Back in 1979 I worked as a Liberty Launch Engineman on a Med Sea Cruise. We anchored about a mile and a half out off Venice, Italy one morning and began running boats from ship to shore for Liberty Call. After Dusk Navy Regs required a Commissioned Officer be on board the boat if we were underway going to or from the ship to shore.
A Squadron Officer walked on board the boat with his map and his compass and proceed to set our course which was almost 90 degrees different than that of what we had gone all day. We were well experienced at night runs and in during our trips in and out had found landmarks, marker lights on buoys, etc which we used. He insisted he was right so off we went and in about 15 minutes I heard the screw come out of the water. We were in about 2 feet of water. I told the Coxun to stop the boat and put in in reverse at just above idle and we backed out. The Officer had no more orders for us that evening LOL.
BTW in a fog bank one night we were running a 50' boat back to ship and hit a fog bank right outside the sea wall. All of the sudden we saw massive lights and saw people inside the staterooms from a cruise liner that barely missed us. The ships Sonar Techs got us back to the ship finally but it took time for them to determine who was who.
The USS Guam LPH9 (now a corral reef) lost men aboard a launch on a med cruise.