighbor. “He wasn’t home much. When he was, he would do family stuff.”

Davidson was fond of her 8-year-old grandson, Eric, who adored Davidson.

“They’re good people,” said Roberta Emmons, Eric’s mother. “I just want them found.”

Sean Grossman, a student at the University of Southern Maine, said that when he moved into the neighborhood last summer, he asked Davidson who his Internet provider was. Until Grossman got service, Davidson gave him the password for his Wi-Fi network – the signal could reach Grossman’s house.

The life of a ship’s captain is one of constant attentiveness, say fellow mariners, and it is not a profession one chooses without an aptitude for precision and preparation.

“It’s not an environment where you can’t take it seriously all the time,” Mavodones said. “Whether it’s the weather, the sea and wind, the cargo you have on board, the passengers on board or your crew – everybody in the business takes it very seriously.”

In one of her only public comments since the ship was reported missing, Theresa Davidson told the Daily Mail of London on Friday, “My husband is extremely capable, he has extensive training. … If anyone can handle a situation like that, it’s my husband.”

Legere said that as a seasoned mariner, Davidson would have approached his situation with concern, not fear. But when the engines stopped, the situation would have been dire.

“In the one big storm I was in down off the coast of Mexico with 12- to 20-foot seas, the waves were coming up over the catwalk, 10 feet above the main deck, and the ship listed to 23 degrees,” he said. The tanker’s engines didn’t stop, as they apparently did on the El Faro.

“Anybody who has gone on the deep sea, that is the main thing. Once you lose propulsion, you can’t maneuver, and if you can’t maneuver, you can’t get out of the way of bad weather,” Legere said.

As the Coast Guard continued to retrieve debris and concluded that the El Faro had sunk, concern turned to sorrow among Davidson’s friends and colleagues.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and crew,” Lamson said. “Hopefully there is a miracle, but as the days go on, it’s less and less likely.”

Tuesday, Sept. 29: El Faro departs, with a crew of 33 and a cargo that includes cars and retail goods, from Jacksonville, Florida, for San Juan, Puerto Rico. As of 5 a.m. on the day of departure, then-Tropical Storm Joaquin has maximum wind speeds of 40 mph and is located about 385 miles northeast of the central Bahamas, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Wednesday, Sept. 30: Joaquin intensifies from a tropical storm to a hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph. In early morning, it is about 215 miles east-northeast of the Central Bahamas, heading southwest at 6 mph.

Thursday, Oct. 1: All communication with El Faro is lost at 7:20 a.m. after the crew reports the ship losing power and taking on water as it passes near Crooked Island in the southeastern Bahamas. Hurricane Joaquin is now a Category 3, with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph and higher gusts.

Friday, Oct. 2: The Coast Guard deploys the cutter Northland, an MH-60 Jayhawk rescue helicopter crew based in Great Inagua, Bahamas, and HC-130 Hercules airplanes from Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Florida, to search for the El Faro. No trace of the ship is found.

Saturday, Oct. 3: Searchers find a life ring from the El Faro about 120 miles northeast of Crooked Island. The ship’s last known position was about 35 miles northeast of Crooked Island. Navy and Air Force planes and vessels hired by the El Faro’s owner assist in the search.

Sunday, Oct. 4: A large debris field that appears to include material from the ship and a sheen of oil on the sea surface is discovered. The company says it has found a container from the ship.

Monday, Oct. 5: The Coast Guard determines the ship sank in 15,000 feet of water. It reports finding the body of a crew member and an empty life boat.

One set of human remains has been found in the debris field from the cargo ship El Faro, but U.S. Coast Guard officials said Monday that they were still searching for survivors.

During a press conference in Miami, Coast Guard spokesman Mark Fedor said crews had suspended their search for the ship and now believe that it sank last week during Hurricane Joaquin.

“We’re still looking for survivors or any signs of life,” Fedor said.

Officials did find one set of human remains in a survival suit, Fedor said, but those remains were not identifiable. Other immersion suits were found as well, as well as a lifeboat, one of two on board the El Faro, that was heavily damaged but empty.

