OMG! Here we go again...Hardberger is back!

Maritime News
21

Max: Correlation does not imply causation, as surely you must know, and I’m pretty sure that the existence of the Jones Act was not responsible for any sealift deficiencies in 1990. You seem to be arguing both that the Jones Act is responsible for a decline in the U.S. Merchant Marine and that the U.S. Merchant Marine should be strengthened through more attention to the very issues the Jones Act attempts to address. So … strengthen it, or abolish it?

Several more points: 1.) I believe you are incorrect in your probably tongue-in-cheek assumption that significant defense assets could be moved coastwise by brownwater vessels. I say that as both a veteran of the U.S. Army and as a licensed deck officer in the U.S. Merchant Marine.

2.) That said, I personally am not terribly concerned about force projection, and if recent history is any guide some limits on our ability to project force (since clearly our politicians are unable to recognize limits on what that force can accomplish) might be a good thing. In the event of a repeat of World War II, I am confident that we could quickly ramp-up capacity – but only if we have shipyards and trained and experienced workers to build them. And they are useful only if we have trained and experienced mariners to man the bottoms.

3.) To that point, I fail to see how a federally subsidized “reserve” force of mariners is more desirable than a federally subsidized industry (or not) that could, if needed, provide those mariners; in fact, and you may not know this if you have not actually filled out a CG-719b, licensed American officers already have the option to participate in the “Mariners Tracking System” so that in the event of a national emergency they may be made available for sealift.

4.) Whatever happened to the Operating Differential Subsidy and Construction Differential Subsidy, both signed into law by President Bush the Elder, but – so far as I can tell – never funded? Maybe it’s time to do that. There’s a Jones Act “tweak” for you.

Finally, I would point out that the difference between an ideologue and a pragmatist is that one deals in theories and the other deals in facts. The facts, with regard to the Jones Act, the present state of the U.S. Merchant Marine, and its usefulness in the event of a national emergency are in fact knowable.

22

my addition

thank you for your thoughts Aaron although I do not believe the Jones Act can be considered a “subsidy” but rather a “protection” to preserve an industry. Certainly the MSP is a subsidy because it does require funding. Of course, one of Max’s major arguments against the Jones Act is that the cost to “protect” a coastwise maritime industry falls disproportionately on residents in distant locations which to some extent is true but it is cost/benefit here. Yes, protection comes with costs yet to try to remove those costs will mean a vastly fewer number of mariners and shipyard workers which itself will have its own cost but just switched from one group to another. Repeal of the Jones Act will put tens (if not more than a hundred) of thousands out of work and close US companies. How much tax revenue will be lost as a result? Whether that cost is greater or less than the costs saved by these residents in Hawaii, Alaska or Puerto Rico could be debated but the would also have the cost of losing the capability of a US flagged and manned sealift for the DoD. We both know that the number of coastwise mariners in the US is vastly more than the number of foreign going so it is from the domestic sailing mariners that the men to man the fleet are pulled. As a case in point, I came from the fishing fleet in Alaska in 1990 which is protected for US mariners.

The CDS and ODS were both part of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 but it was Ronald Reagan who axed further funding of CDS and ceased issuing new ODS contracts, although both are still in the Act and could be restored given willingness in Washingtoon DC however I would believe there is no political will nor the money anymore to bring it back. I do believe that the MSP is a success and that it will be funded for the foreseeable future and personally, would love to see it expanded.

Another move that could be made to enhance the health of the US flagged merchant fleet and pool of mariners would be to cease immediately using any foreign flagged merchant ship to carry any DoD cargo anywhere on the globe. Yes, a cost to the taxpayer but with tremendous benefits. Another still is to enforce existing OCS statutes protecting the GoM for US mariners. No new law need be enacted and the cost would be born by the operators in the offshore who have all these foreign vessels operating there. That one should be a pure no brainer imo however this is not happening although I know HOS is trying to get the Administration to make changes and I applaud Hornbeck for their efforts.

23

I thought this guy was a douce the first time I read his little fairytale about re-possessing arrested ships. I wonder what color the sky is in his world.

24

[QUOTE=captbbrucato;167091]I thought this guy was a douce the first time I read his little fairytale about re-possessing arrested ships. I wonder what color the sky is in his world.[/QUOTE]
This clown is a legend in his own mind. He wrote something that got everyone stirred up in “Workboat” magazine? Who reads the thing other than the advertisers and the people that get free subscriptions? The subscriptions are as valuable as the infamous Hardbergers’ opinion. Max should go back to hauling stolen bicycles and cheap mattresses to Haiti on 150 foot FOC “ships” or get another repo job. Ignore him, he is a troll.

