Several Merchant Marine academies not providing cadets with survival suits

Critics say that Massachusetts Maritime Academy is not putting safety first for its cadets.

WBZ-TV in Boston reported that the school does not provide immersion suits for its 600 or so cadets when they take their training cruises aboard training ship TS Kennedy. The state maritime academies in New York and California likewise do not provide survival suits for their cadets.

However, the survival suits are provided for Mass Maritime faculty and crew.

According to 46 C.F.R. § 199.70, each cargo vessel operating above 32 degrees north latitude and south of 32 degrees south latitude must carry immersion suits for each person aboard. These suits—also known as “gumby” suits—are critical pieces of survival gear designed to save lives in the event of abandoning ship in cold water. They can extend life in the icy waters off of Massachusetts by up to a few hours.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” said Capt. Kevin O’Halloran, “These are one of the greatest things we’ve had on ships for survival, crew survival, over the last 30 years.”

Since the TS Kennedy is classified as a passenger vessel and not a cargo ship, cadets are not considered to be crewmembers and the school is not required to provide immersion suits for them.

Captain Thomas Bushy, Mass Maritime’s vice president of marine operations, justifies the policy not to provide these young men and women the same cold weather protection as faculty.

"There's going to be risk in almost everything we do in life," Bushy said. "I can't eliminate every single element of risk on this ship."

While stressing that the TS Kennedy complies with Coast Guard safety regulations, he remains dismissive of the need to carry the extra suits, adding “I don’t think that it adds that level, that increased level of safety. I don’t think it would be worth it.”

One wonders if Bushy’s use of the word “worth” is literal. With immersion suits going for between $400 and $600 apiece, according to a parent, perhaps the safety of the cadets is taking a back seat to the financial bottom line.

“It seems as if they’re saving money in a very foolish area,” one parent of a Mass Maritime cadet told WBZ-TV. “The idea that the crew and the officers would receive an immersion suit and the students would not, it just made them seem very second class, very expendable.”

Maine Maritime Academy's attitude toward cadet safety runs a reciprocal course from the attitudes of Mass, New York and California. Maine provides each cadet a survival suit on the annual training cruise.

“It’s our intention to provide the highest degree of safety for everybody on board, no matter whether they’re crew or cadets,” said a Maine Maritime spokesperson.

The Coast Guard requirement to carry survival suits came about in the aftermath of the SS Marine Electric sinking in February 1983 when 31 of the 34 crewmembers drowned in the frigid waters off the coast of Virginia.

Ironically, the Marine Electric was bound for Massachusetts when it sank and one of the seamen who died was a Mass Maritime Academy graduate. There is a memorial of him on the campus.

What would Massachusetts Maritime Academy tell the parents of a cadet who died without a survival suit in the icy North Atlantic waters?

Watch the WBZ-TV report here.