Are Captains Required To Go Down With Their Ships?

In the wake of the Costa Concordia, the Sewol, the public is concerned and questioning himself to understand “Are Captains Required To Go Down With Their Ships ?” As maritime professionals, what is your opinion on that problematic matter. Please find some answers that I found on the net …

[I]In the popular tradition of the sea, a ship’s captain is expected to stay until allthe passengers have been safely evacuated.

Customary international law requires captains to operate under the principles of prudent seamanship, which means caring for the safety of crew and passengers. That said, when the ship is sinking, you do try to rescue your own life, but it’s hard to quantify when. As long as your own life is not at risk and there are passengers on board, there is a strong moral obligation to stay.

SOLAS states that all passenger ships must have a system for emergency management, which would set out who is responsible for what during an emergency situation. This may or may not stipulate that the captain has to be the last to leave. “It depends what was written on the plan,” says a spokesman for the IMO.

Howwould a captain fulfil his obligations if he was not on board?

The modern U.S. code, according to a professor at Florida’s Coastal School of Law interviewed by NPR, states that the captain is “legally required to render assistance to every single person trying to get off that ship, and also identify those people who may have been killed in the incident.”

ABC notes that while there aren’t any international maritime laws requiring a captain to stay with his sinking ship, “many countries either have their ownlaws or subscribe to international treaties that mandate certain behavior.”

Under current international regulations, each cruise company must have a safety plan, called a safety management system, that details responsibilities in the event of an emergency, Schoenwald said. One such international treaty is the Safety of Life at Sea convention handled by the International Maritime Organization.The convention requires that passenger ships have emergency management systems in place.

“If you’re going to be master of a ship, your responsibility is first to your passengers, second to your crew, then you look after yourself,” said Allen, a Coast Guard veteran. “It’s shameless and dishonorable for the captain to take himself out of the mix like that.”

Although U.S. law doesn’t single out abandoning ship as a crime, it’s a longtime maritime tradition that the captain be the last one off a sinking ship, according to maritime law professor Craig Allen, visiting professor of law at Yale University Law School and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

In the case of an alarm during a Real Emergency, the passengers must proceed to their muster station. If you are in your cabin, bring your PFD; otherwise, don’t go back for it as there are extras on the boat deck. Find out where you’ll get a life jacket if an emergency keeps you from returning to your room for yours. Remain calm. As a passenger, your obligation is to follow orders. In an emergency situation, don’t expect any crewmember to be less than professional. Your life depends on it. As soon as you board your ship and arrive at your room, find your life vest and participate in the mandatory safety drill, called a muster drill. Pay as close attention to the muster drill as you probably should. Before you board, make a copy of your passport and have a bag with necessities like hard-to-replace medication, said Kimberly Wilson Wetty, head of the Valerie Wilson Travel’s cruise department and John Deiner, managing editor of CruiseCritic.
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“The captain goes down with the ship” is the maritime concept and tradition that a sea captain holds ultimate responsibility for both his or her ship and everyone embarked on it, and he or she will die trying to save either of them. The concept may be expressed as “the captain always goes down with the ship” or simply the “captain goes down with his ship.” Although often associated with the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 and its captain, Edward Smith, the phrase predates the Titanic by at least 11 years. In most instances the captain of the ship forgoes his or her own rapid departure of a ship in distress, and concentrates instead on saving other people. It often results in either the death or belated rescue of the captain as the last person on board.

So then why in …

August 4, 1906: Captain Giuseppe Piccone abandoned the SS Sirio at the first opportunity. Between 150 and 400 people died when the ship sank.

November 12, 1965: When a fire broke out aboard the SS Yarmouth Castle, Captain Byron Voustinas was on the first lifeboat, which had only crew and no passengers aboard. 90 people died.

April 7, 1990: Captain Hugo Larsen abandoned the MS Scandinavian Star after arson caused the ship to burn. 158 people died.

August 3/4, 1991: Captain Yiannis Avranas of the cruise ship MTS Oceanos abandoned ship without informing passengers that the ship was sinking. All passengers survived.

January 13, 2012: Captain Francesco Schettino abandoned ship during the Costa Concordia disaster. 32 people died in the accident.

April 16, 2014: Captain Lee Joon-seok abandoned the South Korean ferry MS Sewol. The captain and crew (with the exception of cafeteria worker Park Ji-young) were among the first to leave, abandoning nearly 300 passengers, mostly high school students heading for school trip. Hundreds of passengers are dead or still remain missing.

You seem like the type of Captain that I hated to sail with and reminds me that I am lucky to be retired.

To answer your question, NO THERE IS NO LAW REQUIRING A CAPTAIN TO GO DOWN WITH THE SHIP.

But, even as a lowly Chief Engineer, I always put the safety of the crew above mine.

There are two sides to every story, get off of your high horse and give it a break.

I know that you are a PILOT and being so means you know everything and have never made a mistake, but forgive me if I do not kneel down before you and beg forgiveness for not agreeing with you.

The way I interpret our maritime law and the international conventions is that the captain is allowed to abandon the ship if there is no hope for saving any further lives or the vessel itself by remaining onboard. Such situation could be anything from rapid sinking or capsizing to the ship being engulfed in flames. In such situation, in which his life would be in immediate danger, I would not hold him responsible for abandoning the ship and demand punishment for doing so. That is, of course, unless he was the cause of the accident…

As per above, I’m do not wholly agree with all those charges against the South Korean ferry captain. Sure, he made a mistake by telling the passengers to wait inside the ship instead of ordering evacuation, and for that he should face trial. However, when he stepped off the ship, the bridge wing was already touching the water and the vessel was in the process of capsizing. How much more he could have done to save the passengers by staying onboard the listing vessel at that point, apart from satisfying a bunch of people who expect the captain to go down with his ship? From the video, we already saw that moving around the vessel was becoming difficult if not impossible and as far as I recall, it didn’t take long for the ship to turn upside-down after that.

Just because they are not required to doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea … there are a lot of chief mates looking for a captain’s job these days.

[QUOTE=Tugs;136880]You seem like the type of Captain that I hated to sail with and reminds me that I am lucky to be retired.

To answer your question, NO THERE IS NO LAW REQUIRING A CAPTAIN TO GO DOWN WITH THE SHIP.

But, even as a lowly Chief Engineer, I always put the safety of the crew above mine.

There are two sides to every story, get off of your high horse and give it a break.

I know that you are a PILOT and being so means you know everything and have never made a mistake, but forgive me if I do not kneel down before you and beg forgiveness for not agreeing with you.[/QUOTE]

I was kinda working around to that opinion of things myself. But seasons change …

Are Captains required?

No ! Unless you are a Japanese Captain during WW2.

The simple answer is NO ONE should go down with the ship. But the Captain should be held responsible for making sure all who can be saved are off before he/she abandons ship…

If the captain tells the passengers to stay put… then he should also stay put. Nothing exonerates this.

I would be the last one off.