(e) Yarmouth Castle: In 1964 the marine inspection office in New York removed the certificate of examination from this Panamanian vessel because the crew was not properly prepared for fire and boat drills. The vessel sailed without passengers. Subsequently, however, the certificate was returned to the vessel after proper drills were held. (f) The subject of conditions aboard foreign passenger vessels engaged in cruise services from New York and from Miami was reviewed as a routine matter by U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters in January 1965. The great majority of foreign passenger vessels engaged in cruise services which have Coast Guard certificates of examination operate from the Miami vicinity. The vessels which were engaged in this service during the winter of 1964-65 were the Yarmouth, Yarmouth Castle, Florida, Viking Princess (ex-Riviera Prima), Bahama Star, and the Ariadne. All of the above are under either Liberian or Panamanian flag. U.S. Coast Guard personnel in Miami advised that they had not received any complaints from passengers on these vessels involving matters of safety during the cruise season of 1964-65. In prior years, however, complaints had been received on some of these vessels but all of the items had been corrected to Coast Guard satisfaction; however, a series of complaints have recently been received concerning the lack of what passengers considered to be adequate hotel services on board these vessels. All of the above vessels meet the requirements of the particular convention (1929, 1948) which applies, and all rebuilding and refurbishing have been completed in accordance with the standards of the 1948 convention. These vessels operating in the Florida area all have watertight and fire screen doors and adequate firefighting equipment. Frequent fire and boat drills are held under Coast Guard supervision and the lifesaving equipment aboard these vessels is considered to comply with the appropriate convention. The only real hazards lie in the materials used in building and furnishing passenger and crew's quarters; material which is wood or other nonfireproof material is a definite fire hazard; however, complete rebuilding of the vessels would be required to render them essentially fireproof. Such a requirement is not imposed upon U.S. vessels which are presently subject to Coast Guard requirements when such vessels were built some years ago under lesser standards than exist today. Information has been requested from the marine inspection offices in New York and Miami concerning the questions which are stated in the first paragraph of this letter to cover any complaints which have not been received at Coast Guard Headquarters but which have been received locally. Replies will be furnished to the committee as soon as obtained. Sincerely yours, W. D. SHIELDS, Vice Admiral, U.S. Coast Guard, Acting Commandant. Hon. HERBERT C. BONNER, U.S. COAST GUARD HEADQUARTERS, Chairman, Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: This letter is supplementary to previous correspondence of August 23, 1965, which furnished information from Coast Guard records about complaints which had been received concerning the operation of foreign passenger cruise ships. The following information was obtained from complaints which were addressed only to our local offices in New York and Miami, and was therefore not included in the previous report: (a) SS Victoria: On January 9, 1965, a passenger on board this Liberian vessel complained that the vessel's lifeboats were being used as tenders for passengers while the vessel was in the Bahamas. A further complaint was received alleging that the lifeboats were not all considered to be in a seaworthy condition. On January 28, 1965, the SS Victoria was boarded by Coast Guard marine inspection officers. The lifesaving equipment was examined and found to be in accordance with the requirements of the 1948 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. The master and several of the deck officers were consulted, and it was explained to them that the United States considered that the use of lifeboats to ferry passengers ashore was contrary to the requirements of 53-924-654 the convention and that this practice should be stopped. Assurances were given that the lifeboats would not be used for this purpose in the future. It is noted at this point that the Coast Guard does not have jurisdiction over the operation of a foreign vessel on the high seas or in foreign waters. (b) SS Rio Jachal, SS Rio Tunuyan, and SS Rio De Plata: In 1963 the above Argentine passenger vessels entered the port of New York and requested the issuance of Coast Guard certificates of examination of foreign passenger vessels. Upon examination of each of these vessels it was found that there was much combustible material in panels and furnishings in the passengers' staterooms, public spaces, and passageways, and that sprinkling systems were not installed. The vessels were not considered to be in compliance with the international convention which applied and the requested certificates were not issued. At present, these vessels do not have Coast Guard certificates authorizing the carriage of passengers from a U.S. port. The above information, in addition to that which was furnished previously in referenced letter, completes the list of complaints to the Coast Guard concerning the operation of foreign passenger vessels in cruise service from U.S. ports. Sincerely yours, E. J. ROLAND, Admiral, U.S. Coast Guard, Commandant. Mr. MAILLIARD. From a rather hasty perusal of that letter, which just came in, I gather that the Coast Guard's point of view at the moment is that violations of the standards that you are now able to enforce are not too