[QUOTE=damagedgoods;179525]“The Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation is looking for evidence of misconduct, inattention to duty, negligence or willful violation of the law by licensed or certified individuals.”
This is exactly why issues like this never get solved. They should not be looking who they should hang, but rather the root-cause so that it will not happen again. Since the CG (or ex-CG’ers rather) run the NTSB, that is the same thing. The big search for a scapegoat.
Marine Investigations in England and other civilized countries are done by experts in the field, not the military, and those who testify are exculpated from guilt (bar a clear and intentional breaking of the law) and the purpose is not to hang someone at fault for a mistake, because those people would never do it again and have learned a lesson the hard way, but rather to find out why and make recommendations that would preclude that from happening again.
Which leads me to the last item at question. Why is the USCG in “charge” of the Merchant Marine? Because they have ships, because they used to run the lighthouses for us? If it is because they have ships, then they should run the airline industry instead of the FAA because they have more planes than ships. Putting them in charge of maritime safety was a big mistake that should finally be rectified.[/QUOTE
A statement which is perhaps getting off the thread but one I agree with. And I have grudging respect, in general, for how the USCG handles their administrative role. For me the question is constitutional and legal in nature. To paraphrase the OP, does the US Air Force regulate commercial aviation? Does the U.S. Army–or your local sheriff, or the FBI–regulate interstate trucking and the railroads? Would we stand for that? Then how does a law enforcement/military force come to regulate waterborne commerce? I will say again that I believe the USCG, on the whole, does a pretty good job of regulating the U.S. merchant marine, but their performance is not the issue. It seems to me having law enforcement or the military making the rules for, and ultimately judging civilians, fundamentally goes against U.S. traditions of governance. We live with the contradictions because 1) U.S. mariners make up a vanishingly small and usually invisible part of the American populace. More importantly 2)many mariners and companies have a vested interest in not rocking the boat. Major shipping companies love to hire ex-USCG and Navy personnel to “facilitate their interactions” with the USCG. These executives are not going to petition Congress to get the USCG out of commercial shipping. A merchant mariner with a naval reserve commission working for MSC is not liable to debate the constitutionality of a sometimes-military/sometimes-not organization running his professional life. We products of merchant marine academies are already indoctrinated into the notion that the merchant marine and the military are locked at the hip. The last big hurrahs of the U.S. merchant marine were, in order, WW2, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. With a couple of nostalgic moments during Gulf Wars 1 and 2. What were we hauling? Cargo for the military. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
So we are “institutionalized” now. We accept things the way we are. Investigations like this are the result. Not a terrible result. I have little doubt that the USCG will get to the bottom of things, to the degree that that is possible. But I also have little doubt that a board consisting of experienced mariners from all sectors of the commercial industry would ask better, more cogent questions. But I don’t see a civilian merchant marine administration on the horizon. Too many fingers in a profitable, if shrinking, pie.