The Watch Nobody Kept

Early one morning, a fire broke out aboard a 75-foot recreational diving boat. Thirty-three passengers and one crew member were asleep below deck; the captain and four other crew members were on the main deck. Everyone below deck died from smoke inhalation. Prosecutors alleged that the captain never assigned anyone to the roving night patrol that federal regulations required to detect fires, never trained his crew to respond to a fire, and, once the fire was discovered, called the Coast Guard but never used the public address system to warn the people below or tell them how to reach the emergency hatch, before ordering the crew to abandon ship and jumping overboard. The captain argued that the law required gross negligence, not ordinary negligence, and that the jury had been wrongly instructed.