numerous. Admiral TRIMBLE. That is right, sir. Mr. MAILLIARD. Could you enlighten us a little bit as to the question Mr. Casey was raising and which interests us all, and that is the difference in the standards that you can apply against the older ships, the ships which have been built or rebuilt since the last convention, and the requirements that we have on our own ships? I do not mean the technical details, because we could not understand them if you gave them to us, but wherein are the major differences in standards? Admiral TRIMBLE. I think I can ask Captain Foster to give you this very quickly. Captain FOSTER. In each convention, 1929, 1948, and 1960, there is the statement that that particular convention applies to new ships on which the keels are laid on or after the effective date of the convention. In the case of the 1960 convention, that would be May 26, 1965; and the 1948 convention was effective November 19, 1952. For vessels which are in existence at the time of the passage of a new convention, each signatory nation is urged to upgrade each of their own vessels to whatever degree that is considered feasible by that particular nation. The United States in its past history has taken this very literally. We have taken wide steps to upgrade all of our vessels which were built under previous conventions. We have even gone way beyond the new convention in many cases on the subjects of stability, structural fire construction, and so forth. We feel some foreign nations have not gone this far. In summary, a vessel is primarily subject to the convention that was in effect when she was built. We apply the same standards to our vessels. The only differences that would exist would be the degree to which each nation has upgraded its requirements on existing vessels. Mr. MAILLIARD. Can you give us a little indication of what the extent of the ball park is? In other words, let us say the vessel United States was built to standards that probably nobody else would want to do because it had a lot of defense features and extra margins of safety that we built in there for possible use as a military vessel which have made her almost unique, I would assume. I am trying to see how wide these different standards are. Let us take the minimum standard, which would be, I presume, a ship built before the effective date of the 1929 convention. There still are such ships around? Captain FOSTER. There are some; yes, sir. Mr. MAILLIARD. In general terms, how much difference would there be between a ship that you would have to approve under those provisions, and a ship that was subject to the 1948 convention? Captain FOSTER. There would be a great deal of difference, because in effect there were no international standards before the 1929 convention. They attempted to establish such standards after the sinking of the Titanic, but World War I prevented this and they did not get around to it until 1929. That, in effect, is the first convention. Mr. MAILLIARD. There are a few ships still around to which no standards applied when they were built? Captain FOSTER. If they were built prior to the 1929 convention, yes, sir. Mr. MAILLIARD. Then in the period between the effective date of the 1929 convention through the effective date of the 1948 convention, how big a step did we make in improving standards and in what areas? Is it lifesaving equipment, fire, stability? What major areas were upgraded between 1929 and 1948? Captain FOSTER. Many things were added in 1948 that did not exist in 1929; with particular respect to damage stability requirements in case of a hole in any portion of the vessel, there were provisions that would have to exist in order for the vessel to remain afloat. Structural fire protection during construction covered a vast number of items. Also, electrical requirements. Many old vessels built prior to the 1929 convention, for example, had wooden troughs which contained all the wiring, and the wiring was not in the usual form that we know it today, such as armored cable or protected wiring. It was open wiring and presented a fantastic fire hazard. This was all rectified. Mr. MAILLIARD. Do you think we still have some ships around that are like that and never have been corrected? Captain FOSTER. I am quite certain we have none that have a Coast Guard certificate of examination on board. Mr. MAILLIARD. Are you able to enforce any higher standards if they are not subject to the later conventions? Captain FOSTER. Each nation has generally upgraded their vessels to some extent. In other words, a vessel that was built prior to the 1929 convention was generally upgraded when the 1929 convention became effective. They were further upgraded in varying degrees, depending upon the nation, when the 1948 convention became effective in 1952, and we anticipate that there will be further advances under the 1960 convention. Mr. MAILLIARD. If a particular vessel 30 or 40 years old chose to charter to an American cruise operator and came into one of our ports, you could not insist that that vessel have been upgraded in compliance with the more recent conventions, could you? Captain FOSTER. That is correct, sir. Mr. MAILLIARD. You would have to let her sail, even though the standards were obviously not satisfactory just from a judgment point of view. Captain FOSTER. If I may put it in the right perspective, I do not know of any case where this extreme situation has existed wherein we have a vessel built prior to 1929 that in effect complies with no convention and wherein we have been forced to issue a certificate to it because we cannot require otherwise. Mr. MAILLIARD. I would certainly think if such a thing does exist, it would be a very remote possibility. What is more possible is that we still