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A petty officer is staring at the radar every single minute, and he is plotting the courses and the Closest Point of Approach (CPA) of every contact he sees. In addition, there is a lookout with a headset in comms with the bridge posted on the bow, the stern, and each bridge wing (outside). It’s a friendly competition to see if the lookout can spot a small boat unseen on radar. Every young set of eyes wants to be the first to spot a contact, and does not want to hear, “Bow lookout, do you see that fishing boat a mile ahead?” The bow lookout wants to be telling the bridge, “I see something ahead, a small boy, do you have it on radar?”
Further: the CO of the ship has standing orders which are reiterated every night that he must be awoken if any contact has a CPA closer than a certain distance of a set number of miles. The distance might vary according to conditions, (traffic, fog, etc), but generally any projected CPA closer than a few miles, and the captain will be on the bridge. The CPA of three miles, for example, might be projected to occur a half hour in the future, but the captain will be brought to the bridge from his “at sea” cabin which is only a few steps away. And when in doubt: get the captain!
Now, looking at the six turns made by the ACX Crystal, it looks to me as if the person at the helm took the decision to make a U-turn and come back in pursuit of lining up a collision attack against the Fitzgerald. There is no innocent explanation for those six turns ending up in a ramming. There are some reports that the Crystal turned off its AIS radar transponder, radios, and running lights.

Wasn't the captain injured in his cabin? You've made a strong case for the ramming being intentional... which would be supported by the oddity of not reporting the incident for over an hour... but WHAT could possibly be the motive?

“Wasn’t the captain injured in his cabin?”

Travis, if this is true, then the Fitz crew (apparently) failed to follow protocol on a number of different levels.

Otherwise, what reasonable explanation has the Capt in his cabin at the time of impact (unless he went back to retrieve something...)?