He may not have authority but he can’t skirt responsibility. He is the one with the license.
I think there is just an assumption here that everyone knows that.
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Tugsailor used the word “blame”. I don’t know who he was talking about, I assumed he was referring to poster on this thread.
The Coast Guard and State AG don’t "blame’ people, they take action against the license and indict, not the same thing.
I guess we could debate the nuances of differences between blame and accountability, but I agree regardless of the verbiage we use, the point is the law is designed to hold the Captain accountable and it will.
If you agree to wear the title of Captain there are very clear expectations regarding your performance as the designated person in charge of a vessel. And if you agree to operate an unsafe vessel or in an unsafe way… even with pressure from owners, customers or managers and there are significant negative outcomes, you will be blamed, held accountable and/or indicted…
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I agree. To say the captain has zero authority is an exaggeration. The responsibility for assigning a night watch is his. He can expect to be held accountable. If he feels he doesn’t have enough crew to do so, it’s on him to address the issue with management. If they ignore him, he has the option of walking away. The issue likely never came up.
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Anyone can blame anybody for anything. To hold accountable implies the authority and the means to do so.
I assume that the dive boat 100 ton Captain, had the average level of skills, experience, and ability of a typical 100 ton Captain.
I have been a hired 100 ton Captain on USCG inspected passenger boats. I have also been a 100 ton passenger vessel owner that hired and fired Captains. As in most things, I’m kind of out of date now. Some things may have changed.
These vessels have a COI issued by the USCG that specifies exactly how many crew and what type of crew are required, and how many extra crewmen (if any) are allowed to be onboard. The COI also specifies the watch system. Most 100 ton passenger vessels have only one “day watch” required by the COI.
In some US passenger boat trades, the day crew will actively operate the vessel less than 12 hours a day, and the vessel will anchor, or tie up at a dock, for the night with passengers aboard. There is no licensed mate or night crew specified in the COI. Nor does the COI require any nightwatch while passengers are aboard. Typically, there will be a “lights out” and bedtime of about 10pm. The watchman (who has undoubtedly worked over 12 hours) will go to bed shortly after lights out. There will be no crew on watch at all until the cook gets up at about 5am. The USCG allows this, and it’s a firmly entrenched custom of the trade. I recall an effort by the USCG years ago to require a licensed mate and a deckhand to stand anchor watch at night. This would have increased costs and reduced passenger capacity and revenues. The owners fought this and the USCG relented.
I know that this sounds rather shocking to a deep sea sailor that works a three watch system specified by the COI with a fully manned watch on duty at all times. It even sounds shocking to most tugboatmen that work a two watch system. But there are one watch passenger boats.
I do not know anything about the California sport dive boat business or it’s customs of the trade. I don’t know what the COI of this particular dive boat required or if it was complied with. I do not know anything about the incident. Apparently, many of the posters on gcaptain know a lot more about this incident than I do. However, I suspect that many posters are simply making assumptions based upon their experience, just as I am.
However, as a former captain, and former owner, of USCG inspected small passenger boats, I view this incident through a different lens.
I have a few thoughts about why the Seamen’s Manslaughter Act, is a bad law, perhaps even an unconstitutional law, but I’ll save them for a future post.
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From the Conception’s COI:
A MEMBER OF THE VESSEL’S CREW SHALL BE DESIGNATED BY THE MASTER AS A ROVING PATROL AT ALL TIMES, WHETHER OR NOT THE VESSEL IS UNDERWAY, WHEN THE PASSENGER’S BUNKS ARE OCCUPIED.
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Ok…
The consensus on this forum with regards to compliance was more or less in agreement with this article.
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This vessel had a required crew of only four men: one master, one mate, and two deckhands for 24 hour operations. A two watch system. The COI allows 103 total persons onboard and operations up to 100 miles offshore with just a four man crew specified. Who thinks this is enough crew?
Among the many tasks required of the four man crew is providing a 24 hour per day roving patrolman. Presumably, the deckhand on watch was expected to be the roving patrolmen, as well as perform his other required duties.
The Captain apparently failed to assign the patrolman specifically required by the COI? Was this a one off lapse, or was the vessel typically operated without the required 24 hour patrolman? By just this Captain? By all this vessel’s captains? By all this owner’s vessels and captains? By all the other vessels and owners and captains engaged in this particular California sport diving trade?
I don’t think that the Captain should be “blamed” for a fire caused by passengers charging the lithium batteries in their devices.
I do, however, agree that the Captain can be held accountable if he failed to post the 24 hour roving patrolman specifically required by the COI.
The Captain, particularly a Captain without license insurance and legal defense insurance, is the low hanging fruit for the prosecutors.
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The COI required only a crew of four, but according to the article they actually had a crew of six. With 34 overnight guests, at least one of the crew, maybe two, was a dedicated cook. A crew of six seems a lot more reasonable than a crew of four. It’s probably enough to have an assigned watchman on duty without routinely violating rest hours rules.
