By ART CHANCE
Anyone who has read or watched Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt For Red October” knows that the U.S. Navy knew of the catastrophic failure of the “Titan’s” hull if not at the time it happened, as soon as the computers reviewed the sound recordings, say a few hours later. Despite the spin from the Biden-media, there was nothing secret.
The United States has had a line of sonobuoys and hydrophones from Murmansk to New York since the early days of the Cold War. If it happens in the North Atlantic, an American submarine or listening station knows about it.
Suffice it to say that I don’t believe anything the Biden Regime says about anything so it wouldn’t surprise me if they ordered the Coast Guard and Navy to string the “Search for Titan” drama out just to cover for Hunter Biden’s bad news, but I don’t know for sure and that is giving them more credit for smart than I like to give them. Maybe it was some sort of sham; maybe they’re just that stupid.
I want to talk about boats not politics. Those of us who’ve been around boats and boating know the term “Six Pack License.” A “Six Pack” isn’t a license; it is a description of a type of boat technically called an “uninspected passenger vessel.”
All those pretty and not-so-pretty things you see bobbing around out there on a holiday weekend are mostly “uninspected passenger vessels.” Almost all the consumer boats are uninspected passenger vessels, meaning they are not built under Coast Guard supervision nor to Coast Guard specifications except in regard to a limited number of safety requirements.
The ”Six Pack” comes from the fact that if you’re a licensed professional mariner, no matter what your rating from 25 ton to unlimited ocean, you cannot take more than six passengers for hire in an uninspected passenger vessel.
If the USCG wants to mess with you about it, they can. If you’re licensed and you take a party out and some of them bring some nice wine to express their appreciation, you can’t legally take it if you have more than six aboard. You sure as hell can’t charge a quarter million bucks to ride an uninspected submersible if you have more than six paying passengers on it.
So, let’s address “The Hunt for Titan.” It is clear that the owner did everything in his power to avoid Coast Guard supervision and inspection of his vessel. He built an “uninspected passenger vessel” to go 14K meters to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. He made it down and back a few times.
I had a mid-range uninspected passenger vessel for several years. From what I could see, mine was much better equipped than the “Titan.” It was strictly a good-weather boat. It was pretty safe up until the seas got into the six-foot range, but then uncomfortable and at times downright scary. I could have sold you a ticket to cross the Gulf of Alaska or even run to Kodiak or the Aleutian Chain, and we might have made it safely; a good weather eye and good luck goes a long way, but if anything at all had gone wrong, we were going to die. The guys on the “Titan” had it better; as the French guy said, if anything goes wrong, you’re dead before you know anything is wrong. On the surface, it takes a while to die from cold water and exposure. A Mustang life suit really just helps them find the body.
People will be screaming for retribution, but I think he gamed the system. He built the deep-sea submersible version of a Bayliner Capri, a Sunday afternoon play boat, and sold tickets to take it two miles down in the North Atlantic. I think he found and used a loophole in the USCG regulations and any claim against him would have to be some sort of tort/negligence claim.
At the time they wrote the regulations, the USCG probably wasn’t thinking that some fool would try to take a beer keg or a propane tank to the bottom of the ocean as a passenger vessel. The Pakistani guy and his son probably didn’t know enough to know better, but a couple of the others were experienced mariners and explorers who should have known better than to get inside that thing. What were they thinking?
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.
