Word: exxon
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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...
...Exxon refuses to discuss Hazelwood, including stories about his ship- handling feats. In 1985, for instance, Hazelwood was captain of the Exxon Chester, an asphalt carrier, as it headed from New York to South Carolina. Offshore of Atlantic City the ship ran into a freak storm. High winds snapped the ship's mast, and it toppled, along with the ship's radar and electronics gear. With 30-ft. waves and 50-knot winds overpowering the vessel, several sailors grabbed life jackets and prepared to abandon ship. But Hazelwood calmed the crew and rigged a makeshift antenna. After radioing shore...
...1980s, however, Hazelwood's drinking problem had become so obvious that seamen on other Exxon ships knew of it. "Ever since I had known of Joe, I heard he had alcohol problems," says James Shiminski, an Exxon chief mate until 1986. "He had a reputation for partying, ashore and on the ship." In 1984, while off duty, Hazelwood was arrested for drunken driving in Huntington, and later convicted. Police say he was leaving a parking lot of a tavern where he had been attending a bachelor party for his brother Joshua, when his van smashed into a car. Hazelwood left...