Alcohol at Sea : For Sailors, a New Wave of Limits

Celebrated in song and literature from Shakespeare to Mark Twain, the drunken sailor is a figure as venerable as seafaring itself.

In “Moby Dick,” Herman Melville inserted a victuals list for a whaling voyage that included “550 ankers of Geneva (gin) and 10,800 barrels of beer” and marveled that harpooners “so fuddled” with drink could “stand up in a boat’s head and take good aim of flying whales . . . and hit them, too.”

But drink and the sea are not mixing as well for modern sailors. The captain of the Exxon Valdez was legally drunk as his ship hit an Alaskan reef, creating the largest oil spill in U.S. history. More recently, the Coast Guard boarded a freighter outside Long Beach and removed the captain. The first mate reported he was drunk at the helm and almost hit the harbor breakwater.

New Regulations

Even before such events, the Coast Guard began moving to implement tough new regulations against intoxication on commercial vessels, arguing that the dangers inherent in the operations of today’s super tankers and huge freighters demand it. The regulations include a tightened blood-alcohol standard of drunkenness and a program of pre-employment and random blood tests.

The maritime industry is resisting some aspects of the Coast Guard program, particularly the testing regimen, arguing that the overwhelming evidence is that most modern mariners are skilled professionals, successfully navigating huge tonnage every day.

“This industry doesn’t have any more problems than any other heavy industry concerning alcoholism,” said Al Zeidel, assistant director of training for the National Maritime Union.

The Coast Guard concedes the point. “The merchant marines of the world are governed by international standards that are quite high. Their performance right now is probably the highest that it has ever been, especially the officers,” said Rear Adm. William Kime, commander of the Coast Guard’s 11th District, which covers the waters off California.

But there is no denying that the tradition of drink and seafaring remains a strong one. The isolated shipboard communities with their enforced companionship, hierarchical social structure dictated by the requirements of command and long hours of repetitive tasks drive some to drink on board and many to binge once they get ashore.

The U.S. Navy used to issue rations of grog--watered rum--to seamen until 1862. The British Royal Navy kept up the practice until July 31, 1970.

“Going to sea is a hard life and seamen have always been interested in something to dull the pain. Wine, women and song have been the traditional remedies,” said James K. Boak IV, a licensed captain who lives in Baltimore.

Drinking was an accepted part of life at sea for generations because “out in the middle of the ocean, as long as the mate-on-watch has at least half his wits about him, there is no real danger,” said Boak.

The Coast Guard argues that today’s high-tech ships, with their machinery and computers, and the crowded shipping lanes, demand a new vigilance. In such circumstances, the sea can be unforgiving to a drunken captain:

--Egidio Auletta, commanding his Mississippi River ferry and drinking from a half-pint bottle of Seagrams VO, ran into an oil tanker near New Orleans in 1976. The collision killed him and 77 others, mostly early-morning commuters, in the most lethal U.S. maritime disaster that has been directly tied to alcohol.

--The crabbing vessel Alexander ran aground in heavy fog as it was leaving the Portland, Me., harbor on June 27, 1987. The six-member crew was saved only after a difficult rescue “in zero visibility with 6- to 8-foot seas pounding the fishing vessel against the rocks on a flood tide,” according to a Coast Guard report. Skipper Frank Purrington had been drinking before he set off, the report said.

--Manuel Reyes Mercado, skipper of the Jennie I, a passenger vessel with a capacity of 393, was relieved of command on a trip from St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands to Puerto Rico on April 13, 1986. Mercado, who had been issued a letter of warning the year before for operating the vessel while intoxicated, had been drinking before the trip and steered the ship on a collision course with the Chinchorro Light, until an unlicensed mate took the helm, the Coast Guard reported.

--Scott R. Erickson, captain of the ferry Carol Jean, grounded his ship in Point Judith Pond off Connecticut in 1987. David N. Washburn, the engineer, told the Coast Guard that he ran up to the bridge and “noticed that Scott was pretty drunk.” After the engineer radioed the Coast Guard for help, Erickson jumped overboard. “I went to look over the side and saw him swimming towards one of the Coast Guard boats,” Washburn said. The Coast Guard picked him up.

--In what may be the worst recorded accident related to drinking, more than 100 were killed in July, 1983, when the river boat Alexander Suvorov rammed a railway bridge near Ulyanovsk in the Soviet Union and the entire top deck was ripped off, including a cinema where most of the dead had been watching a movie. The crew, which Soviet reports said had been drinking, was killed as well.

