Richard Hughes closed his 24-seat safety training center on Cape Cod to become a retired student of modern worldwide shipping operations. He graduated from Massachusetts Maritime Academy with a B.S. in Marine Transportation, then obtained a Masters Degree in Business from Lesley University. While at MMA, he sailed on the Bay State, the CV Lightning, and the TS Mobil Lube. He has also written Bringing Down the Safety Guy, and Hazard Elimination Inc.--a series of novels about safety mishaps. He and his wife have written six screenplays entitled Cape Car Blues, Freeport Fred's Valiant Summer, Golf Cart Ranger, Plimsoll, and Training Ship. He is the author of Deep Sea Dominoes, a print version of SeaBlameworthiness. He is also the co-author, along with his wife Lavinia, of a novel entitled Newtucket - the Rising. He lives in Falmouth, MA, with his wife Lavinia Hughes.

From the sinkings of the El Faro to the Andrea Doria, with dozens of similar maritime tragedies in between, the vague explanation of "human error" has been cited as the reason for the tragedies. For the first time, a 40-year safety consultant challenges much of that causation theory as too simple.

The captain and crew, too often, in modern maritime history have become the scapegoats for far deeper failures of ship design, ship inspection and maintenance, shipping timetables, mechanical deficiencies, poor ship construction, overloading, improper loading, and delayed ship replacement, among myriad other circumstances.

A common thread of greed, hubris, and miscalculation run through the dozens of international disasters. Ninety percent of our daily needs depend on the all but invisible world of international shipping. Are we racing toward disaster or greater transportation sophistication? In the world's rush to autonomous shipping and supersized NeoPanamax ships, SeaBlameworthiness offers many reasons for caution.