25

Turdburger now takes ECO’s side in the suit brought by Wren Thomas in Federal Court

[B]The curious case of the C-Retriever[/B]

Max Hardberger

8/24/2015

There seems to be more than meets the eye in the personal injury lawsuit by a Capt. Wren Thomas against the owners of the offshore supply vessel (OSV) C-Retriever. Capt. Thomas was kidnapped by pirates and held for 18 days after the C-Retriever was hijacked off Nigeria in 2013. The original petition was filed in a Houston state court in October 2013, then transferred to the US District Court there a month later, where it was recently dismissed. The court dismissed the vessel’s charterer, Chevron, outright and the vessel’s owner, Edison Chouest Offshore (ECO) because the suit was filed in the wrong venue.

That ruling means that Capt. Thomas can refile the suit in the Eastern District of Louisiana, where ECO is domiciled, but that doesn’t mean he’ll get much. Although the state court petition contains a number of spelling and grammar errors — unusual but not unknown in state court filings — the case’s real problems are more substantial.

It’s a known fact among personal injury attorneys that corporate defendants going before juries in South Louisiana do so at their peril, so Capt. Thomas will probably get something regardless. But if he does go to trial, he’ll have to show that Edison Chouest was negligent in some way, and the petition doesn’t offer much in that regard. It devotes more than 200 words to establishing that piracy exists in the Gulf of Guinea. When it does get around to ECO’s negligence, the only clearly defined accusation is that Chevron used VHF radios rather than satellite telephones to communicate between vessels and installations. Now that Chevron’s been dismissed, convincing the court that this was ECO’s fault could be a tough sell, even if that did constitute negligence on Chevron’s part.

One virtually meaningless allegation is that the C-Retriever was “too old, too slow, and not equipped with state-of-the-art anti-piracy countermeasures.” This one’s easy: built in 1999 and fully classed with ABS, the C-Retriever was neither older, slower, nor less-equipped than the bulk of the international OSV fleet. Whether the vessel’s anti-piracy measures were adequate is a question of fact and expert opinion, but assuming that the vessel was fully compliant with the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code, this could be a tough sell as well.

The most troubling accusation in the petition is that “in the Spring of 2013, while working aboard the C-Retriever, Thomas began receiving. . .death threats. The petition also states that ECO “received an email. . .that Wren should not return to Nigeria.” What measures ECO took in response to these threats from its headquarters half a world away, and what it should have done, would probably emerge at trial, but I bet ECO’s attorneys could also get in the fact that Capt. Thomas returned to the “zone of terror” (the petition’s turgid phrase) for at least 12 hitches over a period of two-and-a-half years. There’s also the question, unaddressed in the petition, of what Capt. Thomas did or could have done — presumably ashore — to elicit such personal death threats.

Another of the petition’s allegations is that ECO “circulated a warning to its vessels in the region [to] ‘stay very vigilant at all times and review . . . Security plans.’” This isn’t much of an accusation: ECO is required by the ISPS Code to circulate such warnings. The petition also says Capt. Thomas tried to avoid making the trip that resulted in his capture, “but was ultimately overruled and forced to embark on a mission that he knew would make the C-Retriever a sitting duck for pirates and hijackers.”

The question here is whether Capt. Thomas understood the bedrock principle of “master’s overriding authority.” As an ISM/ISPS auditor, I ask the master of every ship I audit what his authority is. A master who doesn’t say he has overriding authority automatically gets a non-compliance. And a master cannot be fired for refusing to undertake an unsafe voyage — or, more accurately, he can be fired, but he has a nice fat lawsuit for that reason alone, including punitive damages.

The petition concludes with an allegation that “neither [Capt. Thomas] nor his crew received any formal education by ECO in the handling of pirates … [including] nothing in the ‘ships security plan.’” This sentence is probably false. Every deck officer on every ship under ISM/ISPS must have a certificate of completion for the required security courses. There is no regulation or standard in the industry requiring a shipboard officer — even the Shipboard Security Officer — to receive in-house (as opposed to on-board) training. And every SSP must have a section on shipboard preparation for and response to threats of piracy.

It may well be that, during his 18 days of captivity, Capt. Thomas was “treated like an animal and developed the realistic expectation of his immanent (sic) death among his captors,” and it may well be that some fault on the part of ECO will emerge at trial, but if I were Capt. Thomas’ counsel — not being a personal injury attorney and based only on the petition itself — I’d be talking about a nice little settlement rather than a trial on the merits.

Hell, everybody knows any good VSP will stop an RPG. I you have to do is hold it up like a shield and the rounds bounce right off!

Anyway, truth be told, I also believe Thomas is not innocent here and is as dirty as is ECO and Chevron in how they operate in Nigeria. However Chouest is still liable and Thomas deserves a healthy settlement.