Captain Jerry Boylan’s appeal of his conviction in the deaths of 34 souls aboard the Conception on September 2, 2019, was turned down on March 3 as a federal appeals court affirmed his four-year sentence. In their ruling, the three judges were explicit in describing Boylan’s negligence that led to the lethal fire aboard the ship that Labor Day Weekend.
The Conception was a charter boat owned by Truth Aquatics, working out of Santa Barbara Harbor since 1981. Boylan was a ship’s captain with more than three decades of experience, but his shipmates had crewed for between two years and just over a month. The 33 passengers were headed for the Channel Islands on a holiday dive trip, which for two of the family groups was also a birthday celebration. After a night dive with video equipment and underwater lights, the ship anchored off Santa Cruz Island overnight, the passengers and crew member Alexandra Kurtz bunking below decks, Boylan and four crew up in the wheelhouse. One hand who’d been working late, awakened to a noise in the middle of the night and saw the glow of fire.
“As his untrained crew scrambled around the vessel in vain to stop the fire, Boylan remained in the wheelhouse,” the opinion describes. “He managed to call the Coast Guard, but never used the public address system to warn the thirty-four people below deck about the fire or instruct them how to escape through the emergency hatch. He never passed the fire axe or extinguisher to the crew, nor made any personal effort to reach the crew and passengers below. Other than a ‘five-second little huddle up,’ Boylan never instructed his crew to use the fire suppression equipment on board. Instead, he ordered his crew to abandon ship, and jumped overboard.”
One of the most painful pieces of evidence presented during Boylan’s 2023 trial was a video found on a passenger’s cell phone. It was taken three minutes after Boylan had abandoned ship, showing the passengers awake below deck and talking about fire extinguishers.
Training the crew on fire safety and procedures is the captain’s responsibility, according to Coast Guard regulations. In noting the crew’s lack of training, the opinion states that the first crewmember to observe the fire ran past a firefighting station twice, and that a crewmember who’d swum back to the boat tried and failed to activate the fire hose.
The examination into the cause of the fast-moving fire by the National Transportation and Safety Board was inconclusive, but pointed to batteries charging on an inadequate electrical system, smoking, and plastic trash containers. The jury’s finding of Boylan’s criminal negligence centered on his failure to assign a crewmember to patrol the ship for dangers such as fire while passengers were in their bunks.
Quoting a seaman’s manslaughter case from 1908 on the responsibility of a ship’s captain, the appeal judges’ opinion reads: “Every day, vessel masters ‘have the lives of thousands of helpless human beings in their keeping, [and] should be held to the strictest accountability and required to exercise the highest degree of skill and care.'” From a 2020 case, the opinion states, “Congress affirmatively, unambiguously, and expressly criminalized the act of negligently causing a person’s death while operating a vessel.”
Boylan’s appeal questioned the jury instructions at trial, but the appeal judges determined that seaman’s manslaughter was for neligence, not gross negligence, and that the use of the word “misconduct” was harmless error given the “overwhelming” evidence of Boylan’s “reckless disregard for human life.”
Boylan, who is now 72 years old, had known several of the victims from previous dive trips. At his sentencing hearing in 2024, his public defender described him as “crippled with pain and guilt.” The judge sentenced him to four years in federal prison; the maximum penalty is 10 years.
The day after the ruling on March 3, Boylan asked for his appeal to be heard again before a larger panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which would consist of the Chief Judge and 10 others. His attorneys have until March 31 to file their petition. Boylan remains free on bail while the appeals process plays out.
