It’s my understanding that anyone operating a ship is required by law to respond to distress calls. Though it would be something to issue a distress call and have a luxury yatch respond
How enforceable would that be though? Do ships keep logs of received transmissions? Like how hard would it be to hear the distress call and just turn off the radio?
If the transmission isn’t recorded there’s no way of knowing if a person deliberately ignored a distress signal or just didn’t receive it.
All true, but enforcement, and the law itself, are unnecessary. I’ve never known a sailor that would even consider ignoring a distress call.
Asshole passenger maybe, but not the crew. So on second thought, the law gives the crew something to say to an asshole passenger who wants to ignore a call.
Sounds like it’s hard to enforce, unless after the fact a crew member came forward to say they heard a distress call and the captain ordered them to ignore it.
At the same time though (and this is me speaking from 0 experience) I’d imagine that most sailors understand the importance of “do unto others…” with respect to distress calls. Even with modern technology, the ocean can be a dangerous place.
Its bound by Solas regulations that are legally enforceable. Ships must have two way AIS and its logged, so they know if you were in range similar to the tracking for planes. Boats under a certain size do not need AIS and often only have one way AIS, but I expect thats not the case with DiCaprios boat.
Solas was bought in because of the Titanic sinking as other boats declined the help due to the risk of Icebergs, so thats a further link to DiCaprio.
That’s basically how the Expanse books and show begin. Except the ships are in space
Man, what a great series. I’ve only seen the show so far, but it was so good.
Also there is a financial incentive. There is part of martime law about salvage rights. The person doing the rescuing has rights to the stuff they saved. Obviously it doesn’t apply to just saving some person floating,. A ship with people, you get some rights to the value of the ship and its contents.
One of the more interesting examples https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/oldies-amp-oddities-the-alraigo-incident-10366728/