About three miles beneath the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean, 35 nautical miles north of Crooked Island in the Bahamas, at 23.2°N 73.7°W, rests SS El Faro, a 790-foot-long cargo ship that was lost at sea on October 1, a victim of Hurricane Joaquin. The ship and her entire 33-man crew were lost; other than one unidentifiable body and an empty lifeboat in a debris field, little else has yet been found. (The ship had two lifeboats that had more than enough space for the entire crew as well as supplies; it is unknown if the crew, a well-trained crew of professionals, even had the chance to abandon ship.)

El Faro had been on its way from Jacksonville, Florida, to Puerto Rico. And there lies the problem. It did not need to be there, stormy day or sunny day, and it does not now need to be at the bottom of the Atlantic, with 33 dead. An American law known colloquially as the Jones Act created the reason the ship was where it was and now, where it is.
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