Conception Captain Found Guilty of Manslaughter

[NDonahue]

California Boat Captain Convicted of Manslaughter in Fire That Killed 34

The 2019 fire near Santa Barbara killed all 33 passengers of the dive boat. On Monday, a federal jury found the captain guilty of “seaman’s manslaughter.”

www.nytimes.com

From NYT Article:

The captain of a dive boat that caught fire off the coast of Southern California in 2019, killing all 33 passengers and one of its six crew members, was found guilty by a federal jury on Monday on one count of an offense known as “seaman’s manslaughter.”
When the commercial scuba diving vessel, the Conception, caught fire in a harbor near Santa Cruz Island early on the morning of Sept. 2, 2019, all the passengers were sleeping below deck. Prosecutors say the captain, Jerry Nehl Boylan, successfully escaped, along with four members of the crew, without trying to help them.

Mr. Boylan failed to carry out his duties as a ship officer in part by “failing to perform any lifesaving or firefighting activities whatsoever at the time of the fire, even though he was uninjured,” the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a news release on Monday that announced the conviction.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for February, the release said. Mr. Boylan could face up to 10 years in prison.
Mr. Boylan had pleaded not guilty, and a public defender representing him, Georgina Wakefield, argued in court last month that the boat’s owner was to blame for the accident. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Monday.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in 2020 that the lack of a required night patrol aboard the boat, along with a lack of smoke detectors, had delayed the response to the fire and contributed to the high death toll.
The cause of the fire could not be determined, the agency said.

 

[Blackcrusader]

Only max ten years for all the people that were killed.

 

[happy-diver]

How about you don't leave your house for ten years

 

[Catito]

Only max ten years for all the people that were killed.

California boat fire victims: United by a love for ocean, taken in tragedy. These are their stories

The passengers of the Conception dive boat ended their second day in the waters off the California coast with a nighttime swim, exploring a lush, watery world populated with coral and kelp forests.

www.latimes.com

Very sad. Tragic.

 

[happy-diver]

Very unfortunate, just doin it just like everybody else was doin it and just plain ran out of luck

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

It should be 10 years per person killed.

 

[Hoyden]

He is 69. Maybe 10 years will be a life sentence.

 

[drrich2]

The reasoning in the article looks off to me. It reads like Boylan and crew did nothing to try to help the trapped people at the time, even though the fire was too far gone to do much. It's not until toward the end that the lack of a required roving night watch (here labeled required 'night patrol') is mentioned, and that was a key concern. Also alleged is a lack of smoke detectors - refresh my memory, were they saying the boat had none at all?

In other words, the impression I get from reading this article is that the main concern was captain and crew abandoning trapped people they could've helped to die in a fire.

My understanding from other threads on ScubaBoard was that the key concern was alleged negligence beforehand (particularly not having that roving night watch; there's also been discussion on whether a good smoking alarm system would've made the difference)), creating a situation where a fire had time to get out of control before it was detected.

The journalist quoted sources so I'm not blaming him/her. From discussion in the thread on the trial, I take it the accusation here focused on wrongdoing before the fire, not how captain and crew reacted once it was found.

 

[KevinNM]

The only guy on the thread with marine firefighting experience says that it was probably fightable, though possibly with gear they didn’t have. But nobody knew how to use the firefighting gear or even where it was. I’m not sure anyone knew how to start the fire pumps other than possibly the captain.

 

[boulderjohn]

Quick Summary of some of the key points.

• A roving night watch is required by regulations, and they never used one.
• The crew was not trained in firefighting or the use of the specific firefighting equipment on board, as is required by regulations. The report said that in the chaos of the fire, a crewman ran past hoses that could have been used several times but did not know about them.
• The captain supposedly did not wake up until flames were 15 feet high. That is when he made the mayday call and then jumped off the ship.
• The only way out of the bunk room for the passengers was through the fire. The supposed second emergency exit was really nonfunctional and led to the same room as the primary exit.
• A passenger's cell phone recovered after the fire had a video in which the passengers are in the bunk room getting dressed, talking about the fire, and trying to find a way out. A voice can he heard saying they were all going to die. The video was made 3 minutes after the captain's mayday call and exit of the ship.

EDIT: Corrected the time on the last bullet.