HAZELWOOD TEACHES YOUNG MARINERS TO STAND WATCH

Daily News wire reports

NEW YORK- Capt. Joseph Hazelwood, the former hard-drinking captain of the Exxon Valdez, has been hired by his alma mater to teach students how to stay alert and stand the watch on a ship's bridge.It's a lesson he may have learned the hard way.

On March 24, 1989, Hazelwood had left the bridge of the Exxon Valdez to the command of a tired third mate and an incompetent helmsman. While he sat in his cabin, the ship drifted out of the shipping lanes and stove up on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, causing the worst oil tanker spill in U.S. history.

Hazelwood is not the first captain involved in a shipping disaster to be hired by the college. John Lerro, who piloted the ship that plowed into the Sunshine Skyway Bridge 12 years ago in Florida's Tampa Bay, killing 35 people, also was hired at the school after his crash.

"The cadets are delighted we have people here with all facets of experience," said Admiral Floyd Miller, president of Maritime College, a campus of the State University of New York.

Both Hazelwood and Lerro are graduates of the 118-year-old college. It is the oldest maritime institute in the nation, Miller said, with 670 students. The campus is based at historic Fort Schuyler, under the Throg's Neck Bridge in the Bronx.

Hazelwood, 45, will work as a "watch officer" on a two-month summer training cruise on the ship Empire, departing May 16 for New Orleans and the Far East.

While Miller defended the school's hiring of Hazelwood, others had trouble believing it was true. Another teacher at the school said they thought it was a bad joke.

"Rather than an instructor on keeping watch, Hazelwood would be better on how to avoid jail time," said Greenpeace spokeswoman Dorothy Smith.

A jury in Anchorage convicted Hazelwood on a misdemeanor charge of negligent discharge of oil but acquitted him of more serious charges that he was drunk and reckless at the time of the collision. Hazelwood was fined $50,000 and sentenced to 1,000 hours of work cleaning oily Alaska beaches. He is appealing his conviction and still faces numerous civil suits, according to his attorney, Thomas Russo.

The U.S. Coast Guard in a separate inquiry found Hazelwood guilty of negligence and violating drinking rules. Hazelwood's license was suspended in August 1990 for nine months. Since then, he has fished for lobster, transported yachts and done office work to support himself and his family, Russo said.

Former Valdez Mayor John Devens said the appointment might not be all bad. "If it's true that we learn from our mistakes, Joe ought to be a heck of a good teacher," Devens said Thursday.

Hazelwood didn't return a call for comment.

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