Haha John wouldn’t even fight a guy over a cease and desist from the Plimsoll mark stickers that he was making. You think they’re going to take on this boondoggle??
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For some perspective, I was looking at a sailboat cruisers’ forum a while ago. Someone had posted about a recent incident saying that fake rescue calls were no big deal because responders were just sitting around doing nothing anyway so it was good practice for them. I registered so I could respond that someone in a real emergency might perish while the CG was off on a wild goose chase. I ended my post by saying the poster didn’t know what he was talking about and needed to educate himself about the realities of SAR; no curses or insults. I was immediately banned by an administrator for addressing their poster in a “rude manner on a friendly forum”. I figured if the people on that forum were that clueless it wasn’t worth going back and asking for forgiveness so I could get exposed to more stupidity.
gCaptain is the best maritime forum hands down.
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No, I do not expect the owner/operator of a forum/website to take a stand over free speech on behalf of an anonymous poster when he receives serious cease and desist letters from organizations with significantly more money, lawyers, and (fanatical) membership.
But let’s recognize that there is an effort to keep these stories from being read. Are all of these maritime organizations coordinating with each other to suppress victim stories? In some cases. But in general their interests happen to be aligned on the issue of SASH and no coordination is needed.
This is about $$$. And about people losing their licenses and about people going to jail.
There are a lot of victims. People in this industry are terrified of the levee breaking. Even if that terror is subconscious.
But if it keeps on raining, the levee’s gonna break…
And there ain’t no cease and desist letter that’s gonna stop that from happening…
There are slander and libel laws, people making accusations without evidence might fall foul of these laws.
In society there have been incidences of people making up accusations just to tarnish the name of somebody they don’t like for other reasons.
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Have participated in more than a few sites, this one is one of the most tolerant. I know they grit their teeth sometimes, but give us quite a bit of latitude. If a post was censored or closed (even my own), generally for a good reason. One of the best maritime sites I have had the pleasure to participate in.
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yeah generally when a scuttlebut thread gets a bit too ‘heated’ it just gets locked and that’s the end of it.
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IMO, your statement is true. But did that other forum have a whole category like, “Searching For Companionship” for romantic hookups? That’s something gCaptain doesn’t have & people (or an individual) is implying gcaptain is covering up some type of systematic sexual harassment plot? A sailboat forum that I stopped visiting a decade ago had something that was nearly an offshore swingers category. I just visited the site again & they’re still at it. Any anti sexual harassment champions should go visit that forum to clean it up.
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I’m sorry who are you? You’ve been on here a day and are already complaining about censorship. How many post/comments did you make in a single day for you to go to directly to the censorship angle?
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What is wrong with an offshore swingers category?
Maybe that’s what this forum needs?
What consenting adults do in their free time has nothing to do with sexual harassment.
The point I’ve made is that Gcaptain has apparently been pressured legally by groups with $ to remove content relating to sexual harassment and sexual assault in the US maritime industry.
No one in this forum is arguing that these stories need to be seen and read. Everyone here seems quite content to see the people who wrote them silenced and in the process to discourage other victims from coming forward while attacking the people who are attempting to give voice to the victims.
Hopefully these threads aren’t deleted when the big maritime sash bomb goes off and we can all come back here and read where everyone really stood.
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Wow. You sure make a lot of assumptions about the people here and what we tolerate, or don’t tolerate.
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If there was, I didn’t see it. I read posts for 20 minutes or so about the 2 women who went out on a sailboat, got lost and ran out of fuel. Rather than use the sails, as I recall, they set off the epirb so they would be “rescued”. I never went back after posting and being banned.
I have seen those kinds of ads elsewhere in the cruising community though so it wouldn’t surprise me.
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The term professional gets thrown around loosely sometimes, but i’d like to think this is a meeting place for professional career-minded mariners…and those who aspire to be. If you honestly believe we need to have a tinder or plenty of fish element here, maybe this isn’t the right place for you.
A thread being locked out because it turns into a trainwreck does not mean anyone here condones sexual harassment. In general, once a few people start losing their tact and the discussion becomes argumentative, the moderators shut the thread down.
