Who is Joseph Hazelwood?

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Joseph J. Hazelwood (born 1946 in Georgia) was the captain of the Exxon Valdez during its 1989 oil spill. He was accused of being drunk at the time of the accident, though at trial he was cleared of this charge. Hazelwood was convicted of negligence, fined $50,000, and sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service, cleaning the Alaskan beaches (which he began in 1999 after 8 years of unsuccessful appeal). Nobody would hire him as a captain afterwards, so he became a technical expert for a marine insurance agency.

Early in the trial, state prosecutors tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the jury Hazelwood was intoxicated at the time of the grounding. According to the defense, blood samples taken nearly 10 hours after the incident (Most states, including Alaska, do not allow samples after 3 hours) were mishandled. The preservative required to halt fermentation was not added to his blood sample causing the test to show a blood-alcohol level of .061 over 10 hours after the Exxon Valdez foundered on Bligh Reef. By his own admission, Capt. Hazelwood had "two or three vodkas" between 4:30 and 6:30 that same night, far less than the 16 to 20 required to cause a .061 alcohol level 10 hours later.Outside Online (2004). ["The Captain Went Down with the Ship"]. Retrieved March 12, 2005.

Capt. Hazelwood was mocked in the movie Waterworld, when his portrait was displayed on a wall inside a rusted oil tanker as a patron saint to the movie's villain, played by Dennis Hopper. In the FOX series Futurama, Hazelwood was further satirized when Bender, who was made captain of an intergalactic oil tanker, gets drunk and crashes the ship into a penguin sanctuary on Pluto, spilling the whole load of oil.

Hazelwood was also mocked in a The Far Side strip. The strip showed Hazelwood as a clumsy person who spilled in various stages of his life; as a baby (his cup), teenager (pen ink in his shirt pocket), and others. The six-picture single-panel strip ends with Hazelwood driving into a water tower.

Joseph Hazelwood is a graduate of the State University of New York Maritime College.

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