TOTE Maritime has agreed to $5m in settlements with some of the officers and crew members who died when its ro-ro sank off the Bahamas.

The US shipowner agreed to pay the families of 10 men and women $500,000 each, according to legal records filed in a limitation-of-liability lawsuit in Jacksonville.

The deals cover less than a third of the 33 people who died when the 5,330-lane-metre El Faro (built