Already posted.
I don’t rememebr the incident from 2006, but new information just release makes it sound pretty scary. Just goes to show that nothing is “routine” when you’re in the military, even disembarking a pilot during sea-and-anchor detail.
A tribute to Senior Chief Thomas Higgins
http://www.military.com/HomePage/FullUnitText/0,11321,826956,00.html?home_page_id=826956&bg_color=%23062653&strPage=T
Define catastrophic. The San Juan hit an underground mountain at a full bell and was so banged up it had to sit and wait for a sea going tug to come get it. But no one died. What happened to those men is much more catastrophic than running into some rocks.
The sub commander was disciplined, but on reading the first part of this story, my first reaction was that the Harbor Pilot was probably most to blame.
Sure enough, the story mentions that: “The harbour pilot was also later dismissed, a decision upheld by the Civil Service Appeal Board.”
A Harbor Pilot is basically in charge of a ship until it is outside the harbor and he gets off of it. He gives the orders. It was evidently his decision to bring the sub to that point, in rather heavy seas, and to disembark in those dangerous conditions. That left the sub commander with the difficult choice of endangering his sub or endangering his crew on deck.
The pilot made the decision to disembark in a dangerous spot in dangerous conditions. Maybe he wanted to get back on shore for his dinner or a drink without further delay. So I think he is primarily responsible for those deaths.