Captain or boat owner at fault?

Lawyers trade blame for ’19 scuba dive boat fire that killed 34

LOS ANGELES — Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that the captain of a scuba dive boat should be held responsible for the deaths of 34 people killed in a fire aboard the vessel in 2019, while the captain’s defense attorneys said the boat’s owner is to blame in the deadliest maritime disaster in recent U.S. history.

The conflicting accounts were presented Wednesday during opening statements in the Los Angeles trial of Jerry Boylan, who is charged with one count of misconduct or neglect of a ship officer, a pre-civil War statute colloquially known as “seaman’s manslaughter.” Boylan faces 10 years behind bars if convicted.

The 70-year-old has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. Boylan sat silently in the courtroom as family members filling three rows in the gallery heard about their loved ones’ last moments alive. Boylan and four crew members survived the Sept. 2, 2019, inferno aboard the Conception, while 33 passengers and a deckhand perished.

The fire spurred changes to maritime regulations, congressional reform and civil lawsuits.

The boat was anchored off the Channel Islands, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day excursion, sinking less than 100 feet from shore.

Throughout the excursion, Boylan failed to post the required roving night watchman and never properly trained his crew in firefighting, prosecutor Matthew O’brien said.

The captain was “the master” of the vessel, O’brien said, and the safety of those aboard was his responsibility.

Boylan, after making a “mayday” call to the Coast Guard, was the first one to jump overboard, while 34 people were trapped in a bunkroom below deck by smoke and flames, the prosecutor said.

“The 34 people who were killed didn’t have a chance to jump overboard,” O’brien told the jury. “They were waiting to be rescued. But nobody rescued them.”

Boylan’s federal public defender, Georgina Wakefield, said that during the fire Boylan was thwarted by 15foot flames consuming the Conception, making it impossible to reach those trapped below.

She blamed the boat’s owner, Glen Fritzler, who had designed the Conception and captained the vessel for more than four decades.

Fritzler and his wife, Dana Fritzler, own Truth Aquatics Inc., the company that operated the Conception. Wakefield argued that Glen Fritzler was responsible for failing to train the crew in firefighting or other safety measures and creating an environment where no captain who worked for him posted a roving watch.

Fritzler’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.