El Faro Shipbuilder Talks To Eyewitness News

By David Spunt

CHESTER, Pa., (CBS) -- After the exhaustive six day search, U.S. Coast Guard crews officially stopped looking for El Faro at sundown on Wednesday. They found only minimal pieces of debris.  Parent company officials say 33 people including 28 Americans were on board.

"It just floundered. Apparently the wave, they theorize, the wave just took it and laid it down," Lansdowne resident Jim Manley told Eyewitness News.

Manley didn't know anyone on the ship, but knew the ship, and quite well. He helped build it in 1974 at the old Sun Shipbuilding yard in Chester.

"It's sad to see it come to an end like this," Manley said.

There's nothing left of the old shipyard, it closed in the late 1980s. Harrah's Racetrack is where the shipyard once stood.

"Ships are kind of like people. They all come to an end. We all come to an end, but the ship to go down with all 33 on board. It's sad," Manley said.