The 790-foot cargo ship left Jacksonville, Florida, last Tuesday carrying 391 containers topside and another 294 trailers and cars below deck. It was bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico, but instead ran into the hurricane as the powerful storm raced north.

Neither El Faro nor its 33 passengers – four from Maine, including Capt. Michael Davidson of Windham – have been seen or heard from since last week. Crew members made a satellite distress call Thursday morning from a location about 35 nautical miles northeast of Crooked Island in the Bahamas to report that the ship had taken on water and was listing by 15 degrees, but that the flooding had stopped. That was the last communication from the ship.

In addition to Davidson, 53, the Mainers on board were Michael Holland of Wilton, Danielle Randolph, 34, of Rockland, and Dylan Meklin, 23, of Rockland. All four were graduates of Maine Maritime Academy in Castine.

Randolph wrote an email to her mother just before the ship began taking on water, according to the Washington Post.

“Not sure if you’ve been following the weather at all,” Randolph wrote to Laurie Bobillot, “but there is a hurricane out here and we are heading straight into it. Winds are super bad and seas are not great.”

During searches over the weekend, debris from the ship was found, including life jackets, wood, containers and oil sheen. Fedor said based on information obtained during those searches, the ship is presumed to have sunk near its last known position.

The El Faro, built in 1974 and owned by TOTE Maritime Services Puerto Rico, was equipped with 46 survival suits, more than enough for the number of crew members, but Fedor said Monday that mariners likely could survive for only four or five days in warm water. The average water temperature around the Bahamas this time of year is between 78 and 80 degrees.

In addition to the suits, the ship had two 43-passenger lifeboats, one of which was found empty, and five life rafts with a total capacity of 106 passengers.

Fedor said maritime conditions during the Category 4 hurricane were brutal. He said even if crew members were able to get off the ship and into a life raft or boat, they would still be facing 140 mph winds and zero visibility.

“Those are challenging conditions to survive in,” he said.

Still, he said officials were not giving up hope. There were three U.S. Coast Guard cutters in the water Monday morning and search planes flying overhead as well.

“We are not going to discount somebody’s will to survive,” he said.

Deb Roberts, Holland’s mother, wrote on Facebook that she was holding out for a miracle.

“As you all have probably heard by now, we received word this morning that the Coast Guard and Tote Services believe that the SS El Faro sunk in Hurricane Joaquin,” the post read. “The hope we hold on to now is that they will find survivors today. Evidence is showing that the crew put themselves in the best possible position to survive by getting into their immersion suits. Miracles happen. Keep the faith! Prayers needed more than ever today.”

In Rockland, a candlelight vigil for Meklin was planned for 6 p.m. Monday.

In Castine, Maine Maritime Academy officials were holding an information session for students and faculty at 4 p.m.

Weather conditions hampered search efforts on Friday and Saturday. Sunday was the first day Coast Guard officials were able to effectively search the area, Fedor said.

The search for survivors would focus on the debris field near the El Faro’s last known location, which spans about 300 nautical miles, and a smaller area about 60 miles to the north, Fedor said. The depth of the ocean there is 15,000 feet, or roughly three miles.

All mariners are warned about weather conditions prior to making a trip, Fedor said. The decision to leave would have been Davidson’s to make and he has been described as an experienced and more-than capable captain.

Nevertheless, the incident will be investigated by both the Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board.

According to TOTE Maritime’s website, the El Faro was last inspected by the Coast Guard in March. The ship makes weekly trips between the U.S. and Puerto Rico and also the U.S. Virgin Islands, typically carrying groceries and automobiles.

Several family members traveled to Jacksonville to be closer to the search.

U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, released a statement Monday offering thoughts and prayers to crew members.

“While it’s devastating to learn El Faro has sunk, we must continue to hold onto hope and pray that survivors will be located and reunited with their loved ones,” he said in a statement. “In English, El Faro means ‘The Lighthouse’ and it is my hope that our lighthouses will help guide our Mainers, and the crew, home.”

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said she was glad searchers were not giving up.

