I would agree with you except that evacuation is one thing all passenger vessels are required to train for. In the case of subchapter T boats that carry no life rafts, grounding is the normal method for accomplishing this. That isn’t to say that the captain ever actually practices a grounding, but he should work through this scenario with the crew. In the case of Duck boats, each and every cruise ends with a controlled grounding.
An additional explanation is a tendency for people in stressful situations to show a reluctance to shift away from the original goal towards dealing with the emergency.
Weick talks about this in his Tenerife paper. The KLM pilot focused on his goal of completing his flight rather then the goal of making sure the runway was clear. Weick refers to obstacles in the way of a goal as interruptions.
Weick also wrote a paper about the Mann Glutch fire -The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster - in this case the fire jumpers waited too long to shift away from firefighting duties to escape from the fire. Some of the firejumper got overtaken by flames while still carrying their tool which they had been ordered to drop.
Another example is the El Faro, the captain didn’t abandon his goal of an on-time arrival until shortly before the ship went down.
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