For this one I did read other reviews before and after I read it and I won't even go into the theme and genre portions of it.

First, the captain goes down with the ship... he never abandones it. I couldn't tell if it sank or they just left it. Maybe I missed something or whatever but it wasn't all that clear.

The death of his child and such was throwaway at best and had no emotion to it. I felt weird reading how emotionless the whole scene was. The wife as I will call her didn't fight or anything as I would think a mother would and she would notice her child dying before it came to that. She would feel her chest going up and down.

The writing wasn't even that good here. A mere rewrite cannot fix this short.

Maybe this isn't your genre or whatever so keep cracking at it but this just struck out.

I can't offer anything new.  The story didn't sit right with me from the get-go.
You open with the captain waiting for his dinner and this eats up too much time and pages, without doing much for your story.  I think you were trying to establish the captain's character, but I don't think it works well.

Why not open with a sense of drama that helps the story?  Maybe Cap is at the map, charting the course.  At least we would have a sense of where they are at sea and of destination.  We would see him performing captain-like duties.
Or maybe he's lost and doesn't want to admit it.

Since Briggs is in his quarters, why doesn't one of the crew come down early on and tell him about the storm?  This would help establish that Briggs doesn't listen or isn't interested.  He throws caution to the wind.

I didn't get a connection between Briggs, Sarah and the daughter.  There is distance between them and I could never grasp that they were a real family.

When the storm hits, it feels like nobody has a clue.  Grillings tells Briggs that it looks like a storm, "but I'm not sure."  Somebody has to come down and show concern about the weather.

In your opening, you tell us that "the clouds are black."  When the storm hits, we're told that the "sky is clear."

Why get into a lifeboat, when the ship is still standing?  Sarah asks this question and gets a "don't argue" from her husband.  No crew member, with there experience at sea, asks the same question of the Cap.
I found it confusing when the lifeboat rope is cut. The boat falls to the water, but hits the ship's hull on the way down.  Doesn't any of the lifeboat passengers get thrown into the sea?
The daughter's death scene was rushed.  It is indeed a mystery as to what kills her.  Slow down the action and stay true to the character's form.
Sarah, if not Briggs too, should make desperate attempts to revive the child.  In just a matter of seconds, the baby goes from "she's not waking up," to "We'll have to bury her at sea."
I thought that Briggs' reciting of the Lords My Shepherd went on a loooooong time.

I felt like you really stretched the theme, but that's a matter of interpretation.  I felt a bleakness in the story that is carried all the way to the end.  There is drama, but it's not smart drama.  It seems to be about a man who makes bad decision and a crew member who makes an equally bad decision (cuts the lifeboat rope).  Thought it was hilarious when the Grillings cuts the rope and then gets chastised by Briggs.
"Have I taught you nothing?" Briggs says.
I thought, yeah, you've taught him everything!
The story may have worked better if the drama hinged on the captain not wanting to abandon ship and the crew/Sarah wanting to take the lifeboat to safety.
Maybe the ship will have to be damaged so it makes sense that everybody hops aboard the lifeboat.

The writing is OK, but the story seems to take a wrong turn.  The dialogue is kind of by the numbers.  I think you could make the drama more realistic and show the captain's stubborness or vanity, by having the crew want to do the opposite of his orders.  Maybe the crew could be divided.  
Rework and have it make more sense.  it could be a nice drama.  Good luck.

I can't believe how massacred I was!  Sheesh! You guys are harsh!

http://www.maryceleste.net will give you everything you need to know about this true story. Looking back, I see my mistakes. I left out a huge fact and smaller details that would've made a lot more sense and they'll be in the rewrite, whenever I get around to doing it.

I took what made a prison cell: Confinement in a larger area. The lifeboat is the cell and the ocean is the compound. I'm not sorry y'all didn't get it.

The lifeboat nor the bodies were ever found. When the ship was found in December of the same year, a few barrels of alcohol were found tipped over and empty in the cargo hold. Theories say that the crew abandoned in ship in fear of an explosion, except the lifeboat and ship weren't attached and the ship got away from them in the storm. Of course, there's no proof why the abandoned or what happened, but it's just a theory.

I chose what I thought was best for a 12 page script. When the ship was found, dinner was in the cold oven. Dinner was about to be served. The water and sextant (an odd looking navigational tool) were not found. The entire ship was soaked, but nothing was destroyed. That points to a seaquake and not to a storm. Seaquakes are very common the Azores, where the ship was found. It was headed to Genoa and found near the Strait of Gibraltar.

I'll reply to the individual comments not made by this post later.

AB, I love the passion. Passion is a valuable tool for any writer. Knowing this was based on true events, though, doesn't change some of the story faults.

This could have been a very dramatic situation but what was lacking was not in the historical/factual evidence, it was in the story and the characters.

As already pointed out, you obviously know how to tell a story. It was well written, but could have been better like all of them could have been better.

I think the point of these challenges is to get us to try and write under pressure to test our limits. It is good exercise for the writing muscles. And now we all have a little bit more experience for next time.

I hope to see you the next time around.

James R