Offshore Rigs

In arguing for its mandatory drug and alcohol testing program, the Coast Guard pointed to the programs begun by management of the offshore oil drilling rigs and supply ships earlier in the decade that confirmed suspicions that educational and voluntary rehabilitation programs were not working.

In 1985, Garber Bros. Inc. of Morgan City, La., which operates supply vessels and barges, began testing employees before they were hired, randomly during employment and also if management suspected a drug problem.

“We have witnessed a confirmatory rate of 23% in 1985 down to 3% in 1987,” said Personnel Manager Robert A. Falgout. Zapata Gulf Marine Corp. of Harvey, La., which performs pre-employment testing, found 24% tested positive for drugs in 1985 when its program started and 12% in 1988.

The Coast Guard began its campaign by introducing a tough new definition of alcohol intoxication last year, setting a blood alcohol concentration of .04% as the threshold, 2 1/2 times stricter than the standard for driving a car in many states. Kime said impairment in judgment begins at the lower level and the potential for disaster with huge ships justifies a tougher standard.

The Coast Guard mandatory testing program is scheduled to phase in over 18 months, beginning in June, and includes pre-employment testing, random testing, and post-accident testing.

The first step is pre-employment testing for employers of 50 or more workers. Eventually, the Coast Guard wants equipment, possibly including Breathalyzers, to be on board ships for use in the testing program.

A range of penalties for those who fail the tests includes suspension of seamen’s certificates pending successful completion of drug or alcohol rehabilitation.

With some exceptions, most of the maritime community oppose the tests.

The Seafarers International Union and the Transportation Institute jointly filed suit against the Coast Guard Nov. 29, alleging that the tests would violate Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. A hearing is set for April 24 in federal district court in Washington.

Others in the industry argue that random searches at sea are difficult to administer, will place the economically beleaguered American merchant marine industry at a disadvantage with foreign flag vessels, and that in any event the industry is policing itself.

Many shipping companies, including the tankers that carry oil from Valdez, prohibit drinking on board ship. And the Seafarers International Union and the National Maritime Union both run rehabilitation programs and support groups for seamen trying to avoid alcohol and substance abuse.

“Maritime alcohol abuse has been with us literally forever,” said Martin C. Seham, general counsel for the American Maritime Assn.

“It began with Father Noah, who had too much of the grape, slipped and fell off the gangplank on Mt. Ararat. Presumably his Superior Officer had not administered an adequate screening test before letting Noah assume command of the Ark. Notwithstanding this early failure, the industry has, from sailing days to date, met and dealt with the problem.”

A number of maritime observers say testing is likely to put a stress on the delicate balances of shipboard life.

“Seamen are a clannish lot, xenophobic even, when it comes to outsiders interfering with their normal lives,” said R. O. Patterson, a retired rear admiral in the Naval Reserve. “They might grudgingly permit the ‘Old Man’ to conduct limited drug/alcohol examinations . . . but a program of several tests would surely result in rapid cover-ups by men working in union.”

Robert Mattsson, senior vice president of operations for New York City’s Circle Line tour boats, agreed that cover-ups would become common. “Crews, because they have only themselves to depend on for long periods of time in an often-hostile environment become very protective of each other,” he said.

Because the typically used mind-altering drugs stay in the blood longer than alcohol, which is eliminated within hours, blood tests generally find more drug abuse than alcohol intoxication. Kime conceded that the new Coast Guard regulation will be more effective against drug abuse than excessive drinking.

Unequal Treatment

The potential for unequal treatment has angered Theodore Sadler, a seaman who lives in Lakewood. “I’ve worked a lot of ships with a lot of drunks and I never saw any get fired. Is the functioning alcoholic somehow left out of this dragnet because alcohol is legal?” he demanded. “Quite a bit of contradiction here.”

Whether the Coast Guard regulations are overturned or not, the union rehabilitation programs are gearing up for more applications to join treatment courses.

Carmine Guastello, a recovering alcoholic and director of the National Maritime Union’s alcohol rehabilitation program, has helped 1,200 seamen in the last 13 years.

“If a winch breaks down, what do we do?” asks Guastello. “We try to repair it or take it back to the shop for repairs and then bring it back to the ship. Why not repair the human being?”