If lookouts were not posted or the radar was not properly manned, the commander is ultimately responsible.
Heads will proverbially roll on this one, and his will absolutely be one of the first.
And we do know he will lose his command and never get another one, whether he's shown to have culpability for his crews failures or not. It's the navy way.
Odd, because when I go back to the OP, I don't see any indication that suggests he thinks the captain made an active decision to be reckless.
Maybe they edited after you replied?
Or is it the quotes around "accident" in this sentence that lead you to interpret their comments this way?
There is absolutely no reason a modern warship should have an "accident" like this.
If so, I read this differently. In my view, an accident is something that occurs due to unexpected changes in a situation. For example, if a car crash occurred because a deer jumped across the road and lead a vehicle to swerve, I'd use the word "accident".
But in cases of negligence, I find the word "accident" makes it far too easy to blame the situation rather than the people. In this case, in my view these two ships colliding was no "accident" in that there must have been clear, conscious human decisions that lead to the event, even if those decisions were simply "I'm going to have a nap now (and thus be negligent in my duties)".
Incidentally, I think we're far too willing to refer to car crashes as "accidents", and for this same reason.
Don't get me wrong, the CO is still "accountable" here, but while the buck may stop with him, there is going to be plenty of room for blame by the time this is all settled out. I don't care who the CO is, there's no excuse for a Navy watchteam on a modern destroyer to miss on oncoming container ship so badly.
That's the proper analogy.
And comparing a ship's captain to a babysitter? When a babysitter comes to my house I expect them to be attentive for 4 hours and then to go home. I don't expect captains to never sleep during long voyages. There is a whole process around allowing the captain to sleep, and waking them for any possible problem, which obviously didn't occur her.
But by all means some posters can compare his job to babysitting.
So yes, provision has to be made for a CO to sleep at some point. And the Navy accordingly has provisions for this -- provisions which failed here. The CO will be held accountable for maintaining -- or not -- an environment conducive to safe navigation, but in any event the blame will not attach solely to the CO here.
In USN, the captain is ultimately responsible for everything that happens to the ship and on the ship. I admire this trait in USN.
1) I really do feel bad for the poor captain as this is most likely not his fault directly but someone else's.
You will probably see one of these on the final report for placing the blame on the captain:
- Not keeping crew trained/motivated enough to be alert to avoid the accident.
- Not giving clear instruction to the crew to wake him up when another ship is near by.
- Having a hostile environment where the subordinates avoid waking him up or dealing with him directly.
- Not keeping equipment in proper order
I'm not saying any of it may be true or not, but usually that seems to be the common thread.
2) Check the case of 2009 USS Port Royal grounding. A USN missile cruiser grounded near Honolulu Airport. Airline Passengers coming in for landing at Honolulu Airport could see the grounded ship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_USS_Port_Royal_grounding
The captain was relived of his duty within days. He didn't even get to stay long enough to command recovery effort of the ship.
The final report states following as the reasons of the grounding.
combination of a misread navigation system, a sleep-deprived commanding officer, broken equipment, and an inexperienced and dysfunctional bridge team.
The ship had just finished a major overhaul and they were busy testing the system, resulting in a captain with not enough sleep.
The direct reason for actual grounding?
Military contractors (engineer/technician) had flown into Hawaii to work on the ship during the overhaul and were on the ship. They were on the ship during the testing out in the sea which lasted longer than planned that day. And the contractors really really wanted to get back to their hotel that evening to play a round of golf the next day before returning to US mainland. To allow the military contractors to leave the ship on the small crafts that evening safely, someone ordered the USN cruiser move closer to the port. And it was during this movement, the cruiser grounded. This is not in the wiki but I remember reading about this in the local newspaper. Because some dudes wanted to play golf before leaving Hawaii, they ended up being one of the direct causes of causing multi million dollar damage to a USN cruiser.
3) Grounding a USN ship usually gets the captain fired, almost 100% of the time, like within days of it happening. Considering bureaucratic delays usually involved in an institution like USN, disciplining captain for accidental damage of a ship is lightening fast.
HOWEVER, Admiral Nimitz did ground a destroyer when he was a young captain sometime in 1920s. He famously went to sleep quite peacefully on the deck of the ship that night because he knew there was nothing that could be done that night. Ultimately, he was not blamed for the grounding because the chart he was following was later proven to be faulty. He went on to lead the USN brilliantly in defeating the Japanese Navy in WW2. Considering how revered Admiral Nimitz is by USN, it's quite an exception.
That's such a bullshit thing to say. Obviously the civilian dudes didn't asked the ship crew to run aground. And even if they would have with those exact words, it's the job of the person in charge of the vessel to say no. Maybe one can say such things when there is an adverse power dynamics (such as it were with the Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash in 2010), but I don't think that would apply in this case.
And the USS Port Royal got close to the shore ONLY because they wanted to let those contractors return to their hotel.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29065902/ns/us_news-military/t/nav...
The article doesn't say anything about contractors wanting to play golf but I"m telling you I read it in the local press.
And yes, the captain simply could've have said no and told the contractors to stuff it. But he didn't for whatever reason.
Edit: The captain is responsible for his crews performance and the navy way means he'll never be given command again, regardless of the results of the investigation.
But my response was to someone who apparently thought the captain was gunning the engine while playing chicken with the cargo vessel. For one specific point, the destroyer wasn't on collision course, the cargo vessel was.