In interviews with NTSB on Friday, the duck boat master said he tried to tell the tow boat guiding the barge to change course, but there was no response.

The fact that others in the area heard his call, which he said he made when the barge was 400 yards away, indicates that the fault more likely lies with the tow boat’s equipment or crew.

The duck boat had shut off its engine and set anchor because it was having engine problems.

When the barge hit the duck boat, the duck boat quickly sank. Two of the passengers were fatally injured. The other thirty-five people on board survived.

The two who died were Hungarian students, 16-year-old Dora Schwendtner and 20-year-old Szabolcs Prem. They were in the U.S. for an faith-based exchange program.

At a press conference Friday night, NTSB board memebr Robert Sumwalt said the master of the boat, a 58-year-old man with the duck boat company for three seasons, told NTSB he found no irregularities during his routine pre-trip inspection.

But the two marine communication tools on board — an airhorn and a VHF radio — were both unsuccessful at catching the attention of the tug boat pushing the barge that collided with the duck boat.

The airhorn didn’t work, although the master said it did when he checked it before the trip. It’s unclear whether the VHF transmitted the message properly since there was no response.

The master said he tried to hail the tug boat operator on a channel meant for boat-to-boat communication. The Coast Guard does not monitor that station.

The master and deckhand told NTSB that after they turned around to head back to the dock, they noticed smoke coming out of the engine. The master described it as “white” and “acrid” smoke, while the deckhand described the smell as similar to “burning rubber.”

The deckhand checked the engine out. There were no flames,  but the master turned off the engine just in case and notified the duck boat dispatcher that they had stopped.

The boat was stopped for five to 10 minutes before the collision with the barge. In that time, another duck boat came by and offered help, but the master or deckhand declined, Sumwalt said.

The master said that when the barge was about 400 yards away, he tried to reach the tug boat operator over the radio and requested that it change course. He said he didn’t receive a response.

It was around that time that either the master or the deckhand told passengers to put on life jackets.

They also interviewed 16 duck boat passengers Friday. Their testimonies were mostly consistent with each others’ accounts and the accounts of the deckhand and master.

“Our investigation at this point is right where it should be. We’ve only been on the ground here for two full days,” Sumwalt said, an answer to the unasked question of why more definitive information couldn’t be made available.

Tomorrow NTSB will interview the five tugboat crew members.

“Our job is to find out what happened. Our goal is to prevent it from ever happening again. It’s a true tragedy of untold proportions,” Sumwalt said.

A U.S. Coast Guard boat circles the site of the accident shortly after 8 a.m. Friday. The boat sank in the Delaware River, only a couple hundred yards off of Penn’s Landing. The river is a busy site for both recreational and commercial use and large freighters like the one in the background are common. The channel is relatively narrow at this point in the river. There isn’t much room for boats to move around.

The salvage company’s barge, being pushed by a tug boat, arrives at the site of the accident. Weeks Marine, the salvage company selected, also salvaged the plane that crashed into the Hudson River last year.

The Philadelphia Police Department’s marine unit makes an attempt to recover the body of one of the duck boat passengers. The strong current pulled his body underneath the barge and police were unable to retrieve it until the barge left at the end of the day. One of the police officers in dry suits later attempted to swim under the barge and retrieve the body.

The duck boat, here being lifted by a crane on the salvage company barge and held by straps that were pulled underneath the hull, broke the surface of the river around 1:30 p.m. Salvaging attempts began at 8:15 a.m.

By the afternoon, dozens of bystanders had gathered at Penn’s Landing to watch the recovery efforts. Person after person expressed shock at the accident.

The duck boat is loaded onto the salvaging barge. It broke the surface around 1:30 p.m., but was not secured on the barge until about 2:50 p.m. A significant amount of water had to be drained from the hull, according to police officers at the scene.

Officials gather at Penn’s Landing to watch recovery efforts Friday afternoon around 2:30 p.m. From left: NTSB public information officer Keith Holloway, board member Dr. Mark Rosekind, board member Robert Sumwalt, a member of the NTSB investigative staff and two officers from the Philadelphia Police Department.

When the salvaging barge left the site around 3 p.m., the trapped body of 20-year-old Szabolcs Prem, one of the duck boat passengers, came up to the surface and began drifting downstream. Bystanders were the first to notice the body, which police are pictured here retrieving. The other deceased passenger, 16-year-old Dora Schwendtner, was found near the Walt Whitman bridge at 4:45 a.m. by a local fisherman.

