The Pelican Hook That Kept Opening
A Gulf Coast deckhand was building a tow when the ratchet he was pulling let go — the pelican hook released the wire under tension, the tool drove into him, and both men fell backward to the barge deck. He testified the same hook had opened on him roughly thirty times before, with three earlier falls. None of it was ever recorded as a near-miss. This is the anatomy of how a routine lashing task became an unseaworthy one.
What “building a tow” actually demands of a deckhand
On inland and coastal waters, a towboat doesn't pull barges behind it the way a harbor tug pulls a ship — it pushes them, lashed into a single rigid unit ahead of the boat. Assembling that unit is called building a tow, and it is the bread-and-butter work of a deckhand. The barges are cinched to one another, and to the boat, with steel wire rope drawn tight by ratchets.
There are two ways to draw the wire tight. The safer way is stationary gear: barges fitted with fixed wires and winches, so a deckhand sets the connection and a machine takes up the slack. The other way is portable rigging — loose slings, wire, and a hand ratchet fitted with a hooked release called a pelican hook, held shut by a small keeper link.
Portable rigging requires a step the winches make unnecessary: snatching wires. Two deckhands hold the ratchet in line, one behind the other, and pull backward in unison — “jerking” the slack out of the wire by hand before the ratchet is tightened. As long as the pelican hook stays under tension with the keeper link seated, the wire stays attached. If the keeper link slips, the hook opens, the wire releases all at once, and the people pulling it fall backward — toward whatever is behind them, holding whatever is in their hands.
One pull, a released hook, and a career-altering injury
The deckhand had crewed this towboat since his hiring in 2019, working a fourteen-on, seven-off rotation of twelve-hour shifts. In early 2023, the boat was building a tow at a Gulf Coast port. He and his deckhand partner were snatching wires and setting ratchets when a second crew, working the vessel the tow was being built for, asked for a hand snatching a wire.
The two men set up to pull, the partner in the forward position. As they jerked the slack out of the wire, the pelican hook opened. The wire let go under tension, the ratchet swung into the deckhand and struck him in the groin, and both men fell backward to the barge deck. He first thought he'd hurt his thigh. The extent of the injury — to his scrotum and a testicle — became clear only after his crew helped him back aboard the boat. He was taken to a hospital that day, accompanied by his partner.
He was later cleared to return to work, but within days the pain worsened. A re-evaluation led to surgery to remove the damaged testicle. He was eventually cleared to return again, and remained employed in the same role.
The hook that opened that day had opened on him before — about thirty times, by his account.
From the deckhand's deposition testimonyThree pillars, one unseaworthy task
A retained marine-safety expert — a career mariner and certified safety-management-system lead auditor and casualty investigator — reviewed the company's manuals, the vessel records, and the sworn testimony, and built the liability case on three structural pillars. Each stands on its own; together they describe a work environment that was unsafe before the deckhand ever picked up the ratchet.
Training by “tribal knowledge”
Crew learned the job largely by watching senior hands, not through a documented program. Formal orientation amounted to a one-page checklist and, by testimony, about an hour of being shown “how to do everything.” On-the-job learning has its place — but as the primary method it lets unsafe habits get passed down and normalized as correct.
A method at war with the rulebook
Snatching wires requires two people to jerk a load backward by hand. The company's own safety rules require “proper body mechanics” when lifting, pushing, or pulling. Industry ergonomics guidance urges engineering manual handling out entirely. Stationary winches would eliminate the snatch — and the deckhand had raised that very point with senior personnel.
Paper that contradicts practice
The safety manual called the snatch a one-person job; testimony said it took two. It barred misusing tools; practice condoned cheater bars and sledgehammers struck against rigging. Overlapping, inconsistent safety sections coexisted. A safety system this far out of step with the deck is, by definition, not implemented.
A safety system required to catch this — and didn't
Federal law has required U.S. towing operators to run an approved Towing Safety Management System since the Subchapter M rules phased in, with full compliance due by mid-2022. The whole point of such a system is to surface problems and force correction: it must establish procedures to identify near-misses, unsafe acts, and unsafe conditions, and to implement corrective action and continuous improvement.
The deckhand testified the pelican hook had opened on him roughly thirty times during snatching operations, knocking him down three times before the incident that injured him. Those are textbook near-misses — exactly what the system exists to capture. There was no indication any of them were recorded, investigated, or corrected.
That is the quiet center of the case. The hazard wasn't hidden. It announced itself dozens of times. The operator's own required safety system was the mechanism that should have caught it — and the absence of a single corrective action is what turned a repeatable malfunction into a foreseeable injury.
The arguments a towing operator makes — and why they don't hold
A liability case is only as strong as its answer to the other side. Here is the defense at its most credible, paired with the response the record supports.
Experience cuts the other way. He performed the snatch the way he was trained and the way the crew always did it. Under the company's own procedure, watching the pelican hook and keeper link was the forward person's duty — and his partner held that position. A comparative-fault theory collapses when the injury flows from the method itself, not from any deviation by the worker. Under the Jones Act, an employer's negligence need only play any part, however slight, in producing the injury.