“Almost everyone in Maine knows someone who works on the water and knows the risks that involves,” she said. “Our thoughts are with the brave men and women who go to sea and the Coast Guard and military personnel who have risked their own lives to conduct the search.”

This story will be updated.

CASTINE — Jean Devereux, 81, had heard about the disappearance of a cargo ship near the Bahamas last Thursday. When she found out Sunday morning that four of the 33 lost mariners are graduates of Maine Maritime Academy, she reacted with disbelief at first. Then she wept.

And like a lot of people here and on the nearby Maine Maritime Academy campus, she offered reasons for hope.

“Those kids are so well-trained. You are talking about the cream of the crop,” said Devereux, whose grandson graduated from the academy. “I think they’ll find them. They are smart, these kids.”

Anxiety and hope are wound together in Castine as planes and Coast Guard cutters continue to search for the missing 790-foot container ship El Faro, or survivors in life rafts.

People are anxious, but at the same time many say there’s no reason yet to give in to despair.

The lack of information is upsetting, said Bekah Campbell, 22, a graduate student from Corinth studying to be a port manager.

“We are all anxious, but we are hopeful, too,” she said. “We are really confident in the education we get here.”

Those interviewed Sunday said they didn’t want to discuss the decision of the ship’s captain, Michael Davidson of Windham, to sail on a course that took the ship into a hurricane.

Davidson graduated in 1988. Michael Holland of Wilton graduated in 2012. Danielle Randolph, 34, of Rockland graduated in 2004. Third assistant engineer Dylan Meklin, 23, also of Rockland, graduated last May.

Tyler Gilson, 20, a junior at the academy, said he’s a good friend of Meklin, and that he’s optimistic that Meklin and other crew members survived because of the extensive safety training they received.

“I think he’s going to be all right,” Gilson said while watching the academy’s women’s soccer team compete against Johnson State College. Like many students, he said he was frequently checking his phone to see if there was news on the search.

The disappearance of the El Faro has made some students more aware of the risks of being a merchant mariner, said freshman Ilya Bolduc, 20, of Vassalboro.

“It goes with the job,” he said. “You know what you are getting into.”

Even though he did not know any of the crew members, the school is so small that everyone is affected, Bolduc said.

The academy, which has about 950 students, mostly from Maine, is one of seven public maritime training colleges in the United States. It was established in 1941 at a time when the nation needed more merchant mariners for the war effort.

Its campus is situated near the center of Castine on a hill that slopes down to the Penobscot River. The State of Maine, a training vessel, is moored below the campus.

With nearly 1,400 year-round residents, Castine is a classic New England village. Many of its white-clapboard homes and public buildings were built in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Not only is the college the town’s largest employer, but many students are involved in the community, such as working as volunteer firefighters, said Ben Burton, 16, whose parents work at the academy.

“A lot of people here know someone who was on that ship,” Burton said.

Jill Schoof, an engineering professor at the academy, said teachers put a strong emphasis on safety to prepare students for a field that is inherently dangerous. She became upset when told by a reporter that one of the crew members was Meklin, a former student.

“Dylan?” she asked. “Yes. This will be a big tragedy.”

When the El Faro’s emergency radio beacon sent out a single ping at 7:20 a.m. Thursday, it was already in a precarious position.

The ship was adrift after losing all engine power. It was taking on water and listing at 15 degrees while a Category 4 storm raged around it, blowing 100 mph winds and whipping up 40-foot waves.

“It would be as if you were on the road at 60 miles an hour and you lost your steering,” said Kelly Sweeney, a master mariner with 35 years’ experience.

But Sweeney said the captain and crew of the El Faro – which included the captain, Michael Davidson of Windham, and crew members Danielle Randolph of Rockland, Dylan Meklin, also of Rockland, and Michael Holland of Wilton – were highly qualified, and highly trained, to deal with such dire circumstances.

“If there was anyone who could overcome this, it would be the crew who were on this ship. I have not given up hope,” said Sweeney, who writes for the Maine-based Professional Mariner magazine and lives on an island off Seattle.

