Crew Tells Tale of Alleged Cruelty at Sea : Courts: Four seek damages in an incident the captain has called mutiny.

Working on a fishing boat thousands of miles from shore, Todd Schotanus was increasingly troubled. The captain seemed less and less rational, he thought, and there was nowhere to run.

First, Bruce Mounier cursed at his new crew members for not working hard enough, with a pistol ominously planted in his belt, said Schotanus. Then, he recalled, Mounier showed off a photograph from an earlier excursion on the Magic Dragon: a crew member hogtied on the deck.

In the end, it was Schotanus himself and another itinerant crew member who were handcuffed to the ship’s rail and denied rations for nearly 30 hours after Mounier became obsessed with a missing candy bar and accused them of its theft, according to a federal lawsuit seeking more than $20 million in damages.

“To be on a boat hundreds of miles from shore . . . You’re trapped, that’s your world. You’re helpless,” said Schotanus, a 26-year-old North Hollywood resident who joined the crew on a lark and is one of four former crew members now suing the captain.

Two more hired hands--18-year-olds who similarly sought adventure and now are plaintiffs in the suit--allege they were held captive in a small, overheated cabin and starved.

Their tale of terror on the high seas has prompted a federal investigation based on the rarely invoked, 160-year-old Cruelty to Seamen Statute. The target is Mounier, who told the U.S. Coast Guard that he’s had to get rough with unruly crews six other times.

No criminal charges have been filed so far, and Mounier’s attorney says the case stems not from an abusive captain but a rebellious crew that refused to work and generally wasn’t up to snuff. Mounier himself was fishing in the Hawaiian Islands and was unavailable for comment.

“They’re calling this case ‘The Caine Mutiny,’ ” said lawyer Carleton Russell, referring to the film classic in which Humphrey Bogart plays the paranoid and abusive Capt. Queeg. “But I have a new title for it: just ‘The Mutiny.’ ”

Word of the incident has rippled up and down the coast in sailing ports.

“It was just so outrageous that I had to laugh,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of a Sausalito-based fishermen’s organization. “This is like something out of the last century, if not the century before that or Roman times. The only thing he didn’t have them doing was rowing.”

It all started in May, 1994, when Schotanus, an amateur sailor who had never been on an extended sea voyage, drove down to San Pedro to look for a job as a seaman. He had previously worked as an oil technician and handyman, and now wanted to try something different.

People at the docks directed him to Bruce Mounier and the 100-foot Magic Dragon.

Mounier, 54, is well-known in San Pedro, if known in different ways. “You talk to 50 different people about him, you’re going to get 50 different opinions,” said one friend who works on the berth where the Magic Dragon used to dock and who asked not to be named.

A renowned scuba diver and fisherman, Mounier regales listeners with tales of his exploits, proudly displaying photographs of his biggest catches, including a sea turtle “as big as a Volkswagen,” friends say.

Born in Florida, he’s fished throughout the world, published his own photos of spiny lobster catches in National Geographic and broken new ground in fishing techniques, according to friends.

“He’s incredible,” said one admirer in San Pedro, who asked that he not be named. “If there was a huge storm, and boats were trying to make it back--he’d be the one who made it in.”

But since he moved to California in the early 1990s, Mounier has had problems with recalcitrant crews, said John Henderson, an Orlando, Fla., resident and former fishing hand who stays in touch with the captain.

“I admit, every time I’ve heard (about an incident), I say, ‘Damn, another one,’ ” said Henderson, 35, who maintained that Mounier has gotten along well with thousands of fishermen.

“I don’t know if it’s the people out there,” Henderson added, “but he’s had more problems out there than he had in 30 years of fishing. It’s unbelievable.”

Late last year, Mounier reported another mutiny to the Coast Guard, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Mary Andrues, who is handling the investigation into the incident involving Schotanus. In the other alleged mutiny, a shot was fired to quell the disturbance, said Andrues, who refused to elaborate.

One Magic Dragon alumnus, who sailed with Mounier between Schotanus’ voyage and the shooting incident, recalled the captain as so verbally abusive that he was not surprised by the lawsuit.

“All it took was just for somebody to speak up” for the captain to snap, said Todd Zersen, 27, an experienced seaman who contacted Schotanus’ lawyer after hearing of the suit. Like Schotanus, Zersen said the captain and his officers proudly displayed photographs of crew members bound to the deck.

Mounier’s exploits already landed him once in federal court, in Hawaii, according to officials there.

As part of a 13-count indictment, Mounier was charged in 1990 with harboring and concealing illegal immigrants and killing a migratory bird, a humpback whale and a killer whale, said Assistant U.S. Atty. John Peyton, who handled the Hawaii case.

Mounier pleaded guilty to lesser charges of concealing information about illegal immigrants and illegally transporting a dead killer whale. He was fined $5,000 and placed on three years probation--which ended 17 days before the Magic Dragon set sail with Schotanus aboard.

Schotanus said he wasn’t aware of Mounier’s reputation when he signed on.

Nor were co-plaintiffs Jason Garinger, Amy Roumagoux or Ryan Hallas, all Oregon residents who responded to classified ads in a local paper for positions on the Magic Dragon. Garinger, 24, had worked on boats since he was a teen-ager, but Roumagoux and Hallas were inexperienced.

Most boats the size of Mounier’s depend on hired hands who work from voyage to voyage. Often they are seasoned fishermen like Garinger, but sometimes they are thrill-seeking novices such as Schotanus, Hallas and Roumagoux.

