The captain of a scuba dive boat lost in the deadliest maritime disaster in recent U.S. history was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison, far less than the 10-year term prosecutors and victims’ families had pushed for.
Jerry Nehl Boylan was the captain of the Conception when it caught fire and sank near Santa Cruz Island on Labor Day in 2019. In all, 33 passengers and one crew member died as a result, and the ensuing fallout prompted a number of changes to maritime regulations.
On Thursday, Noylan, 70, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge George H. Wu to four years in federal prison. He faced a maximum of 10 years.
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Noylan was found guilty in November 2023 on one count of misconduct or neglect by a ship’s officer—an offense colloquially known as “seaman’s manslaughter.”
The fatal fire aboard the 75-foot wood-and-fiberglass passenger vessel broke out in the early hours of the morning while it was anchored in Platt’s Harbor, approximately 22 miles southwest of Santa Cruz Island. The boat was carrying 33 passengers and six crew, including Boylan. The fire engulfed the boat while those on board were sleeping below deck. Just five crew members managed to escape and survive the blaze.
“The defendant’s cowardice and repeated failures caused the horrific deaths of 34 people,” said United States Attorney Martin Estrada in a statement to The Daily Beast. “The victims’ families will be forever devastated by this needless tragedy. While today’s sentence cannot fully heal their wounds, we hope that our efforts to hold this defendant criminally accountable brings some measure of healing to the families.”
Estrada appeared disappointed by the sentence. “Certainly, four years was not what we wanted. We wanted the 10 years. We thought the appropriate sentence was 10 years in this case,” Estrada said, according to CBS.
According to the Associated Press, family members of the victims had pleaded with the judge to institute the maximum sentence. The father of Alexandra Kurtz, the sole deckhand, brought a container of ashes with him while addressing Boylan and the court. “This is all I have of my daughter,” Robert Kurtz said.
“The fate of the victims on the Conception might have been different were it not for the negligence of the defendant,” said Mehtab Syed, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “I want to commend the collaborative effort by investigators and prosecutors that led to today’s sentence and hope that it delivers a measure of justice to the victims’ families as they continue to heal from this tragedy.”
Prosecutors said Boylan “committed a series of failures” that led to the disaster, including fleeing the ship instead of attempting to rescue his passengers. Other notable failures, they said, included failing to provide firefighting instructions or directions to crew members after the fire started; failing to use firefighting equipment, including a fire ax and fire extinguisher that were next to him in the wheelhouse, to fight the fire or attempt to rescue trapped passengers; failing to perform any lifesaving or firefighting activities whatsoever at the time of the fire, even though he was uninjured; failing to use the boat’s public address system to warn passengers and crew members about the fire; and becoming the first crew member to abandon ship even though 33 passengers and one crew member were still alive and trapped below deck in the vessel’s bunk room and in need of assistance to escape.
“There are no winners when lives are lost at sea, but there is justice in bringing those accountable to answer for their crimes. Today is an example of that,” said Coast Guard Investigative Service Director Jeremy Gauthier.
