Word: captain
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...criminal charges pending against him in Alaska. A two-month TIME investigation of the accident has unveiled a wider web of accountability in which Exxon and the Coast Guard appear to share some of the blame for the worst oil disaster in U.S. history. As the Valdez's captain, Hazelwood will bear the ultimate responsibility for the spill. But whether he was drunk or sober, his actions were not the only cause of the accident. The fiasco resulted from a confluence of breakdowns, both individual and organizational. The major findings of TIME's investigation...
...criticism of Hazelwood's conduct, the Coast Guard maintains that his handling of the ship after it ran aground was exemplary. Not only did he help prevent the oil spill from being even worse, but his actions may have saved lives as well. By adjusting the engine power, the captain was able to keep the vessel stable and pressed firmly against the reef...
Laraway recalls that he, Hazelwood and several other cadets would each routinely down a case of beer on Saturdays at the Long Island home of cadet Saunders Jones, today a sea captain who remains Hazelwood's closest friend. By early evening the boys would turn up at local Huntington bars. By midnight, having rounded up as many as 50 other merrymakers, they would shift the party back to Jones' house, where the drinking would resume on Sundays...
...starting out in 1968. Hazelwood, who by then preferred to be called Joe, reported for duty on the Esso Florence in Wilmington, N.C. His seafaring instincts made an instant impression. "Joe had what we old-timers refer to as a seaman's eye," recalls Steve Brelsford, a retired Exxon captain and Hazelwood's first boss. "He had that sixth sense about seafaring that enables you to smell a storm on the horizon or watch the barometer and figure how to outmaneuver it." Because of such gifts, Hazelwood rose swiftly through the ranks. Only ten years after graduating, he became...
Even as Hazelwood's reputation as a boozer grew, so did his image as the best captain in Exxon's fleet. Exxon management, however, was increasingly unhappy with the talented young skipper, less for his drinking than because of his headstrong, independent manner. Like the old-time captains he modeled himself after, Hazelwood shunned paperwork, company politics and extensive contacts with the M.B.A. executives who were increasingly chipping away at the traditional authority of shipmasters. "Joe didn't have Exxon tattooed under his eyelids," says a high-ranking Exxon engineer. "He'd make his own judgments and act accordingly. That...