My brother was an experienced captain and quite frankly not a risk taker

“My brother was an experienced captain and, quite frankly, not a risk taker.”It is easy to be an armchair captain and, with the benefit of hindsight, judge actions taken in haste and desperation. But if you look at the course of action adopted by March, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the intense pressure on him undermined his ability to make clear-headed decisions and stick to them. Understandably, March’s family has steadfastly defended his conduct during the storm and, by implication, Windjammer’s. “Allegations of a suicide mission and corporate greed are ludicrous and extremely painful to me, my family and all the loved ones of the Fantome crew,” March’s brother Paul, who also used to work for Windjammer, has said. In Antigua and St Vincent, Grenada and Nicaragua, sadness and anger tore at the hearts of men and women who had little in the first place, and are now convinced that their children died to save a rich man’s ship. The hurt will also be felt in the Cornish village where March’s mother, Jenny, lives. Each vessel is owned by a separate, fully independent corporation, based in Panama The Fantome was, for instance, owned by Fantome, SA.

All it has in Panama is a PO box, and a lawyer to represent it Windjammer’s property, assets and money are in America. “Ahoy!” said a jaunty recorded message when I called the company’s offices in Miami, as a calypso tune played in the background. “Windjammer Barefoot Cruises is pleased to offer Limbo 101! A history of tall ships, including the mixology of the rum swizzle!”Closure has not been so easy for the mothers and fathers of the men who died on the Fantome. Last weekend, candles were lit in New Amsterdam, and the family of Onassis Reyes held a Mass in his memory. He has also erected a series of fire walls between himself and any liability for what happens on his ships.

The family of Onassis Reyes, the second officer, might have been one of them. But when Windjammer made, then withdrew, an offer of $275,000 compensation, Gilberto Reyes, the young second officer’s father, became convinced that the company was not acting in good faith, and has now joined the law suit. “I didn’t fuck up!” Soon after the lawsuit was filed, Windjammer began a major public relations operation to salvage its battered reputation. It took a further battering when it became known what value the company had fixed on a man’s life: for as little as $20,000, the victims’ families were asked to waive all future claims against Windjammer To date, 16 people have accepted the offer.

“I will continue fighting until this company pays for what it did,” he says.It will probably be a long fight. For, though Big Daddy enjoys all the advantages of life in the First World, he has, like many other businessmen, made sure that his corporate headquarters are registered off-shore, in the Third World. Phrases like “corporate greed” and “suicide mission” have flown thick and fast Some saw a racial element. “The owners of the vessel couldn’t care less about these Caribbean people,” said Sanita Dindiali, the wife of Maxwell Bhikham, a deck hand from Guyana. “They should have put off everybody, not just the white passengers.”Michael R Burke, of Windjammer, categorically rejects such claims.

He also remains convinced that the decisions he and March took during the hurricane were the right ones “I considered all the options,” he said recently. Among other things, the lawsuit alleged that the Fantome had three chances to unload the crew – in Omoa, in Belize City and in Roatan – but took none of them. And infested with sharks.Within weeks of the Fantome’s disappearance, a Miami lawyer named William Huggett, who specialises in maritime accidents, and whose clients are often from the Third World, filed an $11m law-suit on behalf of 11 of the crew, accusing Windjammer of negligence and the reckless endangerment of his clients’ lives. The wave that smashed the radio antenna probably flooded the forward sections of the yacht. Or the Fantome could have pitch-poled, flipping end over end as it plunged into the wave’s trough.