Navy looking into issues surrounding 'overboards'
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
The Navy said four sailors on the Pearl Harbor-based cruiser Port Royal jumped overboard during a nine-month span, an unusually high number that the ship's command finds hard to explain.
"I can't give you an explanation because I don't know what goes on in the minds of every one of those sailors on a daily basis," said Lt. Cmdr. Brian Fort, executive officer of the Port Royal. "I can tell you that for each one of them, there were some issues that those sailors were working through in their lives."
According to a crew member, one sailor jumped from the guided missile cruiser's bridge wing, falling 60 feet. Another sailor suffered cuts on his feet and thighs from the propeller of a rescue boat searching for him at night. All were quickly rescued.
Some of the Port Royal's 390 crew members said that an overbearing command turned the ship into a pressure cooker. The ship's command concedes that the crew worked hard during a recent combat deployment but said the atmosphere aboard the ship had nothing to do with the four incidents, known as "overboards" in the Navy.
"Certainly those sailors had their reasonings of why they wanted to do what they did," Fort said. "I can tell you none of the sailors had any comments at all citing Port Royal or anything on the command as reasons. ..."
As the war against terrorism proceeds and the threat of war with Iraq looms, it is clear all the military forces are facing more pressure, longer deployments and intensified training.
But the Port Royal overboards raise questions about an issue that even the Navy has difficulty tracking — determining the difference between sailors who are genuinely suicidal and those who take a risky leap to get a trip home and a ticket out of the service.
Although officials said they can't talk about details because of privacy regulations, the Navy believes that the Port Royal overboards encompassed both motives.
At least one was an attempted suicide, Fort acknowledged. But in the others, "we can pretty well say that this may have been a case where someone (was attempting) to get out of the Navy by jumping over the side of the ship."
In two of the four overboards, the chaplain on board was involved in personal counseling before and after they jumped, the Pacific Fleet said.
Three of the four Port Royal sailors, all in their first six-year enlistment, were "administratively separated" with honorable or general discharges following psychological evaluations, the Navy said. The fourth sailor is undergoing an evaluation following convalescent leave.
While on deployment to the Arabian Sea, meanwhile, the Port Royal rescued a female sailor who jumped overboard Jan. 6 from the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, the Navy said.
There were also individual cases of sailors jumping from the carriers USS Kitty Hawk on Nov. 7, 2001, and Abraham Lincoln on Jan. 26 of this year, the Pacific Fleet said.
The problem does not seem to be universal, but the Naval Safety Center in Norfolk, Va. — which collects data and provides safety training, education and mishap prevention programs — tracks only those sailors who are killed or lost at sea in an accidental overboard, or are injured and miss five or more workdays, making it difficult to get a complete picture.
A judge advocate general's administrative report was filed in one Port Royal case, while incident reports for all four cases were provided to the battle group commander, Fort said.
A spokesman for the Navy's Office of Information in Washington, who did not want to be identified, said the number of intentional overboards is small Navy-wide, but he acknowledged there is a reporting gap.
"Statistically, I would imagine even if you would factor in the ones that don't meet the safety center criteria, it's still a very, very, very small percentage," he said. "You are talking about 385,000-plus sailors."
The Pacific Fleet said the only overboards it was aware of for Hawai'i-based surface ships since January 2001 were the four intentional Port Royal cases and a sailor who was reported missing from the destroyer USS Russell on Nov. 27, 2001. The San Diego-based carrier Stennis had three overboards from September 2001 to January 2002 — only one intentional.
To get a sense of how that compares, no overboards were reported since January 2001 by the carriers USS Carl Vinson and USS Nimitz, each with crews of more than 5,000.
Retired Rear Adm. Stephen H. Baker, a 30-year Navy veteran and senior fellow with the Center for Defense Information in Washington, said four overboards in nine months is a high number.
"There could be something there," Baker said, "and I'm sure some of the experts over in (the Pacific Fleet) are taking a long look at that and what the shipboard environment is."
The first overboard on the Port Royal occurred Nov. 6, 2001, while the cruiser was operating 50 miles south of O'ahu. The next two came during deployment. The last overboard occurred July 13 about 40 miles southwest of the Big Island during naval exercises.