Like mentioned before, this is John and his partners fiefdom. Most of us feel they have been more than fair with us. If the culture here and their methods offend you so much, take it up with them or leave.
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If we want to see and read these stories, you made it abundantly clear that we could find them on your blog with every single post of yours. Again… that’s called spamming a forum.
I feel like maybe what you’re really butthurt about is that your blog isn’t pulling in the readership you thought it would and you lost your free advertising here… or maybe, just maybe, you got hit with your own cease and desist letters (it’s been awhile since the last entry on the blog) and were trying to drum up some support and backers with an account that you could plausibly (and tried repeatedly to) deny ownership of here.
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Maybe this place?
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I’d rather look for a chief engineer than a captain. If i’m gonna get bossed around i at least want that person to know how to fix stuff around the house.
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Beat me to it dang it! I was searching for that thread frantically here. 
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This is true but it goes deeper than the leadership of organizations. It’s cultural. As you can read in my book, I blew the whistle at Transocean a year before the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the company (with uscg and abs’ tacit approval) worked diligently to shut me up which isn’t surprising. What did surprise me was the number of good friends and shipmates that turned on me. Many of these were the same guys who were pushing me to blow the whistle in the first place.
As sailors we bitch and moan all the time about the troubles we face but whenever someone stands up he gets blocked by leadership then pulled down by his fellow sailors.
My wife was a 2/m. We know people personally who have been harassed and even violently raped. I’ve been trying to publish these stories since day 1 of gCaptain but nobody’s willing to step forward and and publish the facts. And it’s not the big lawyers that scare them, it’s the multitude of sailors who will flood to places like this and yell at them and call them liars and whores.
Even that level of defamation against the victims might be ok if the good guys were willing to stand up and help them fight back but I don’t see much evidence of that happening. Nobody offered to help me against transocean. Even small things, that plimsoll dispute that’s mentioned above, well I got a lot of emails and forum posts cheering me on but nobody sent money or legal help or even started a gofundme fund to assist.
Big things too. ABS was our biggest advertiser but they pulled out when we started reporting on the bullshit that was happening during the el faro trial. That was a HUGE financial hit for gCaptain but I foolishly thought it would cause mariners to flood the trial and demand justice or picket uscg headquarters or do something to stop them. But nothing significant happened except the NTSB lead investigator did look into it and then was forced out, abs & uscg took control, and he’s been struggling to find work ever since.
And foolishly I keep forgetting this fact. Last year I blew the whistle on a small organization associated with my college that was failing miserably. It was not a powerful organization and I had the college leaders support as well as hundreds of alumni who supported my campaign but when the leaders of that organization started a smear campaign and threatened legal action my support vanished and again I got threats of violence.
Think about that: there are people dumb enough to call me, and industry leader and owner of a website with hundreds of thousands of followers that gets over 2 million views a month, and (after telling them I am recording the call) threaten to “drive to my house and beat the F out of me”. And they get away with it because they know if I publish there are plenty more people who will follow suit. And this was over a tiny bs college organization I was trying TO HELP.
And the same thing happened this year when I helped a black mariner organization put out a very simple messaged asking for help.
The only person I know who has been successful in blowing the whistle is Capt John Loftus and he succeeded by keeping his whistleblowing mostly secret till the end.
I’ve failed multiple times, so has Ryan, so have many others who have tried. And we will continue to fail until someone can organize a system of support because it’s just too easy to suppress one voice.
I have the biggest megaphone in the entire industry and if I cannot succeed how is a rape victim suppose to?
John Loftus succeeded not because he was more right than I, he did so because he had a team (a legal team) fighting for him (big legal teams cost bug $ so he was taking a huge personal risk).
Saltydog69 isn’t banned because of some high level conspiracy or because I don’t care about SASH (I care very deeply) it’s because a bunch of you flagged his posts and sent copies of them to organization who have expensive lawyers on staff.
His cause is good but, imho, he won’t succeed as long as the only name that’s not anonymous in his reports is his.