A salvage company brought the boat out of the water at about 2:45 p.m. and loaded it onto the company’s barge. The company will bring the boat to shore for closer inspection.

From Penn’s Landing,  200 yards from the accident site, the only sign of damage visible was a crushed canopy, but there could be more damage to the side of the boat that couldn’t be seen.

One passenger, 16-year-old Dora Schwendtner, was found at 4:45 a.m. downriver from the accident site. A fisherman found her near the Walt Whitman Bridge on his way out for the day, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The body of the other, 20-year-old Szablcs Prem, was recovered by the Philadelphia Police Department’s marine unit at about 3:10 p.m. It was first spotted around 9 a.m., before his body drifted underneath the salvage company’s barge. The current was too strong for the police to recover the body until after the barge moved.

Both were Hungarian citizens visiting the United States on a church program, the Inquirer reported.

Although the Philadelphia Police Department’s work is almost done, NTSB still has much ahead of it. Board members Robert Sumwalt and newly-approved Dr. Mark Rosekind came to Penn’s Landing around 2:30 p.m. Friday to watch recovery action.

NTSB Lead investigator Tom Roth-rothy spent much of the day onboard a local Coast Guard boat, observing recovery efforts.

Rosekind and Sumwalt spent much of the time in serious talk with local police and Coast Guard officials and were there when the second body was recovered.

NTSB declined to comment until tonight’s press conference at 8 p.m., where they will discuss findings from today’s investigations.

Check back later tonight for a series of photos from today’s work.

But board member Robert Sumwalt, the only one to speak at the press conference, spent more time telling local media that NTSB still has few answers and it will be a long time before some of their most pressing questions are answered.

Thirty-seven people were thrown into the Delaware River Wednesday afternoon when a barge collided with the amphibious duck boat they were on. Thirty-five people were immediately rescued.

The U.S. Coast Guard suspended the search for the two missing people on Thursday night.

When a television reporter asked Sumwalt what he thought about tourists getting mixed up in an accident involving the industry side of the marine sector, Sumwalt’s only response was “It’s tragic.”

At the time of the collision, the duck boat was at a halt on the river, waiting for assistance after a reported engine fire disabled the engine. A tugboat was pulling the barge.

NTSB is taking the lead on the investigation and questions are being deferred to board member Robert Sumwalt and lead investigator Tom Roth-rothy, who are in Philadelphia supervising the investigation team.

Sumwalt said that NTSB expects to have investigators on the scene for seven to 10 days total, meaning they could depart as early as the end of next week.

Investigators will take all of the data and information collected and bring it back to Washington, D.C., where NTSB is headquartered. It will likely take several months to put all the pieces together and determine everything that went wrong Wednesday afternoon.

While on the scene, investigators will be gathering all kinds of information and data on the actual boats involved, their operating procedures, their crew members and their emergency preparedness and response. That will come form actual inspections of the boats, records and equipment and extensive interviews with passengers, crew and first responders and rescuers.

For local coverage of the accident, you can check out the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer at www.philly.com. Thursday’s main story on the accident focuses on confusion about why the tug boat was unaware of the duck boat’s presence.

Keep checking back for more updates and some photos of the accident site. Contact reporter Ariel Zirulnick at ariel.zirulnick@news21.com if you have any leads.

Thirty-five of the 37 people on board were rescued. Two are still unaccounted for. The Duck boat is at the bottom of the Delaware River.

The Duck boat was stopped in the shipping channel because of an engine fire that prompted the crew to cease operations, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. They were waiting for a rescue boat to come get them.

The National Transportation Safety Board has launched an investigation into the accident. Board member Robert Sumwalt will be on the scene, holding regular press conferences.

Keep checking back on the blog for more information as it becomes available and follow reporter Ariel Zirulnick on Twitter at @ariel_news21. If you know anything about this accident or know people who were involved, please contact her at ariel.zirulnick@news21.com.

But it wasn’t always that way. Before a 2003 accident on the Andrew J. Barberi ferry that left 11 dead and 70 injured, the Staten Island ferry’s operations and safety practices left much to be desired, said some regular commuters.