On Sunday, Sweeney and other merchant mariners were watching events unfold in the Bahamas, where the El Faro disappeared in the midst of Hurricane Joaquin on its way to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

John Gormley, retired editor of the Professional Mariner, said the captain of the ship makes the call on whether to leave port.

“The captain is responsible for the crew, any passengers, the ship and the cargo,” said Gormley.

It appears the El Faro was following standard industry practices when it left Jacksonville, Florida, on Tuesday on a regular weekly run back and forth to San Juan.

Capt. Jeff Monroe of Cape Elizabeth, a master mariner, said modern ships like the El Faro do not get caught in a hurricane. He said it is likely there was a combination of factors going on, such as the loss of propulsion and taking on water.

“Every modern ship knows exactly where the storm is and what is happening. It is not like you decide to take a dive into a hurricane,” said Monroe.

Sweeney said Davidson would have been keeping a close eye on the weather before leaving port.

Officials at TOTE Marine Puerto Rico, which owns the 790-foot cargo ship, said Davidson was keeping track of the weather and communicated with at least one other ship in the area where he was heading when he was determining the El Faro’s route.

Monroe said commercial ships regularly leave ports with a storm in the forecast, in part because it can be more dangerous in a confined port. Monroe said Davidson would have tried to get south, behind the storm.

“A lot of the time vessels know they are going to hit rough weather. Generally it is not an issue unless you have other issues, such as a propulsion failure or hull failure,” said Monroe.

Monroe said there are various things that may have gone wrong with the propulsion system, such as water in the circuit board.

Sweeney said the company has run ships between Jacksonville and San Juan for decades. He said the crew, from master on down, were well aware of the threat of hurricanes “because this is one of the hurricane alleys of the world.”

Hurricanes are predictable only up to a point, but then they become unpredictable, Sweeney said.

He said it is possible that the El Faro got on the wrong side of the storm, called the “dangerous semicircle,” which sucks everything into the eye of the storm, instead of the right side of the storm, called the “navigable semicircle,” which spits everything away from the eye.

He said the crew would have been highly trained to deal with the worst-case scenario and would have undergone regular drills. He said the crew would have done anything to avoid abandoning the ship because the safest place to be would be on it.

“People ashore may not realize how hard it would be to get off that vessel in a hurricane leaning over 15 degrees taking on water with 100 mph winds onto something much smaller. That is a very difficult situation,” said Sweeney.

Both Sweeney and Monroe said they remained hopeful even after three days of searches for the ship. Monroe said if the crew members had to abandon ship, they are probably in life rafts right now because lifeboats would have been too difficult to launch from a listing ship.

The rafts would be equipped with VHF radios, which have a limited range.

“I was in a storm once and had all my antennas ripped off and all communications were down. We couldn’t talk to anybody for days and finally we got close enough to shore to communicate by radio,” said Monroe.

Sweeney said every mariner holds out hope.

“I have known people who have been adrift in lifeboats for weeks and months. We will never give up hope until we know for sure,” said Sweeney.

The search for a gigantic cargo ship that vanished four days ago during a hurricane in the Bahamas was to intensify at daybreak Monday as Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force crews keep looking for its 33 crew members, including four merchant mariners from Maine.

The Coast Guard said Monday morning that air crews were heading back to the scene to search for El Faro crew members. The Coast Guard has now searched more than 70,000 square nautical miles since last week. Officials are expected to update families of crew members and the media at a 10 a.m. press conference.

Late Sunday afternoon a Coast Guard search plane found a debris field that came from the 790-foot El Faro, whose captain is Michael Davidson, 53, of Windham.

On Sunday night, the Coast Guard said various objects were located in the vicinity of the container ship’s last known position, about 35 nautical miles northeast of Crooked Island, Bahamas.

The objects included life jackets, wood, life rings, Styrofoam, containers, cargo and an oil sheen – all within a search area of 225 nautical square miles. The El Faro, which left Jacksonville, Florida, on Tuesday bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico, was carrying 391 cargo containers as well as 294 trailers and cars. It was lost during Hurricane Joaquin.

