As the winter holidays near, we feel a change in the air. The days are shorter and the nights are colder. Change is part of life, sometimes welcome… sometimes not. We see changes over time in the maritime community. From a cultural standpoint, we see boaters dressed in blazers and ties preparing to land Elco cruisers at gas docks in old seamanship education books… nautical attire which seems dated by today’s norms.
From a design standpoint, we see change in the form of racing sailboats no longer needing to look like classic one-design Dragons or Shields with their graceful overhang and delicate lines. Just look at the beasts with straight plumb bows and composite sails that scream down wavetops at 20-plus knots in Southern Ocean races, easily blowing the doors off many powerboats in such sea conditions.
From a legal standpoint, change is evident in many ways. In 2025 it became law for vessel operators in New York State to complete mandatory boating safety instruction. Seasoned boaters might yawn at the idea of being schooled about PFDs and passenger capacity plates. But the benefits of such programs show proof in boating safety statistics.
Another legal change in recent years goes to passenger vessel safety, the changes coming on the heels of the tragic 2019 fire aboard the dive boat Conception. These changes involve revisions to maritime limitation law. In a nutshell, limitation law basically enables a vessel owner to cap losses at the post-accident value of their vessel, provided they did not have control over the factors that caused the accident (this is very oversimplified). The City of New York tried to invoke limitation law with the tragic 2003 crash of the Staten Island Ferry Andrew Barberi, and it was not successful, in part because the NTSB’s findings.
Under the revisions to limitation law, the Small Passenger Vessel Act (SPVA) now excludes some small passenger vessels from invoking this protection. Under the SPVA, a small passenger vessel is one carrying no more than 49 passengers on an overnight domestic voyage and not more than 150 on an overnight domestic voyage.
Interestingly, some legal changes are spurred by technology. Earlier this year, the Coast Guard sought comments from mariners on proposals to remove about 350 aids to navigation between New Jersey and Maine. This is in part tied to digital chart technologies rendering nuns and cans obsolete. While some argue this point, it may be already be “old news,” after we learn that the 160,000-ton container ship Ever Max covered over 5,000 miles of the Pacific Ocean in an experiment this past summer to test an autonomous system that didn’t need inputs from crew.
That’s an interesting change there in terms of its legal implications. Autonomous self-driving cars can be forced to make ethical decisions between hitting a tree and protecting pedestrians… or hitting a pedestrian and protecting occupants. What kind of ethical and legal questions would be raised by a crewless vessel?
Other changes occurred in Florida, with new boating accident laws. Florida’s new law (HB 289), sets a minimum prison sentence of four years for a Boating Under the Influence (BUI) manslaughter conviction. It also increases penalties for leaving the scene of a boating accident without rendering aid and properly reporting it to authorities. This covers accidents that result in death, injuries, or property damage. The law also makes it a misdemeanor to provide false statements to authorities in the aftermath of a crash.
Legal changes are often a matter of cause and effect. If we look at RMS Titanic, the rules of the Board of Trade that allowed so few lifeboats could seem criminal today. But the feeble lifeboat inventory was in part attributed to philosophies of the early twentieth century, where it was believed that lifeboats would serve mainly as a shuttle between a stricken ship and a rescuing ship. That one should have been called out, even before 1912. This was but one of the changes to occur, either technically, in the way of watertight bulkheads extending higher up on sisterships Olympic and Britannic, or legally, in subsequent safety regulations.
We hope you and your families stay safe and warm this winter, and that if changes come your way, they are ones you wished for. As always, please keep our local businesses in mind. Wishing all of you the best for a bright and wonderful Holiday Season! Tim, Erol
Tim is a NY-based maritime attorney and has taught law at SUNY Maritime College. Erol is a graduate of CUNY School of Law and Farmingdale State College.