Since that accident, when the person piloting the boat passed out and allowed the boat to ram a maintenance pier on Staten Island, many improvements have been made.

Today there are more crew making rounds on the boat, loudspeaker announcements are regular and clear and inspection officials regularly make appearances, said Tami Kelly, a Staten Island resident who has used the ferry to commute to her job in Manhattan for 15 years.

Without that accident, many unsafe practices, such as a lack of barriers preventing people from falling overboard or an allowance of smoking onboard, might never have changed, said Norman Serafin, a Staten Island resident who has been riding the ferry to work since 1983.

Although the accident highlighted many safety failings in the system, it didn’t cause Staten Islanders to have second thoughts about using one of their most important modes of transportation.

“If you live on Staten Island, this is what you do,” Kelly said. “It’s part of our DNA.”

The 2003 accident spurred the National Transportation Safety Board to make a recommendation that passenger ferries implement a safety management system, which is essentially a checklist of safety and operational items that must be in order for a boat to run safely.

That recommendation was added to the Most Wanted List in February.

Check back later this month for a closer look at what safety management systems could accomplish for the marine industry.

In May 2010, the ferry once again crashed into a pier, this time because the propulsion system stopped working, according to NTSB preliminary investigations.

The 2003 accident spurred a recommendation for a safety checklist that would have included a thorough medical background check of the worker who blacked out on the job. The NTSB would like to see that recommendationapplied to all U.S. commercial passenger vessels, including ferries.

In 2010, that recommendation remains unaddressed. Accidents that could have been prevented continue to add up. Many Americans are boarding boats every day that have no regular safety checkup.

Because the investigation into the 2010 accident is still underway, it’s unknown whether a safety management system would have prevented it — but it probably wouldn’t have hurt.

Do you have a story about being a ferry accident, or know someone who does? Do you use the Staten Island ferry or another ferry system regularly? Do you feel safe?

Get in touch with reporter Ariel Zirulnick (ariel.zirulnick@news21.com) if you would like to share your experiences with this topic.

Without even realizing it, our abilities decline once we fail to get our recommended eight hours of sleep. Response times, decision-making, reflexes, mental focus and mood all begin to slide once a human begins building a sleep deficit. All the while, the propensity for risk-taking increases. In short, fatigue and sleep deprivation can put even the most highly trained, qualified and experienced people in an irrational state of mind. As one expert told News21: “It makes them stupid.”

As we examine fatigue in the transportation industry, we’ve found that the NTSB has issued repeated recommendations to regulatory agencies across all sectors, some dating as far back as the early 1970s. These recommendations have largely been ignored.

In aviation, there is rarely, if ever, a single cause for an accident or incident. Often the circumstances are more like the links in a chain. Fatigue’s place in this chain is most often evident when something has gone wrong. It’s the decision or reaction to that first link in the chain where the real trouble can begin for a fatigued flight crew.

It was an element in the Colgan Air crash near Buffalo, New York that killed 50 people in February 2009. And it has been a factor in hundreds of other deaths over the years.

Yet little has been done to protect pilots, traffic controllers and the flying public from the one bad decision, on the one bad day a pilot or controller might have during an otherwise long and unblemished career.

The recommendations are fairly simple: Change the limits of flight and duty times for flight crews so that it takes into account modern research into sleep, fatigue and circadian rhythms.

While we wait for regulatory agencies to change the rules, a pilot is climbing in the cockpit after a fitful night of undiagnosed sleep apnea; or a controller peers into the glass of his scope with a few hours of sleep and a hot cup of coffee.

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If you have a story to tell or want to talk about fatigue or another safety issue related to transportation, contact charlie.litton@news21.com

What if you worked on a boat that spent weeks, or even months, out at sea? You don’t have much of a commute to work, but when your shift is over and it’s time to go to sleep, you’re not climbing into a roomy, comfortable bed. You’re climbing into a bunk on a moving vessel. The engine is still running in the background, the room may not be dark and there are other crew members running around above deck because now they’re on watch.

You may have a generous amount of time set aside for shut-eye, but is that quality sleep you’re getting?

Does all this sound familiar? Would you be willing to talk to a reporter about your experiences and take a video camera with you the next time you shove off? Get in touch with Ariel Zirulnick, who is reporting on issues of marine safety, at ariel.zirulnick@news21.com.