Lt. Cmdr. Gabe Somma, a spokesman for the Coast Guard, said the discovery of the debris field demonstrates that the search for the missing ship is taking place in the correct area. “This validates our search pattern,” he said.

“We did not find the ship, which is not good news,” Somma said in a telephone interview late Sunday night. “But we remain hopeful that we can find the survivors in lifeboats or life rafts.”

Somma said the El Faro’s Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, or EPIRB, emitted a signal around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, but there has been no contact with the ship or crew since then.

“We got one ping (from the EPIRB) and that was it,” Somma said. He said those transmitters can malfunction, but the fact that the device pinged only once is puzzling. The distress signal beacons interface with satellites and are used to locate missing vessels.

Somma said Sunday’s relatively good weather allowed for a more comprehensive search. Conditions during Sunday’s search included 1-foot seas and 15-knot winds with unrestricted visibility.

Those conditions contrasted sharply with the hazardous weather that searchers encountered Saturday.

Somma said the search was called off at nightfall Saturday because of the terrible conditions – aircraft flew close to the hurricane’s eye and encountered winds of 100 knots, with low visibility. Crews saw seas of 30 to 40 feet, he said, and that kept two Coast Guard cutters that were set to join the search in port Saturday.

One Coast Guard pilot said Saturday on Twitter that the conditions were the most challenging he and his crew had ever encountered

Two Coast Guard cutters – the 210-foot Northland, based in Portsmouth, Virginia, and the 210-foot Resolute, homeported in St. Petersburg, Florida – were assigned to remain at the scene northeast of Crooked Island on Sunday and were to continue to search throughout the night.

Somma said a news conference will be held at 10 a.m. Monday at the Coast Guard’s Air Station in Miami.

The cargo ship’s four crew members from Maine are all graduates of Maine Maritime Academy in Castine. They include Davidson, the captain, a former Casco Bay Lines employee who graduated from MMA in 1988.

Also on board the El Faro are crew members Michael Holland of Wilton, who graduated in 2012; Danielle Randolph, 34, of Rockland (2004); and Dylan Meklin, 23, a third assistant engineer from Rockland (2014).

Crew members’ families from Maine headed down to Florida, where they met with Coast Guard officials and got up-to-the-minute reports on the progress of the search effort.

Holland’s mother, Deb Roberts, created a Facebook page Sunday called “Making Waves for Mike – Bring the El Faro Crew Home Safely.” As of Sunday night, more than 1,000 people had joined.

Roberts reported on Facebook that the crew members’ families met with Coast Guard officials at 6 p.m.

“I caution each and every one of you not to take the news reports as gospel. Some media outlets are sensationalizing the snippets of information,” Roberts wrote.

“A container was found that was confirmed to belong to El Faro. To put that in perspective, though, winds were 140-plus miles per hour … not surprising that a container would come off,” Roberts said. “Ships will continue to search through the night. Planes will be back at it at dawn. Please don’t give up! Keep the prayers coming.”

Meklin’s parents, Karl and Elaine, traveled to Jacksonville on Saturday to be closer to where the search was based, joining other families.

Davidson’s family declined to talk to the news media Saturday. Theresa Davidson, the captain’s wife, spoke to a British newspaper, The Daily Mail, on Thursday, saying her husband had extensive training and is extremely capable.

“If anyone can handle a situation like that, it’s my husband, so we are hopeful that he’s just waiting it out and that they’ll be rescued today,” she said.

Davidson’s daughter, Arianna, is a member of the University of Southern Maine women’s soccer team. Her teammates posed for a photograph Saturday before their game with Plymouth State in New Hampshire. Numerous players wrote “El Faro” on their forearms to show their support for their teammate.

Randolph’s mother, Laurie Bobillot, also was quoted by The Daily Mail.

Randolph “is usually the only female aboard the ship, but even though she is a short little girl, she can handle her own well,” Bobillot said in a written statement. “When she’s home, she’s all girlie girl. She’s an avid Barbie doll collector and loves to dress up retro-style, shop and bake. Ever since an extremely young age, she wanted to work on the ocean.”

