The crew is more at risk than the Captain since there lives depend on his knowledge. If the Captain says we sail into a Hurricane we trust his decision because he is all knowing. The crew is taking the risk every time they ship. Sometimes we risk our lives getting to the vessel but that’s another sea story.
Trust me. We are not all knowing. Hurricane avoidance with me always involves plenty of input and discussion with the mates and the chief engineer. I want to know if there is something I am missing in analyzing the data and I also want the officers to have a good idea of the plan. This allows them to chirp up if the conditions do not match the plan, but also discuss with the crew what the plan is when they inevitably start asking on watch. I will also discuss the plans if asked, but it can be difficult to make it to a meal if everyone in the ship thinks you’re the only one with the information.
As long as you are strong in you belief??
The legal risk faced by a Master almost every day is different from the risk faced by a crew when the Master take them into the eye of a hurricane, which seldom happens (Not NEVER)
The first gets more and more frequent as the power of the Masters decreases.
The second increases as the Masters gets less and less powerful (and knowledgeable?)
Today most ships are “controlled” by someone “in the office”, usually with very little seagoing experience and knowledge. I.e. the power of the Master is eaten away.
Of course, if the Master are willing to listen to advise he’s got a lot more and better sources of it than ever before.
OK. In all my port calls to the US I personally have been treated with courtesy and all the crew have possessed the correct visa. Unfortunately that hasn’t extended to my crew of Kiribati’s and Filipino’s. Now while Filipinos are familiar with officials wearing fire arms Kiribati’s aren’t. With one shouting “when you were born” they froze. The Filipinos were quizzed on whether they had relatives in the USA aggressively. A very young homeland security woman decided arbitrarily to not allow shore leave to our three young ordinary seamen. Unfortunately for two of the young seamen this was the final call before going on leave after 13 months onboard. 2 months under training after 6 months sea school and 11 months seatime. On the last visit to the US they would buy up large to take home things like chainsaws, tools etc and ship them home from Fiji, they missed out.
On another vessel Homeland Security went berserk when the agent didn’t inform them before a crewman was admitted to hospital with a heart attack, assembling the entire crew in the mess room all night and destroying the man’s cabin. They found three bibles. I’m not sure when the last devout Methodist was a terrorist.
It’s a third-world tribunal looking to make a scapegoat. This is the rebuttable presumption from which one should operate.
Clearly it’s a shitty gauntlet that the captain is being forced to run, but you also really have to wait until the thing plays itself out in order to make any meaningful evaluation.