Testimony placed this operator in the minority still using portable rigging as its primary lashing method, where much of the industry has moved to stationary winches that remove the snatch. “Some companies still do it” is not a seaworthiness defense — particularly when the practice can't be performed without violating the operator's own body-mechanics rule and runs against recognized ergonomics guidance to design manual handling out.
A risk that materializes roughly thirty times on one worker is not an unforeseeable accident — it is notice. The use of cheater bars and sledgehammers to strike keeper links can deform the very component meant to hold the hook shut. And once the hazard was known, the operator's required safety system obligated it to investigate and correct. Repeated, condoned exposure to a documented failure mode is the breach.
The opinions here are about safety-management-system design and implementation, manual-handling ergonomics, and casualty investigation — the exact domain of a certified SMS lead auditor and incident investigator with decades in the maritime industry. That is a question of weight for cross-examination, not admissibility. The factual deck mechanics, meanwhile, come straight from the sworn testimony of the people who did the work.
How the record reads in order
The matter was resolved on a confidential basis. No settlement amount, verdict, or other figure is disclosed here, and the analysis below is offered only as a study of liability and proof.
When the safety manual becomes the plaintiff's best exhibit
The instinct is to think a written safety system protects the company. In a case like this one, the opposite is true. Once federal law requires a towing operator to maintain a management system — to define safe practice, to capture near-misses, to correct unsafe conditions — that system becomes the standard the operator is measured against. Every gap between the manual and the deck is documented, in the operator's own words.
The contradictions did the work: a task the manual called a one-person job that everyone knew took two; a body-mechanics rule that the primary lashing method could not satisfy; a tool-misuse prohibition that coexisted with condoned sledgehammers and cheater bars; and roughly thirty recordable near-misses that the required reporting system never captured.
The lesson for maritime workers and their counsel is that compliance is a floor, not a shield. A safety system that exists on paper but is contradicted by the company's own condoned practice is not a defense — it is evidence. The strongest proof of an unsafe vessel is often the operator's own description of how safe it was supposed to be.
What injured towing-vessel crew often ask
Generally yes. A deckhand who contributes to the function of a vessel in navigation and has a substantial connection to that vessel or fleet is a “seaman” under the Jones Act, which lets an injured worker sue the employer for negligence. Tugs and towboats are classic Jones Act vessels. The Jones Act also carries a famously plaintiff-friendly causation standard: the employer's negligence need only have played some part, however slight, in causing the injury.
They're two separate theories that often travel together. A Jones Act claim targets the employer's negligence — unsafe practices, inadequate training, failure to correct known hazards. An unseaworthiness claim targets the condition of the vessel and its equipment, appurtenances, and crew: the duty to provide a vessel reasonably fit for its intended use. A lashing method that can't be done safely, defective or deformed rigging, or an undermanned task can all support unseaworthiness regardless of fault.
Not by itself. Many injured mariners return to work — out of financial necessity, on light duty, or after being “cleared” before they've actually healed. Returning to work does not waive a claim for the injury, for past and future pain, or for the consequences of a serious injury. What matters is the cause of the injury and its lasting effect, not whether you went back to a paycheck.
Maintenance and cure is an ancient, no-fault maritime obligation: an employer must cover a seaman's reasonable living expenses (maintenance) and medical treatment (cure) until maximum medical improvement, regardless of who was at fault. It is separate from — and in addition to — Jones Act negligence and unseaworthiness damages, and an employer that wrongfully cuts it off can face additional exposure.
Because they establish notice. If the same failure has happened before — and a federally required safety system was supposed to record and correct it — then the eventual injury was foreseeable and preventable. A long string of uncorrected near-misses is often the difference between “a freak accident” and “a known hazard the company chose to live with.”
Doyle Dennis Avery LLP
This study reflects how our firm approaches towing-vessel and offshore injury litigation: read the operator's own safety system closely, find the gaps between the manual and the deck, and build a liability theory the defense has to answer pillar by pillar. The facts here have been anonymized; the method is the point.
Case summary
A Gulf Coast deckhand was building a tow when the pelican hook released a wire under tension; the ratchet tool drove into him and both men fell backward to the barge deck. He testified the same hook had been opening on its own, and safer fixed rigging was available instead of the portable gear in use.
Legal lessons from this case
- A release device that keeps opening on its own is a classic unseaworthy condition.
- Lines and wires under tension carry a snapback hazard that demands safe rigging and procedures.
- Choosing portable rigging over available fixed, mechanical gear can be evidence of negligence.
Hurt building a tow, snatching wires, or rigging on the deck?
If a ratchet, pelican hook, winch, or line injured you on a tug, towboat, or barge, the operator's own safety records may already tell the story. Talk with a maritime injury trial lawyer before those records get explained away.
Request a Confidential Case ReviewAbout this case study. This page is an anonymized, educational account drawn from a maritime liability matter. Names of the injured worker, the employer, the vessels, co-workers, the retained expert, opposing parties, and counsel, along with the specific location and exact dates, have been omitted or generalized to protect confidentiality. The matter was resolved on a confidential basis; no settlement amount, verdict, or other result is represented, and nothing here should be read as a claim of a specific outcome.
Not legal advice. This material is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different, and prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter. If you have been injured while working on a vessel, consult a qualified maritime attorney about the specific facts of your situation. Doyle Dennis Avery LLP is responsible for the content of this communication.
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