Officials Confirm Wreckage Found Is El Faro

NASSAU, Bahamas (WJZ) -- A US Navy search team located wreckage of a cargo ship and they confirmed Monday that it is the wreckage of El Faro.

Mary Bubala spoke with a Baltimore County family with a relative who worked on the ship.

"I was happy. That's a good thing to hear," said Destiny Sparrow, whose father, Frank Hamm, was on board when the ship sank.

She hopes the officials will find the data recorder. That way, she and her loved ones can know exactly what happened as the ship veered into the path of Hurricane Joaquin last month.

"The last conversation because there are a lot of questions being asked but no one is receiving an answer," she said.

Frank Hamm's wife still holds out hope her husband will return home.

"She got the call last evening that special sonar that the Navy had out had discovered something at the bottom of the sea on the floor about 15,000 feet and they feel that it is the El Faro so that is very exciting news for her," said her uncle, Gordon Outlaw.

He says it's exciting because she still holds out hope that he's alive despite the odds.

"Going out to sea was something she was accustomed to, that he would be out for three or four months at a time to Africa, to Italy, so just the fact that it's been one much is still just a bit much for her to say, `Well, he's not coming home,'" Outlaw said. "She's still prayerful that he's coming home."

The ship's 28 American crew members and five Polish nationals are all presumed dead. One body was found during a Coast Guard search of the sea surface in the days after the ship disappeared.

The NTSB says sonar indicates the ship landed upright, which could help crews recover the ship's black box.