Word: tankerful
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Fired from Exxon in March in the wake of the Alaska disaster, Hazelwood, 42, is discovering how America treats those it deems to be villains. Newspapers and late-night comics had a field day with early press reports depicting a boozy Hazelwood leaving the bridge of the 987-ft. tanker and turning control over to an unqualified mate. SKIPPER WAS DRUNK, screamed the New York Post. "I was just trying to scrape some ice off the reef for my margarita," chortled comedian David Letterman, suggesting one of Hazelwood's "Top Ten Excuses" for the spill...
...Sharp cuts in the size of the tanker's crew had left the Valdez shorthanded, contributing to fatigue that may have helped cause the accident...
...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...
...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 a captain, in charge of the Exxon Philadelphia, a California-to-Alaska oil tanker. At 32 he was the youngest skipper in Exxon's fleet...
...Hazelwood did not win his battle with the bottle. Not long after he left the hospital, he was reinstated as the skipper of the Yorktown, an oil tanker that ran along the East Coast. Friends say that being closer to home helped him dry out. He regularly attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Huntington right up through 1988, but the sessions were often jammed with up to 90 alcoholics at a time. "The place was a social club," complains a former participant who remembers Hazelwood. "Only about ten or 15 people ever had a chance to talk." That seems to have...