JANE writes:

I want to share with you my catch of the day while out surfing the net. I was reading about the economy and global shipping when I came upon a comment (buried in the comments section) referring to why the Exxon Valdez happened. It spiked my interest because my brother graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, New York along with the Chief Mate of the ship at the time of the accident. For those in and around the shipping business, there has never been an acceptable explanation for how this could have happened. You’ll appreciate what this poster has to say, in the sense that it reinforces what you have to say about women working where they shouldn’t be working.

Laura writes:

Of course this amounts to hearsay. There is no testimony from any named source or from someone who was known to be present. So we have to take it as rumor.

Still rumors are sometimes correct and there are many believable details here. The commenter’s final words are especially interesting:

Exxon Shipping Management in Texas was a bunch of young PC college guys who thought you could run a merchant tanker business by the same politically correct misconceptions about what equality really means in our society at large. That is that women should have access to every job and every title that is male–and even be encouraged to take those jobs. And, that it just wasn’t fair that officers have to be college graduates of a maritime school. Members of the crew were encouraged to take the officers jobs even if good qualified individuals from the maritime schools were avilable [sic] –and they were. Also Exxon was not a part of any shipping union. So no union could dictate to them who to hire. All of the crewing decisions were made by Exxon, so they have no one to blame but themselves for the way they ran the ships. It cost Exxon dearly. They got rid of all their ships and put them under Red River Shipping shortly after that. I don’t know if Red River Shipping still exist, but they chartered all their ships. This way they were not liable if something like this happened. It’s not a bad idea considering they apparently didn’t have people in the office who really knew the merchant shipping industry which is a unique industry. Or if they did have experienced people, then somewhere from up higher these people were being told to run the ships in the same manner that most CEO’s run companies ashore. U.S. companies have been indoctrinated by our government with “fairness” and opportunity for all.

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