Excellent post. I won’t bore people with the foundation to support my comments, but what you say is exactly right.
When I was on ships in heavily traffic areas, EVERYONE, and I do mean everyone, was practically at GQ because no one wanted to collide with a merchant ship.
Moreover, among other things, we did not want to deal with investigators, have our liberty canceled, suffer embarrassment, be disciplined, demoted, and worst of all, have promotions quashed or delayed.
P.S. ++ re: Most officers treat sea duty as “ticket punch” to get the next promotion; i.e., many guys on a ship don’t love the sea and don’t want to be there. To them being at sea is a depressing time and they can’t wait to get back to land.
If there’s no “pride of ownership” being on a ship, that will eventually lead to accidents like this because the ship is crewed by men looking at the service mainly as a meal ticket.