Word: exxon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Although Exxon claims that it thoroughly monitored Hazelwood after he voluntarily sought treatment for alcoholism, the company repeatedly missed signs that he had continued drinking heavily. Moreover, Exxon supplied low- alcohol beer to tanker crewmen despite its policy of banning drinking aboard its ships...
...complains one of his lawyers, Thomas Russo. "They make people assume that alcohol played a role in the grounding, when it didn't." Drinking has been an important part of Hazelwood's life since his college days, but it did not impede a rapid rise to the top of Exxon's seafaring ranks. Hazelwood long seemed to believe that nothing bad could befall him. As the ironic motto printed next to his picture in his college yearbook put it, "It can't happen...
Known as Jeff until his Exxon days, Hazelwood seemed destined for a career at sea from an early age. One of four children of a veteran Pan Am pilot, he was born in Hawkinsville, Ga., in 1946, then moved with his family to a new | neighborhood in Huntington, Long Island, popular with young airline captains and their families. "If there were any problems, Jeff and I certainly felt isolated from them," says a boyhood chum, Martin Rowley. "Ours were perfect childhoods." Hazelwood's father was a stickler for discipline who permitted no drinking in his home...
Hazelwood was one of a select group of around 15 classmates chosen to work for Esso, as Exxon was then called. As a third mate, he earned $24,000, extraordinary pay for a young man 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...
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...