Deb Roberts didn’t worry when her son, Michael Holland, left home in Wilton a decade ago for another 75-day job at sea.

Holland had attended Maine Maritime Academy in Castine because he was adventurous, athletic, liked to get his hands dirty and could hunt and fish near campus. Quiet but charming, he had a way of entering a room full of strangers to leave it as everyone’s friend, his mother said.

She felt he had made the right choice of school and career.

But 10 years ago Wednesday, she got a call at work. The company he worked for had lost contact with his ship, the El Faro, which had left Jacksonville, Florida, two days before, headed for Puerto Rico.

A week later, the night before the search was called off, “A switch went off and I said, ‘Okay, he’s not coming home,’” she said. “It’

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