After the second overboard, on March 27, and the third, nine days later on April 5 — both in the Arabian Sea — Capt. Lee Geanuleas initiated a "command climate survey" among his crew, which had made a port stop in Australia.
The survey, which did not include sailors' names, was given to 379 crew members and was completed by 245. The Advertiser was provided portions of the report.
Some survey respondents described Geanuleas as "talented and disciplined," a man with "very high standards and expectations."
Seaman Kevin Roberts, a ship's cook on the Port Royal, said Geanuleas makes a point of talking to sailors.
"Every day, he always asks me how I'm doing, about my family, and if I've called them," Roberts said in an interview aboard the ship that was relayed recently through a Pacific Fleet spokesperson. "He asks if I'm getting enough time off, getting enough rest. He's always interested in how people are doing."
But concerns about an unrelenting pace, piled on work and low morale aboard the 567-foot ship — the last of 27 Ticonderoga-class cruisers and one of three based at Pearl Harbor— were also common in the survey.
"In the two years that I have been on board we have been going full throttle, 110 percent. I feel that everyone is being burnt out and a lot of aggression is setting in," said one sailor. "If the tempo stays like this, I don't even want to think of re-enlisting."
Life aboard Navy ships during combat operations can mean 18-hour days. At least one sailor said that tempo was kept up too long.
"Take a look at how we just got back from our mission in the Gulf," the crew member said. "Now, on the way home we got all this dumb training that's just taking up people's off time. We're tired."
An overwhelming majority of the 245 respondents said they were satisfied in terms of job fulfillment on the Port Royal, and a majority said they were satisfied with the ship's disciplinary system and support from the chain of command.
But an overwhelming majority also said they were dissatisfied with the consistency of leadership and management, and a majority said they were dissatisfied with the amount of respect from superiors.
Command officers pointed out the survey was taken at the tail end of a six-month deployment that started two months early — on Nov. 17, 2001 — to join the Stennis battle group. As a result, the crew spent Thanksgiving and Christmas away from family.
Although the ship did not fire any missiles in the North Arabian Sea, Geanuleas said in an interview with The Advertiser that the day-to-day challenge of protecting the battle group in combat operations "puts a lot of strain on people."
"We were a little tired (after the deployment)," Geanuleas said. "But I was very proud of the job they did."
Fort said sailors on board the Port Royal were "worked hard — but not overworked."
"I've been on deployments where we trained hard on the way home," Fort said, "and I've been on deployments where you come to a more relaxing posture. We took this opportunity to train."
Geanuleas, who took command of the Port Royal in February 2001, said he mounted an aggressive education program on deployment and more than 60 percent of the crew improved their educational level in one way or another.
The Port Royal also was the only ship in the battle group to get an SAT and ACT administrator from the Stennis on board to give those tests, he noted. The cruiser won the annual "Battle E" award for excellence during the war effort.
Fort said the ship's retention rates, or crew members who choose to stay in the Navy, are some of the highest in the Pacific Fleet — "between 75 percent and 80 percent on board Port Royal, and Navy-wide is about 60 percent, I believe."
"These would all be metrics that would not be so positive if there was an issue of command climate (on the Port Royal)," said Geanuleas, who is headed to the Pentagon as deputy director for the Navy missile program after a change of command Oct. 24.
The ship last week was finishing nine weeks of maintenance at Pearl Harbor.
The Pacific Fleet said that as with all command climate surveys, "opportunities for making a good ship even better" were identified.
One follow-up was all-hands suicide awareness training. A joint effort by Port Royal's chaplain and the Fleet and Family Support Center, the sessions were completed in August.
Experts from the support center also were brought in for training for all officers and chief petty officers focusing on communications in the workplace, the Navy said. That training was completed at the end of September.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for members of the Navy and Marine Corps. Between fiscal 1995 and 1999 there were 355 suicides. The leading cause was motor vehicle accidents, which led to 631 deaths.
The Navy's Office of Information said overboards are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
"Personnel that make suicidal gestures, obviously, each individual case is something that the Navy is concerned with," the Navy official in Washington said.
Jumping overboard is an offense punishable by up to six month's confinement and a bad conduct discharge, but the official said such measures are rare, and there are just three cases dating back to 2000, all involving other accompanying charges.
"If it's determined to be a suicidal gesture, we treat it as a mental health issue, and go from there," the Navy official said.
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