I’ve seen it dozens of times. Good people (Some of them very smart and passionate) stand up and are beaten down. Then they either give up or they keep doubling down in (like this guy or like c.captain) until an overwhelming number of people are against then.
But there is some hope. There are some groups working behind the scenes to get groups of women to come forward together. There are sash support groups popping up in secret. There are legal cases that are right now working their way secretly through the courts. He’s right, this is about to explode. I just don’t know how to help any of them because any publicity I give them is going to result in people at ALL levels (deckplate AND office) trying to stop them.
And once those groups now operating mostly in secret are ready for press then gCaptain will publish it and work to get them broader support just as we did for Loftus.
P.S. crucifying our own shipmates isn’t just a SASH issue, it’s at the heart of most of the problems we face in the US Merchant Marine right now. Hell, I can’t even push to restore rights that we already had and are still legally entitled to (like basic veteran medical for mariners) without getting a flood of angry emails and physical threats of violence. We have to stop fighting ourselves if we are going to have any hope of progress at all.
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Speak for yourself. I seemed to have pissed off a few people by my views on the topic.
It’s not about $$$ it’s about $ vs goose eggs.
That’s one myth I hear over and over. I hear it from unions saying they can’t fight the big $$$ interests. I hear it from jones act supporters saying they can’t fight the big $$$ lobbyists. I hear it from whistleblowers saying they can’t fight the big $$$ american shipping companies. I hear it from everywhere that we can’t fight the Big $$$ uscg.
The NRA is Big $$$. The anti-jones act contingent is small $.
Wal-Mart is a Big $$$ anti union, offshore operators (at least since the crash) are small $… so is the post-covid cruise industry.
RJ Reynolds put Big $$$ against whistleblowers, american shipping companies do not.
The US Navy has BIG $$$$, the uscg does not.
All American shipping interests by definition are small money organizations that are failing. Maybe ten years ago (Transocean, carnival, and ABS had some deep pockets then) but not today.
The problem is the people fighting them have NO MONEY. This guy Ryan isn’t new to the scene, he’s been fighting this for 5 years… and in that time he’s been homeless. A USMMA grad with a law degree homeless.
Think about that.
C.Captain keeps yelling at me to do more. With what money? We had to start selling F’n tshirts just to keep the doors to this forum open. Do you know what a pain in the ass selling tshirts is dealing with complaints and returns because someone ordered the wrong size and color and thinks it’s my fault or because shipping is delayed two weeks because of covid?
And you guys mostly stopped buying any tshirts when covid hit.
You’re 
right. money IS the problem. But it doesn’t take $$$ to fight these failing companies and failing organizations. It would not take $$$ to restore the US Merchant Marine to acceptable efforts.
All it would take is $ and a modicum of grassroots support from the deckplates.
This cannot come from me. I built the tools (this forum), I got hundreds of thousands of likes on social media, I got the millions of pageviews pouring into gCaptain, I got the killer rolodex of industry leaders… I got everything you guys need to raise $ and get shit done.
Problem is I can’t raise money to fight for a strong merchant mariner or basic sailor rights Or anything else and then go spend it on myself and via companies that I own. That’s illegal.
It has to come from you.
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Thanks for the perspective. I wasn’t surprised by any of it except your comment above. That’s some low down bullshit. I thought Saltydog69 was spamming the forum with his many new threads on the same topic but I just quit reading them. It never occurred to me to flag them? I can understand having loyalty to your employer, union & alumni but to pick a side in something as serious as sexual harassment & rape without having any firsthand facts & forward the debate to your favorite organization in defense is below pathetic. I don’t think cowardly, delicate-sensibility flag-happy commentors would be so eager to do it if their avatar were shown by each flag they made. I think you & your team are doing a great job managing your business without the help from diehard company, union or alumni loyalists telling you/us what is offensive.
Also, sorry about the GoFundMe on the Plimsole mark fiasco. I don’t know you personally but from your public comments about it I thought it wasn’t something you guys cared enough to peruse? I would of chipped in some if you said you wanted to fight it & had an avenue to do so. Thanks again.
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