Recently, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released the findings from its investigation of the 2017 collision of the USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) and the tanker Alnic MC. One of the report’s recommendations was that the Navy adopt the crew-rest requirements of the Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping (STCW) for all ships.1 The STCW holds that sailors standing navigation and engineering watches must receive a minimum of 10 hours of rest in any 24-hour period, and 77 hours of rest in any 7-day period. In addition, required rest may be divided into no more than two periods in any 24-hour period, one of which must be at least 6 hours long, and the interval between consecutive rest periods must not exceed 14 hours. Since 2017, the surface navy has made improvements to crew-rest policies, but it has not adopted the NTSB-recommended STCW standard. Below, we describe the root causes undermining sailor well-being on surface vessels, assess the strengths and weaknesses of the STCW provisions, and contrast STCW provisions with current Navy efforts to improve crew endurance and operational effectiveness.
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1. National Transportation Safety Board, Collision between US Navy Destroyer John S. McCain and Tanker Alnic MC—Singapore Strait, 5 Miles Northeast of Horsburgh Lighthouse, August 21, 2017 (Washington, DC: National Transportation Safety Board, 3 August 2019), report no. NTSB/MAR-19/01; www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/MAR1901.pdf.
2. Nita Lewis Shattuck and Panagiotis Matsangas, Assessment of the Utility of Circadian-Based Watchstanding Schedules for Sailors Working on U.S. Navy Surface Vessels (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, August 2019), Technical Report no. NPS-OR-19-001R.
3. Carlos A. Comperatore, Pik Kwan Rivera, and Anita M. Carvalhais, U.S. Coast Guard Guide for the Management of Crew Endurance Risk Factors—Version 2.1 (Groton, CT: U.S. Coast Guard Research and Development Center, 2005), report no. CG-D-13-01; Nita Lewis Shattuck and Panagiotis Matsangas, “Culture Change in the U.S. Navy: From Data Collection to Mandated Policies,” Sleep Science 12, Supplement 3 (2019): 63–64.
4. Shattuck and Matsangas, “Culture Change in the U.S. Navy,” 63–64; Shattuck and Matsangas, Assessment of the Utility of Circadian-Based Watchstanding Schedules.
5. Nita Lewis Shattuck and Panagiotis Matsangas, Comparing the Work and Rest Hours of Sailors aboard United States Navy Ships with International Seafarer Standards (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School), unpublished, 26.
6. Christine L. Fletcher, The Unresourced Burden of United States Navy Sailors at Sea (master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2018).
7. Fletcher, The Unresourced Burden.
8. W. P. Colquhoun, “Hours of Work at Sea: Watchkeeping Schedules, Circadian Rhythms and Efficiency,” Ergonomics 28, 4 (1985): 637-53.
9. United States Code 2016, 46 USC & 8104, www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/46/8104; Shattuck and Matsangas, Comparing the Work and Rest Hours of Sailors; ILO, Maritime Labour Convention 2006, www.ilo.org/global/standards/maritime-labour-convention/lang--en/index.htm.
10. Department of the Navy, Comprehensive Fatigue and Endurance Management Policy, (ComNavSurfPac/ComNavSurfLant Instruction 3120.2), 2017.
