And your argument is predicated upon the assumption that the master of the Crystal is lying and didn’t try any of that. Unless you know something that the rest of us don’t, you can’t know the level of honesty of the Crystal’s master. My personal experience with the Navy is that when they drop the ball they have a habit of doing so in a spectacular fashion. Regardless, the Japanese Coast Guard very likely has a recording of the VDR and sooner or later we’ll know more. As for this forum giving the Captain and crew of the Crystal a pass? I’d recommend doing a bit more reading. You’ll find that this just isn’t true. The collective experience of this forum’s members do seem to indicate a collective failure on the part of the Navy when it comes to training their seamen how to actually sail around other vessels.
And you really think that correcting your usage of marine vs mariner was intended to further the discussion? You read into things too much.