According to the article, it appears that the COI patrolman requirement had been routinely ignored on all the owner’s vessels by all of the captains (and the owner) for many years. It sounds like it may have been an established custom of the entire California sport diving trade to “overlook” the patrolman requirement.
If it was a custom of the trade, I am not surprised. This would put the captain’s conduct in a much better light. It’s one thing to be the only rogue Captain intentionally ignoring a specific COI requirement, but it’s quite another thing to be one of many captains in a trade that has customarily “overlooked” a requirement for many years. In short, it appears that all the captains were “trained” to “overlook” the requirement in this trade.
The Captain is still legally “culpable” or “accountable” for his failure to post a 24 hour patrol as required by the COI, but he is less “blameworthy,” or had less of a guilty state of mind,” if he was merely following an established custom of the trade in the same manner as all the other captains.
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We’ve been through this here on threads after the fire if you care to go back but here’s some background on diveboats. It’s not a 2 watch system, it’s literally a no watch system. I ran them with six person crews and I can say that days were long and tiring and sleep was a valued commodity. The divers were tired after three day and one night dives on successive days. The crew was tired from handling tanks, tending to 2 dozen divers coming on and off, and moving the boat between dives, often at night so it was a 24 hour operation. The cook was the only member of the crew not busy on deck but otherwise, everybody chipped in without a set schedule.
I catnapped during the day and was usually on deck at night enjoying the peace and quiet or navigating if we were travelling, otherwise I made sure one of the crew stayed up. On these small boats, the term roving is a bit wishful. The boats aren’t big enough to have somebody doing walking rounds without waking people up but as it’s been pointed out, someone awake watching a movie in the Conception’s wheelhouse would have made a difference.
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I agree, I think the captain should be held accountable and I think that he is in fact in serious legal trouble. I’ve said as much upthread.
This is apparently the situation. My point is that if actual compliance with regulations is the goal it’s necessary to have a system in place to check compliance. This is why the NTSB has recommend such a system be put in place.
Tugsailor said it, you don’t run a boat safely with paperwork, you run it by retaining experienced mariners.
This captain had something like 30 or 40 years experience running dive boats. The 20 something year old coasties that want the boat run according to a piece of paper have never been out on a dive boat. The CG told the NTSB they don’t know what happens on dive boats. In fact they said it was unknowable.
In your experience a watch at night is maintained, this is my experience as well. This captain’s experience is for 30+ years without a night watch and never a problem.
Jerry is an experienced professional. His father was in the Coast Guard when he was a kid and he started diving himself when he was just five-years-old.
He has worked professionally as a captain since 1985 and by all reports is thorough when it comes to safety on every ship where he is at the helm.
Now 67 years old, would have been 32 when he started as captain.
EDIT: I understand that it’s obvious in hindsight that the CG was right and the captain was wrong. Experience is a poor guide in low probability high consequence events.
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I don’t think you can say that the captains on these boats never assigned night watches. There is no set itinerary or set watch schedule on these boats. They decide when and where to set up individual dives based on weather and water conditions. Same with assigning watches as needed.
I know some of the company captains on the boats I worked on only assigned night anchor watches when the wind was up but it was up to them. That’s what they did on the few trips I went on as observer before I started out.
As relief captain my crews never complained about the way I did things, including assigning night watches. If they did, management would not have offered me a full time rotation when I told them I would no longer be available to do relief work.
It’s not my intent to assign blame but I can see the prosecutors using this argument to prove that the captain made a conscious decision.
On the night of the fire, the weather was calm so Boylan opted to let everyone sleep. I have sympathy for him. With the water smooth as glass, the generator and compressor shut down, fire was the furthest thing from his mind.
Edit: correction, the generator may have been running to supply electrical power to the plugged in chargers.
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Yes, I agree, an assumption or simplification for the sake of argument.
Better to have said; in making the decision to require a watch or not the captain evaluated the risk based on his experience.
I don’t know what degree of culpability the captain has in this case. Depends on the facts of course.
But suppose you were put in charge of operations shoreside for several dive boats. Taking into account how you’ve seen other captains run their boats, your experience with how things should be run and the lessons learned in this incident would you let each captain run the boats the way they wanted or would you put some procedures in place and make sure they were followed?
The COI pretty much determines what you have to do. If the Conception had to have a roving watch at night, and didn’t have one, then that is both on the owner and on the Captain. Surely the owner or owner’s rep knows whether there is a night watch or not. At the very least the evidence would be in the deck log and the payroll records, unless those were falsified (and that’s a whole nuther can of worms)
And the crew all survived no? They will be put on the witness stand.
Good points dude.
Could have happened to a lot of other boats, Just happed to have happened on this unlucky dumb bastard’s boat.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.