A reporter from WCSH-TV interviewed Bobillot in Jacksonville. Bobillot told the reporter she received an email from her daughter alerting her that the weather had taken a turn for the worse.

But she also told her mother not to worry because if anything were to happen to her at sea, “It’s OK, I died doing what I wanted to do.”

“I just want everybody to keep her and the whole crew of the El Faro in their prayer chain,” Bobillot told the Portland TV station. “It’s in God’s hands now. That hurricane whammed them really, really hard.”

Bobillot told The Associated Press that Davidson “is a top-notch captain. He’s well-educated. He would not have put the life of his crew in danger, and would not have out his own life in danger, had he known there was danger out there. He had the best intentions. He has a family too, and he wanted to go home to them, too. That storm just came up way too fast.”

The search has covered 31,000 square miles of sea near the Bahamas, an area about the size of West Virginia.

The Coast Guard resumed its search for the ship at first light Sunday off the Bahamas. Three Coast Guard search planes concentrated on finding life raft-sized or smaller objects while a Navy plane searched for the ship.

“This is a dire situation,” Somma said.

On Sunday morning, Coast Guard ships and aircraft, along with private ships, spotted more debris and an oil sheen that may be from the El Faro.

Tim Nolan, president of TOTE Marine Services Puerto Rico, which owns the El Faro, said Sunday afternoon that another company-owned ship, the El Yunque, and a contracted tugboat both found a shipping container that appeared to be from the El Faro and observed what appeared to be an oil sheen.

“Our thoughts and prayers remain with the 33 individuals aboard the ship and their families. They are our number one priority,” Nolan said in a statement.

Somma said Sunday that the Coast Guard planes returned to the area where an El Faro life ring was retrieved late Saturday afternoon to determine whether other life rings and a life jacket spotted nearby belonged to the missing ship. A salvage tug was positioned at the last known position of the El Faro.

Somma said the retrieval of the life ring validated the Coast Guard’s search process.

He said just how the El Faro got caught in the eye of a Category 4 hurricane is a question that the Coast Guard cannot answer. He said the Coast Guard issues frequent storm advisories and even flies over advisory areas issuing radio alerts to the ships below. But he said there is a limit to what the Coast Guard can do to warn mariners of weather conditions.

He said the search was initially hampered by the sheer power of the storm.

Somma said Hurricane Joaquin “is an unusual storm. It is the most powerful storm in history that far north. It was only one mile per hour away from being a Category 5 hurricane, which that far north is unprecedented.”

The captain of a ship has final say about whether to leave port. The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville reported Saturday that TOTE Services officials said the captain had been closely following the storm before leaving.

“He made his voyage plan based on all the information he had available,” said Phil Greene, president of TOTE Services, an affiliate of TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico. After putting out to sea Tuesday, the ship ran into Hurricane Joaquin, which strengthened to a Category 4 storm during the week as it lingered over the Bahamas. The El Faro’s crew made a satellite distress call Thursday morning to report that the ship had taken on water and developed a 15-degree list, but that flooding of the vessel had been stopped. That was the last message from the ship.

The Coast Guard and TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico have not released any information on the crew.

ELEUTHERA, Bahamas — Hurricane Joaquin destroyed houses, uprooted trees and unleashed heavy flooding as it hurled torrents of rain across the Bahamas on Friday, and the U.S. Coast Guard said it was trying to reach a disabled cargo ship with 33 people aboard that lost contact during the storm.

The Coast Guard said the 735-foot ship named El Faro had taken on water and was listing at 15 degrees near Crooked Island, one of the islands most battered by the hurricane. Officials said the crew includes 31 U. S. citizens and two from Poland.

“This vessel is disabled basically right near the eye of Hurricane Joaquin,” said Capt. Mark Fedor. “We’re going to go and try and save lives. We’re going to push it to the operational limits as far as we can.”

Officials said they hadn’t been able to re-establish communication with the vessel, which was traveling from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Coast Guard said the crew earlier reported it had been able to contain the flooding.

