Doing the right thing out at sea can be a hard choice- A mariner’s tale. Pt. 2

I took the floor at that meeting and spoke my piece. Spoke from the heart. I’m usually not the sort who does this in a meeting; I just want to do the best job I can on my tour without drawing any unnecessary attention to myself. But I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was fired up. I looked the captain, chief mate, and chief engineer each square in the eye. I told them the condition of the ship was inexcusable and that they each were accountable. That the ship was a floating death trap and none of them were willing to do anything about it. I couldn’t believe these words were actually coming out of my mouth but I couldn’t stop the flow. After a quarter century of going to sea, I was no longer just willing to go quietly in the night.

The whole crew just looked at me. Well, some stared down at the deck. No one challenged anything I said. Most of them agreed with me in spirit, I’m sure. However, the sense I got coming out of that meeting was that my words would just end up fading into the bulkhead and nothing would ever change. God forbid what I said was all in vain and the deplorable conditions end up costing lives.

A couple of months later back home, that company called me and asked me if I was ready to go back to work on the vessel. Though I needed to get back to work to pay my bills, and even though shipping is slow these days, no way was I headed back to that ship. I told the voice on the other end of the phone the exact reasons why I would not go back on that ship. He was astonished; I don’t think he’d ever heard that kind of honesty before. He asked me if I minded if he put me on a speaker phone with his boss and a couple of other management types in the office and repeat what I’d just said. In other words, a surprise conference call would be sprung on me. I told him, and this is a direct quote, “I’ll say these words in front of anyone in the office, with the Coast Guard, or in a court room.”

In the back of my mind I knew that taking a stand could have repercussions on my ability to find gainful employment. The U.S. merchant marine isn’t exactly a hot bed of jobs and it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that this particular company could blackball me from their fleet for being an ingrate. I also only have a few years to go before I pension out so it’s important to get the remaining time in. However, did I want my legacy to be that of just another sailor who didn’t speak out because it was the easy thing to do?

The story of Bob Cusick came to my mind. He was the chief mate aboard the S.S. Marine Electric that sank off the East Coast in the early 80s. Before its final voyage, Cusick did not want to make the trip because he knew how unseaworthy the ship was. Even though he reported numerous deficiencies, the authorities did nothing about them and it sank in a storm. Only Cusick and two other crewmembers survived. I can only hope that the ship that I was on does not suffer the same fate.

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