Conclusion after reading, The US Attorney interfered with and hindered the NTSB in their ability to conduct a full and complete inquiry into this incident. Which I find quite disturbing.
Surely the main objective of any decent public official is to find out what happened why it happened and what can be changed to help prevent it happening again.
The correct agency for doing this is the NTSB. Air Rail and Marine accidents of all kinds are investigated by the NTSB. The NTSB is considered one of the best, if not the best authorities on accident investigation in the world.
I was under the impression the NTSB had the primary jurisdiction. Clearly this is not the case.
All communication with the NTSB being privileged and the report and is findings not be used as evidence in criminal or civil courts.
Surely this interference is a serious concern to anyone interested in marine safety. Far more important than the prosecution of one individual. Or even the company.
The reason most reputable accident investigation agencies are privileged is to encourage people involved in accidents to speak openly without fear of repercussions.
The US Attorney could still prosecute both the Master and The owner without having interfered. The report can’t be used as evidence by the defence or the prosecution.
On a small boat like that would anyone actually be able to sleep during the day even if they were wearing ear plugs?
I bet the whole boat was incredibly noisy all day with all the passengers making noise and compressors being run to fill the air bottles for divers.
Most of the crew bunks were directly behind the bridge, in the bridge even and right above the living area where the fire started, it would probably be impossible to sleep during the day, unless they hired someone who actually was deaf to be the night watch-person then they could sleep during the day.
Sometimes the knee-jerk reaction to incidents is to create stand alone training courses in response, instead of just including it as mandatory training at maritime college, as the root cause of this incident is thought to be from bad battery management maybe they will create a ‘battery management course’ that everyone needs a training course and certificate for.
Often I think they create these stand alone training courses just to help training centers make more money, there are things you have to do courses for that should just be in the curriculum for a certificate of competency.
I just read a Federal Judge has dismissed charges of criminal negligence against the Skipper and two managers of the Duck Boat which sank with the loss of 17 people.
They did some dumb stuff.
Guilty? Not according to a federal judge.
The chances this will end the same way. Pretty good.
Inland pushboats doing fleet work forcefully bang against barges while building tow & tilt at ridiculously crazy angles several times a day with their flat bottoms but people sleep on them on their off watch. Small tugs are as loud as hell & vibrate so much it is hard to sleep in a normal setting once you get home. I won’t mention any examples of sleeping in horrible sea conditions because people in our industry don’t need the reminding. So Yes, mariners can sleep on a dive boat during the day if they required to, I’ve done worse.
This is true but you and I both work(ed) in an environment of compliance. For example the Fire & Boat drill back in the day. That wasn’t done because the captain did a risk assessment. It was the routine, would have been very strange not to do it. Every week, same routine, same log entries to be made, they even had stamps made up.
Most deep-sea captain can’t work at the next level. They only keep running the routine that was already set when they started their career . For example the need for a SMS is obvious once the underlying reasons behind it are understood. Yet many if not most captains fought it tooth and nail.
There’s no reason to think a 100 ton captain is going to do more then run the boat the way it’s always been done unless the change is forced upon them,
This is from page 9 of the NTSB report. You don’t have to be a master electrician for this to raise a red flag. Would you allow this anywhere on your vessel? I’d be curious to know who took the photo and why. A concerned passenger maybe?
FYI - In a weird kind of synchronicity, over on the ham radio forum one guy just had his whole shack burn down because of a power strip. Turns out many of them are also surge suppressors and almost all surge suppressors use MOVs (metal oxide varistors). They are prone to failure and catch on fire when they fail. That was what burned down his shack and some research showed these fires are surprisingly common.
I went on a mission and threw out about 20 of these things I have around the house and boat. All are now replaced by either metal power strips with no MOVs or Tripp-Lite metal surge suppressors. The higher end gear has fused MOVs.
So that power strip or a similar one can burn the boat down even without anything plugged into it
If the USCG started doing 0300 inspections of anchored dive boats THAT might give everyone a clue. Right now, or at least before the fire, if the industry works the way I suspect it does a skipper trying to set up a night watch might get asked to think about finding other employment.
That link is 404, but IIRC it was about shipboard power being different than household power in some way that the surge suppressor did not like*. I am sure that is true, but they can and do catch on fire at home or plugged into the exact equivalent of domestic power onboard.
was it something to do with how cabin outlets were tapped off of a 3-phase bus???
A less heavy-handed way to do it is just come to the boat while it’s alongside and ask to see documentation to show the roving watch is being maintained IAW the COI. If it can’t be done to the satisfaction of the inspector then tell the captain they will be back the next day. A note could also be sent to the company letting them know.
Would I have know about the requirements for a roving patrol?
years ago no I wouldn’t have, I was a tanker guy.
Rounds at sea, were conducted and logged at the end of the watch. So every 4 hours.
Got a job on an old ferry, where they had this weird wind up clock wrapped in leather. with number keys placed all over the vessel.
As 2nd mate, I wound the clock and changed and wrote the date on the punch card wich recorded the number of the keys.
The QM did the “Detex Rounds” when was relieved from the wheel. Every hour.
Very easily checked, I’m sure Detex clocks were in use in all sorts of industries where security rounds are required for close to 100 years.
Now in more modern times, it’s all done by swiping an electronic gadget.
Still known as the “Detex Rounds”
So I can’t figure out why CG couldn’t figure this out particularly since USCG in Seattle audited our “Detex Rounds.
Of course deck crew loved these things, the clocks were constantly going for repair after being dropped on decks banged of of bulkheads and kicked along alleyways.
When reported broken it was logged and reported as a deficiency and continued logging visual rounds.
So after having worked on a passenger vessel where rounds were routine practice. I would know.
It wasn’t written on our inspection certificate. I always thought it was an insurance requirement.
According to the report, one of the other Capt. He Thought having one of the crew sleep in the bunk room somehow met the requirements.
Which explains why one of the crew a deck hand was sleeping in the bunk room and was lost.
Could a roving patrol have been monitored or audited? Very easily.
Every now and again you get a cleaver deck hand who thinks he can beat the system.
You just put the scanner into the computer and check. So when the cleaver guy has scanned the same number a dozen times. Instead of walking around. It shows up.
Then you get a new deck hand.
Enforcing good housekeeping is more difficult then it appears.
In this case an alternate would have to be provided. A safe place for the passengers to recharge their equipment. Likely the captain would not be able to accomplish that on his own but would need assistance from shoreside. Otherwise the captain would be interfering with a service the passengers probably think they’ve paid for.
Of course in hindsight it should have been done but it’s a lot easier to take photos of things that are wrong then to fix them.
What appears to have happened is that at the time the Conception was commissioned, the location and number of electrical outlets were more than adequate. In the last 10 or 15 years, the divers brought aboard more and more power hungry battery operated equipment. Rather than adding a dedicated charging bay and updating the grid, they took the easy way out and let the number of power strips multiply without considering the extra load on the system.
The danger would not have come to an inspector’s attention with the boat tied up at the dock without divers aboard.
I hadn’t given it that much thought when I plugged an electrical device into a US socket using an adapter, but I never realised that your hot wire is opposite to ours. Ours is on the left of the socket.
