No doubt. The Captain’s career will not survive the Court Martial, in fact it was gone before the ship made it back to port . But, as an infantry rifle company commander and as an infantry battalion commander I had to sleep and those who tried to tough it out for long periods made some big mistakes. I haven’t heard of any discussions of a sea cabin. All of the skippers of my era were always in their sea cabin when under way, their main cabin was used when at the quay.
Understood, centurion. I wonder if this ship crossed the Equator prior to this collision. If this accident occurred shortly after those celebrations, it could be another factor.
You’ll be surprised when you hear my story of a WestPac deployment on the USS Okinawa with a Marine Corps battalion out of Hawaii. I bunked in a cabin for 3 months on the the cruise over with 2 Marine Captains and 1 Navy Doctor.
One of those Marine Captains is our current Secretary of Defense — a highly dedicated and regular guy and I now have the pleasure of remembering a few interesting conversations we had.
We were both the same rank at the time. One of us rose to become a leader of the free world. The other guy is now posting comments on this forum.