I chatted with a friend of mine who was once a commercial first mate. Based on her deep experience on large commercial vessels worldwide, she had some interesting thoughts on the Suez Evergreen incident and why we should not call the captain a fuckup

1) The “Suez Authority” is nothing. Suez has a pilot system but, they are notoriously awful; preferring to stand around smoking and drinking coffee while the captain does the work

2) For this reason, companies only allow their most experienced captains to ply the canal, especially on the mega ships

3) Many of the other ships held back due to high winds but, this vessel went ahead. Why would the captain make such a reckless decision?

It was a choice between risking his career and absolutely losing his career.It was more than likely the company’s decision to go ahead with the transit. His slightly too high speed was possibly due to the fact he’d lost time waiting. If he refused, he would have been fired.He did as he was ordered and he, not the executives who ordered him to proceed, will be held accountable.

He was a veteran captain whose career is now over because of an an impossible choice.This goes to show that we don’t know the whole story as well as we think we do. For myself, I now feel for the captain rather than think of him as an idiot.