have ships and probably quite a number of them which may comply with the 1929 convention but which have not been upgraded to comply with the 1948 convention. Do you think there is a substantial number of such ships? Captain FOSTER. There are some, yes, sir; under foreign flag that were built between the two conventions and were not upgraded to the standards of the 1948 convention, say vessels built in the 1930's, for example. In the primary area in Miami, through moral suasion during the last 5 years the foreign operators have upgraded their vessels voluntarily in many ways. They were told, for example, in order to get our certificates they would have to be able to launch their boats on each side within a maximum period of 10 minutes. They could not meet this in the beginning, but they meet it now. They have extensive drills. They have also installed some fire screen bulkheads which they actually were not required to install, you might say, but they did it anyhow. The They have followed the U.S. procedure that when any area is refurbished to attract passengers or to be more attractive to the trade, we require complete fireproof standards for all materials used. oretically, under the convention under which these vessels were built and under the policies of some foreign nations this has not been done, but we have asked that they do it and they have. Many of these vessels, also, in the Miami area, never go home. They are drydocked in a shipyard in Tampa, and the Coast Guard inspector can make an observation of the underwater body in drydock. This is an unusual situation. Mr. GARMATZ. What size of ship would these be? Captain FOSTER. They vary in size. That is hard to answer. Two of them are the old Yarmouth and Evangeline that used to run between Boston and Nova Scotia under the American flag, now called the Yarmouth and Yarmouth Castle. There is one new vessel which is only 2 years old which I think carries around 300 passengers. I am speaking only of the so-called cruise ships. There are many large vessels en route, say, from the British Isles to Australia that do stop in Port Everglades or off Fort Lauderdale and pick up passengers in that area, but they are not local cruise ships. They vary from small vessels which run on short trips to the Bahamas and the larger vessels which go throughout the islands. Mr. MAILLIARD. Of course, I have been in communication with people in the Coast Guard about these problems for a considerable length of time, several years, and it is very encouraging to hear the many things that have been done and that they are voluntarily doing what the Coast Guard requests them to do. This is very helpful to the standards we are trying to achieve. What I am worried about is those who are not cooperative and where you are limited in what you require them to do. Surely everybody is not so cooperative. Captain FOSTER. Last January we made a routine survey of this particular operation, both in New York and in Miami, and I asked for reports from those two offices of all complaints that they had received, and a number of those are covered in the letter which was introduced in the record. Actually, we have not received many complaints from any source with respect to the safety of the vessel alleging that there are problems that are attributed directly to unsafe conditions such as lifeboats, and so forth. Mr. MAILLIARD. Is it not true that the average cruise passenger would not have the slightest notion whether a ship was safe or not? Captain FOSTER. That is a hard question to answer, sir. Mr. MAILLIARD. If you go on board with an experienced eye, you know the usual things and practices that make a ship unsafe; but when a bankers' convention of the State of California decides they will all go on a cruise, they do not know what is safe and what is not. They know what is uncomfortable, they may know what is unsanitary, and they probably know whether they like the food or not. But I do not think the ordinary person is able to judge whether a ship is inherently safe or is being operated safely unless there is something flagrant. If you see a lifeboat with a hole in it, you figure that is not very safe; but the chances are they would have a canvas cover on it and you would not see it if you were a passenger. I would imagine your complaints would be more to the point of lack of comfort or conveniences than safety of the ship. Would that not be true? Captain FOSTER. They have been; yes, sir. Mr. MAILLIARD. I think that is natural. You would not expect the average layman to be able to judge safety conditions on a ship. I know from having been on them myself that the amount of flammable materials in some of these "gussied-up" ships would be wholly unacceptable under the American flag. Captain FOSTER. That is true. Mr. MAILLIARD. It would not be permitted, because once a fire was started, it would be virtually impossible to stop. Captain FOSTER. There is a matter of phisolophy here, too. Under the 1948 convention there are three basic methods of construction that are permitted. The so-called method 2 permits the use of nonfireproof material with sprinkling systems. Ever since the loss of the Morro Castle back in 1936, our regulations were very much strengthened and we have followed method 1 in the construction and inspection of all of our vessels; method 1 requires basically fireproof materials, rather than depending upon a sprinkler system. However, the convention does authorize this if a nation wanted to use it. Mr. MAILLIARD. And it is still authorized under the 1960 convention? Captain FOSTER. I cannot answer offhand. I think so. Mr. MAILLIARD. My whole point in introducing the bill is to see if we cannot upgrade the standards a little bit before we have another |