Fedor said there were 20- to 30-foot waves in the area, and that heavy winds could have destroyed the ship’s communications equipment. The ship went missing when Joaquin was a Category 4 storm. The hurricane has since lost strength and become a Category 3 storm.

On Friday evening, the Coast Guard said the planes and helicopters involved in the search had returned to base because of darkness and would resume the search for the ship at first light.

Messages left with Florida-based TOTE Services, the ship’s owner, were not returned. The company said in a brief statement that it was working with the U.S. Coast Guard and trying to establish communication with the ship.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Joaquin’s threat to the U.S. East Coast was fading as new forecasts showed it likely to curve out into the Atlantic while moving north and weakening in coming days.

But the slow-moving storm continued to batter parts of the Bahamas, cutting communication to several islands, most of them lightly populated. There had been no reports of fatalities or injuries, said Capt. Stephen Russell, the director of the Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency.

Officials were investigating reports of shelters being damaged and flooded, as well as two boats with a total of five people that remained missing.

About 85 percent of homes in one settlement of a couple dozen houses on Crooked Island were destroyed, said Marvin Hanna, an Acklins representative. He said he has had no communication with Acklins since late Thursday morning.

“At that time, vehicles were floating around and the water level was up to the windows of some homes,” he said.

Residents reached by relatives said they were “trapped in their homes, and reported feeling as if their structures were caving in,” Russell said. “It’s too dangerous to go outside because the flood waters are so high, so we ask that persons stay inside and try to go into the most secure place of their home.”

Power also was knocked out to several islands, and Leslie Miller, executive chairman of the Bahamas Electricity Corporation, said the company “is in no position to do much” to restore electricity. “All the airports are flooded,” he said.

Schools, businesses and government offices were closed as the slow-moving storm roared through the island chain.

Streets were largely deserted as people remained hunkered down on the island of Eleuthera, which was bracing for heavy winds later Friday. Some people were still making last-minute preparations, including Alexander Johnson, 61, who was moving his fishing boat with his brother, Solomon.

“It looks like it’s going to make a turn to the north, so we won’t get it in full,” Johnson said. “That’s good for us, because we’ve seen some rough ones come through here.”

Security guard Patrick Bethel said he was thankful there had been no reported casualties and wasn’t too worried about what the day would bring: “We just have to see what God will do. God controls the storm.”

Joaquin had maximum sustained winds of 125 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. By late afternoon, the storm was centered about 15 miles west-southwest of San Salvador, Bahamas and was moving north near 7 mph. Hurricane force winds extended outward up to 50 miles and a hurricane watch was in effect for Bimini and Andros Island.

The storm was expected to continue north, with some weakening expected on Saturday as if follows a projected path farther from the U.S. East Coast than originally predicted.

Rick Knabb, director of the Center, said Joaquin is expected to pass well offshore from the eastern seaboard.

“We no longer have any models forecasting the hurricane to come into the East Coast,” he said. “But we are still going to have some bad weather.”

In addition, the entire East Coast will experience dangerous surf and rip currents through the weekend, he said.

“Joaquin is going to generate a lot of wave energy,” Knabb said, adding that Bermuda might issue a tropical storm or hurricane watch, depending on Joaquin’s path.

The Hurricane Center said parts of the Bahamas could see storm surge raising sea levels 6 to 12 feet above normal, with 12 to 18 inches of rain falling in the central Bahamas.

Authorities in the nearby Turks & Caicos Islands closed all airports, schools and government offices. Bermuda, meanwhile, issued a tropical storm watch.

ELEUTHERA, Bahamas — Hurricane Joaquin destroyed houses, uprooted trees and unleashed heavy flooding as it hurled torrents of rain across the Bahamas on Friday, and the U.S. Coast Guard said it was trying to reach a disabled cargo ship with 33 people aboard that lost contact during the storm.

Several people who didn’t want to be identified and numerous Facebooks posts said at least one Mainer was aboard the 735-foot container ship El Faro, but the information couldn’t be confirmed by the Coast Guard or the ship’s owner Friday night.

