I have sat in a masters office and/or been in the middle of the conversations between the vessels operator and the captain many times over the years before a storm or an impending port closure, including Katrina. What ends up happening end of the day, the regulatory perspective and how it always plays out is discretion of the master. Ship over loads grain, was not the shore elevators operators fault in not following the Prestow/sequence, it was the mate and master. The ship gets popped by USCG for a magic pipe, the engineer goes to jail.
But what is often never discussed, is what commerical pressure did the master or crew receive from the owners/operators. Too often there is an effort to criminalize or at least blame the ships command. And generally the regulatory perspective supports this. Sure end of the day the master is responsible for his ship and if the owners are pressuring him to do something unsafe or unethical, he should stand up to it. But often that is not the case, and an American master even with the support of strong unions is no more or less suceptable to these pressures, then a Ukrainian or Filipino master.
Commerical pressure is what drove the Bow Mariner crew to cut corners tank cleaning, commerical pressure is what withheld nesc repairs to the Marine Electric and influenced ABS inspectors.
20 years in the business end of shipping, what I am seeing is more and more commerical pressure and less and less experience and quality decision making within owners commerical teams operating the vessels. With an historic depression in shipping, over capacity, falling rates, dollars and cents are driving decisions more than ever.
Not saying at Tote pressured this master to sail, but what am saying if they did, it may never be proven and end of the day the master will be the one who’s judgement will be placed in question. But can assure in my mind at least, the decision to sail JAX for PR was not made solely by his judgement.