Following the fatal fire on the dive boat Conception, the U.S. Coast Guard launched a nationwide inspection campaign last fall focused on safety and regulatory compliance aboard overnight passenger vessels.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has granted Eastern Shipbuilding Group (ESG) limited extraordinary relief due to Hurricane Michael, reducing the company’s construction contract for Coast Guard offshore patrol cutters (OPCs) to four vessels maximum.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will cease production of traditional paper nautical charts within five years, a move that reflects falling demand from commercial and recreational mariners.
A global survey showing that seafarers are generally more content with their work now than in the recent past is tempered by a new concern: fears that mariners may be on the hook for noncompliance as vessel operators adapt to the International Maritime Organization’s 2020 sulfur cap on fuel.
For 10 years leading up to 2017, 60 seafarer fatalities and 145 serious injuries occurred globally during lifeboat testing, according to a study by the ship management firm InterManager.
The U.S. Coast Guard has proposed a rate decrease of about 1 percent for the three Great Lakes pilots’ associations for 2020, the first reduction after a five-year stretch of double-digit increases.
At 2030, the articulated tug-barge Clyde S. VanEnkevort/Erie Trader entered the cold, dark St. Clair River, about six hours north of the ATB’s destination: a steel plant in Detroit, Mich.
Alcatraz Flyer was about to get underway from San Francisco’s Pier 33 when a passenger approached the wheelhouse. The young man, speaking with an Eastern European accent, wondered if anyone could swim from Alcatraz to shore.
Capt. Ray Parker signaled to the deck hand to lift the vehicle ramp. With that, and a toot on the horn, the nation’s first all-electric passenger/vehicle ferry slipped its mooring in Camden, Ala., and entered the Alabama River.
Battling 30-knot winds, 25-foot swells and complete darkness, Green Lake maneuvered alongside an overboard mariner from the burning vehicle carrier Sincerity Ace.
The U.S.-flagged vehicle carrier Green Lake saved seven people from the Panama-flagged Sincerity Ace after it caught fire in the North Pacific late on Dec. 30, 2018.
A deck hand preparing to return home for the holidays died after falling into Lake Michigan while her ship was docked at a northwest Indiana steel mill.
Federal investigators attributed a fire that left a towboat and nine barges adrift in the Mississippi River — and indirectly spurred the captain’s dismissal — to spraying lube oil that ignited on a hot engine surface.
Investigators say the master of a Japanese cruise ship was impaired by alcohol when the vessel struck mooring dolphins at a U.S. Navy fueling dock in Guam, causing nearly $1 million in damage.
Roughly 3,000 gallons of marine diesel spilled from an offshore supply vessel following a collision with an articulated tug-barge near Sabine Pass, Texas.
Mariner presumed dead after utility boat sinks near Port Aransas A mariner is missing and presumed dead after a small utility boat sank near Port Aransas, Texas, with two men aboard. The victim was working on Cristi when it sank…
In September, a fire on the dive boat Conception killed 34 people; a preliminary federal investigation found that the entire crew was asleep when the fire began.
Beeps, buzzes and flashing lights are an increasingly common soundtrack for life on the bridge of any modern vessel.
Just before graduation from California Maritime Academy, I had the chance to be in the audience for a debate on the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (Jones Act) held during an industry symposium at the school.