The Coast Guard said the El Faro had taken on water and was listing at 15 degrees near Crooked Island, one of the islands most battered by the hurricane. Officials said the crew includes 28 U. S. citizens and five from Poland.

“This vessel is disabled basically right near the eye of Hurricane Joaquin,” said Capt. Mark Fedor. “We’re going to go and try and save lives. We’re going to push it to the operational limits as far as we can.”

Officials said they hadn’t been able to re-establish communication with the vessel, which was traveling from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Coast Guard said the crew earlier reported it had been able to contain the flooding.

Fedor said there were 20- to 30-foot waves in the area, and that heavy winds could have destroyed the ship’s communications equipment. The ship went missing when Joaquin was a Category 4 storm. The hurricane has since lost strength and become a Category 3 storm.

On Friday evening, the Coast Guard said the planes and helicopters involved in the search had returned to base because of darkness and would resume the search for the ship at first light.

Messages left with Florida-based TOTE Services, the ship’s owner, were not returned. The company said in a brief statement that it was working with the U.S. Coast Guard and trying to establish communication with the ship.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Joaquin’s threat to the U.S. East Coast was fading as new forecasts showed it likely to curve out into the Atlantic while moving north and weakening in coming days.

But the slow-moving storm continued to batter parts of the Bahamas, cutting communication to several islands, most of them lightly populated. There had been no reports of fatalities or injuries, said Capt. Stephen Russell, the director of the Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency.

Officials were investigating reports of shelters being damaged and flooded, as well as two boats with a total of five people that remained missing.

About 85 percent of homes in one settlement of a couple dozen houses on Crooked Island were destroyed, said Marvin Hanna, an Acklins representative. He said he has had no communication with Acklins since late Thursday morning.

“At that time, vehicles were floating around and the water level was up to the windows of some homes,” he said.

Residents reached by relatives said they were “trapped in their homes, and reported feeling as if their structures were caving in,” Russell said. “It’s too dangerous to go outside because the flood waters are so high, so we ask that persons stay inside and try to go into the most secure place of their home.”

Power also was knocked out to several islands, and Leslie Miller, executive chairman of the Bahamas Electricity Corporation, said the company “is in no position to do much” to restore electricity. “All the airports are flooded,” he said.

Schools, businesses and government offices were closed as the slow-moving storm roared through the island chain.

Streets were largely deserted as people remained hunkered down on the island of Eleuthera, which was bracing for heavy winds later Friday. Some people were still making last-minute preparations, including Alexander Johnson, 61, who was moving his fishing boat with his brother, Solomon.

“It looks like it’s going to make a turn to the north, so we won’t get it in full,” Johnson said. “That’s good for us, because we’ve seen some rough ones come through here.”

Security guard Patrick Bethel said he was thankful there had been no reported casualties and wasn’t too worried about what the day would bring: “We just have to see what God will do. God controls the storm.”

Joaquin had maximum sustained winds of 125 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. By late afternoon, the storm was centered about 15 miles west-southwest of San Salvador, Bahamas and was moving north near 7 mph. Hurricane force winds extended outward up to 50 miles and a hurricane watch was in effect for Bimini and Andros Island.

The storm was expected to continue north, with some weakening expected on Saturday as if follows a projected path farther from the U.S. East Coast than originally predicted.

Rick Knabb, director of the Center, said Joaquin is expected to pass well offshore from the eastern seaboard.

“We no longer have any models forecasting the hurricane to come into the East Coast,” he said. “But we are still going to have some bad weather.”

In addition, the entire East Coast will experience dangerous surf and rip currents through the weekend, he said.

“Joaquin is going to generate a lot of wave energy,” Knabb said, adding that Bermuda might issue a tropical storm or hurricane watch, depending on Joaquin’s path.

The Hurricane Center said parts of the Bahamas could see storm surge raising sea levels 6 to 12 feet above normal, with 12 to 18 inches of rain falling in the central Bahamas.

Authorities in the nearby Turks & Caicos Islands closed all airports, schools and government offices. Bermuda, meanwhile, issued a tropical storm watch.