The Magic Dragon began its scheduled 40-day, 4,000-mile journey May 16 with the four new crew members, Mounier, and Mounier’s first and second mates, James Alexander and Michael McGuire. The hired help was assigned to tend the ship’s 30 miles of fishing lines by baiting them and pulling in their catch, and general maintenance during a sometimes 16-hour workday.

The trip began routinely enough, Garinger said. Schotanus complained of seasickness early on, but although Mounier was loud and critical, there were no serious problems.

“I’ve worked on boats before, and the foremen, they yell and scream a lot,” Garinger said in an interview. “I just thought the captain was a hard-ass.”

But as the voyage dragged on, matters worsened, the crew members said in interviews. Several times, their suit contends, the captain and his mates denied them food. Around June 11, Schotanus said in an interview, he and Garinger said they would not work unless they were fed.

The captain was furious, crew members said, and told Schotanus he was not being fed because he was suspected of stealing a missing candy bar. Their suit contends that the captain confined all four crew members to one, 7-by-7-foot cabin; Russell, Mounier’s lawyer, said the new crew voluntarily went into the cabin.

Mounier told them they could get food and water if they came out one by one, Russell and the crew members all said. The crew members refused, saying they feared Mounier would jump them. Meanwhile, Russell said Mounier was afraid he and his two officers would be overwhelmed if he let all four out at once.

The lawsuit alleges that Mounier turned on the ship’s heater while the crew was in the room, and slowed the boat’s engines to delay their return to port. At midnight, June 17, Garinger opened the door and walked outside to get a drink of water, crew members said.

The ensuing confrontation between Garinger, Schotanus, Mounier and his officers led to the hired hands’ suffering numerous injuries, according to the suit.

In interviews, Garinger and Schotanus elaborated on their claims: First, Garinger was jumped by Mounier and his two mates when he left the cabin for water. Schotanus said when he ran out to help, he was hit, throttled and handcuffed by Mounier, who dragged him to the deck and cuffed him to the boat rail opposite Garinger.

All four crew members were threatened with death during the ordeal, and Schotanus and Garinger remained bound to the deck until the Magic Dragon reached San Pedro the morning of June 18, according to the lawsuit. For most of their alleged imprisonment, the lawsuit contends, Garinger and Schotanus were clad only in the underwear they had stripped down to, to cope with the cabin’s heat.

Both sides agree Mounier radioed ahead to tell the Coast Guard there was a mutiny on board. The Coast Guard met the boat, everyone on board gave statements and the four crew members were taken to a hospital for medical examination, the plaintiffs said.

Among his complaints about the crew, Mounier told the Coast Guard he had six similar situations in the eight years he’s owned the Magic Dragon, according to an official report of the incident. He also said that verbal abuse is enough to get some workers going, according to the report, while others “are motivated by being slapped around a little.”

His comments raised a red flag with the reporting Coast Guard officer, who wrote: “In my opinion, this type of behavior is completely unacceptable in any working environment, and especially on board a commercial vessel.”

The Coast Guard referred the case to the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Russell said Mounier acted to protect his ship and crew. He said the captain lost $10,000 because he had to come in early, and that the new crew members weren’t up to life at sea.

“In this case we have very inexperienced people trying to become fishermen,” Russell said. “It’s nice to sit at the kitchen table and speculate how nice it would be to get out on the open sea and get away from the rigors of life, but when you get out there, it’s not for the timid. The sea is a very unforgiving place. You can’t just call a cab.”

Indeed, it was the stark reality of being isolated at sea that inspired maritime law, based on the centuries-old philosophy that a captain must be the master of his ship and crew and responsible for their well-being, said Robert Jarvis, a maritime law expert from NOVA Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

So sacred is the interdependency of captain and crew that mutiny, or disobeying a captain’s orders, is a federal crime--possibly the only private profession in which it is illegal not to perform one’s job, Jarvis said.

Case law traditionally sides with the captain because of the rationale that the need for law and order on board generally supersedes the rights of crew members, he said. “If you have a mutineer on one ship,” Jarvis said, “you could have a mutineer on any ship.”

Yet even mutiny doesn’t justify abuse, according to Jarvis and Coast Guard spokesman Jack O’Dell.

“These laws say nothing more than that a master must be fair and humane to his crew, and the crew must have the best interests of the ship at heart,” Jarvis said.

Mounier’s alleged actions may have violated the cruelty to seamen statute, according to Andrues, who said she’s had to take a crash course in the finer points of maritime law. The statute, which Jarvis said dates back to 1835, states that any captain who “flogs, beats, wounds, or without justifiable cause imprisons any of the crew . . . or withholds suitable food and nourishment” faces five years in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Mutineers face an even stiffer punishment under federal law--up to 10 years in jail. Although Andrues declined to comment, sources close to the case said mutiny was not the focus of the federal investigation.

Neither law is invoked much nowadays. Jarvis said the last case he can recall going to trial was in 1988. Coast Guard officials said they consider mutinies to be rare occurrences.

But “many, many times, mutinies have been claimed where mutinies did not exist,” O’Dell said.

Mounier’s Florida friend, Henderson, said he believed Schotanus and his co-plaintiffs must have planned a mutiny in advance, and that the captain’s reaction was mild.

“If you’ve got anybody in a situation who’s trying to work hard and make a living,” Henderson said, “and you’ve got a crew that mutinies 3,000 miles from shore--now I don’t know what he did--but I think any normal person would lose their self-control a little bit.”