SUIT CHARGES CAPTAIN WAS HEAVY DRINKER
18-MONTH-OLD COURT PAPERS SAY HAZELWOOD WAS REGULARLY DRUNK

The Associated Press

NEW YORK- A former second mate under the fired Exxon captain implicated in the Exxon Valdez oil spill says the skipper was frequently drunk and failed to follow regulations, according to published reports.

Bruce Amero, who worked for Exxon for eight years, has a $2 million lawsuit pending against Exxon in New York state court charging that Capt. Joseph Hazelwood and other superior officers harassed him.

In a lengthy pretrial deposition given 18 months ago, Amero said that Hazelwood "constantly . . . appeared to be intoxicated" when he was in command of the vessel, The Boston Globe reported Saturday.

Amero said Hazelwood held regular drinking parties in his room on board ship, and added that he once saw Hazelwood throw four empty quart bottles of Jack Daniels whiskey overboard.

"There's a bad joke in the fleet that it's Captain Hazelwood and his chief mate, Jack Daniels, that run the ship," he said in the deposition.

Hazelwood was captain of the Exxon Valdez on March 24 when it crashed into a reef and spilled more than 10 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound in the nation's worst oil spill.

Hazelwood, 42, faces three misdemeanor charges in Alaska of operating a ship while intoxicated, reckless endangerment and negligent discharge of oil. He is free on $25,000 bail after surrendering last week on Long Island, where he lives.

Amero, who now lives in Meredith, N.H., also claimed that Hazelwood "falsified the deck logbook about fire and boat drills" aboard his ships, the New York Daily News reported Saturday.

He told the New York newspaper in a telephone interview that "I smelled liquor on him on a number of occasions."

The lawsuit, which charges that Amero was treated so badly that he needed psychiatric treatment, is pending.

It seeks $2.075 million in personal injury damages from Exxon, charging that he was "subjected to abuse and harassment by his superior officers and other supervisory employes, and in particular Capt. Joseph Hazelwood."

There was no answer Saturday at Amero's home in New Hampshire. Michael G. Chalos, Hazelwood's attorney, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

On March 24, Hazelwood allegedly turned control of the Valdez over to a third mate uncertified to pilot the vessel in the waters off Alaska. He was fired by Exxon on March 30 after the National Transportation Safety Board said tests taken about nine hours after the disaster showed he was under the influence of alcohol.

Amero said his problems with Hazelwood began a week after he first began working under his command.

"I was asleep and he was jumping up and down on his floor one evening screaming at me to come up and drink with him," he said in the deposition quoted in The Boston Globe. He said he refused and that Hazelwood began harassing him, and that a female sailor told him that she was sexually harassed by Hazelwood.

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