Philadelphia Duck Boat Accident: Criminal Case and $17M Settlement

The Philadelphia duck boat accident was a July 7, 2010 collision on the Delaware River in which a 250-foot sludge barge ran over a stalled amphibious tour vessel carrying 37 passengers, drowning two Hungarian exchange students and injuring eleven others. The tugboat mate pushing the barge was distracted by his cell phone and a company laptop, pleaded guilty to seaman’s manslaughter, and served a year and a day in federal prison. The victims’ families and roughly 20 surviving passengers later settled civil claims for $17 million.

What Happened on the Delaware River

The tour vessel was DUKW 34, a 33-foot amphibious passenger vehicle operated by Ride The Ducks International, LLC. About ten minutes into a river cruise on an afternoon when temperatures hit 103 degrees, Captain Gary Fox smelled smoke coming from the starboard engine compartment. Believing there was a fire, he shut down the engine, hit the emergency fuel shutoff, cut the battery, and closed the fire dampers.¹

With the engine dead, Fox ordered his deckhand to drop the anchor. It was set at about 2:29 p.m. but dragged roughly 155 feet along the river bottom before catching, leaving the boat anchored in the middle of an active navigation channel. Fox called a Ride the Ducks manager for a tow and, from about 2:36 p.m., made repeated bridge-to-bridge radio calls on VHF Channel 13 to “the northbound tug near Penn’s Landing.” Those calls went unanswered.¹

At roughly 2:37 p.m., the barge known as The Resource, a city-owned sludge barge being pushed by the tugboat Caribbean Sea, struck the stern of the stalled boat. The barge drove DUKW 34 underwater and capsized it. Survivor Kevin Grace later described “tremendous horror and panic” as the boat was “swallowed” by the river, with passengers “flailing underwater” amid debris. He said he could not get a life jacket on himself but managed to secure one on his nine-year-old daughter while holding her hair to keep her from being swept away.²

The two passengers who drowned were Dora Schwendtner, 16, and Szabolcs Prem, 20, both Hungarian exchange students from Mosonmagyaróvár visiting the United States through a Christian exchange program hosted by a West Chester, Pennsylvania church.³⁴

Who Was Responsible

The National Transportation Safety Board adopted its final report on June 21, 2011. It concluded the probable cause was the failure of Caribbean Sea mate Matthew Devlin to maintain a proper lookout. Two things drove that failure. Devlin chose to operate the tugboat from its lower wheelhouse, which offered significantly reduced visibility, and he repeatedly used a personal cell phone and a company laptop while he was the sole crewmember responsible for navigating the vessel.¹

Devlin did not hear, see, or feel the collision until he saw people in the water. He also failed to respond to the DUKW 34 crew’s radio warnings on Channel 13. When Coast Guard investigators first interviewed him, he claimed he had been in the upper wheelhouse and had seen no vehicle, heard no radio calls, and detected no radar targets. The NTSB found he had not been in the upper wheelhouse at the time of the collision.¹

The board also faulted the Ride the Ducks side. Maintenance personnel had failed to properly secure a surge tank pressure cap before the vehicle went into service that morning, which contributed to the engine overheating that stranded the boat. Captain Fox was faulted for not adequately addressing the risk of anchoring in an active channel and for not ordering passengers to put on life jackets after the anchor was dropped. The manager who took Fox’s call was cited for failing to notify the Coast Guard, as regulations and company policy required. The boat’s air horn was also inoperable at the time, because it only worked when the ignition was on; the company later corrected the wiring across its fleet.¹

The Federal Criminal Case

A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania charged Devlin with one count of misconduct of a ship operator causing death under the Seaman’s Manslaughter Statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1115, the maritime analog to involuntary manslaughter. Trial testimony later established that Devlin had been on the phone dealing with a family emergency in the moments leading up to the collision, and had also turned down the marine radio.⁵⁶

Devlin pleaded guilty on August 1, 2011. As part of the plea deal, he agreed to the permanent revocation of his Coast Guard-issued mate’s license. Federal sentencing guidelines called for 37 to 46 months in prison, but the plea preserved his ability to argue for a lower sentence.⁵

On November 1, 2011, U.S. District Judge Legrome D. Davis sentenced Devlin to one year and one day in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release, well below the guideline range. The judge told Devlin, “You were pushing a barge the size of a football field. Very few people are entrusted with that level of responsibility,” and said he could not understand why Devlin had turned down the ship’s radios: “Everybody knew this was happening but you.” Davis acknowledged Devlin’s remorse, saying, “I think you have personally punished yourself in many ways,” but added, “There has to be a consequence for behavior. I just think that you should have stepped away.”⁶⁷

Devlin addressed the victims’ families in court: “I feel responsibility for the deaths of these two students every single day with my heart and my mind.” The parents of Schwendtner and Prem listened by telephone from Hungary. Devlin reported to federal prison on January 5, 2012.⁸

The $17 Million Civil Settlement

The families of Schwendtner and Prem filed wrongful-death lawsuits against both K-Sea Transportation Partners and Ride the Ducks International. Lead plaintiffs’ attorney Robert Mongeluzzi argued the collision reflected inadequate training and safety practices at both companies, and produced evidence that K-Sea’s own no-cell-phone policy was “routinely ignored.”⁹

Both companies tried to cap their exposure under the Limitation of Liability Act, an 1851 maritime statute that lets vessel owners limit financial exposure to the value of the vessel involved. K-Sea sought to cap its liability at $1.65 million, the value of the tugboat. Ride the Ducks sought a cap of $150,000, the value of DUKW 34. K-Sea’s attorney, Wayne Meehan, put blame on Devlin personally, calling his conduct a “meltdown” driven by a family emergency. Ride the Ducks attorney Jack Snyder argued his company’s crew bore no responsibility, saying the duck boat was “helpless in the channel” and the barge had room to go around it.⁹¹⁰

The federal nonjury trial began in May 2012 before U.S. District Judge Thomas O’Neill. On the second day, after emotional testimony from Kevin Grace, Judge O’Neill directed the parties to negotiate. A $17 million settlement was reached on May 9, 2012. Of that total, $15 million went to the families of Schwendtner and Prem, and a separate $2 million fund was established for approximately 20 other survivors. The allocation between K-Sea and Ride the Ducks was not disclosed.¹¹²

What Happened to the Companies

K-Sea Transportation Partners was acquired by Kirby Corporation in July 2011 for approximately $604 million and became a wholly owned subsidiary. At acquisition, K-Sea operated 63 tugboats and 58 tank barges.¹²

Ride the Ducks Philadelphia kept operating after the 2010 accident, though its boats were grounded for eight months. On May 8, 2015, a Ride the Ducks vehicle struck and killed 68-year-old pedestrian Elizabeth Karnicki at 11th and Arch Streets. Police reported witnesses saw the victim crossing against a red light while using an electronic device, and no citation was issued. The Karnicki family filed a wrongful-death suit, also handled by Mongeluzzi, alleging the vehicles had “huge blind spots.”¹³¹⁴

On October 5, 2016, Ride the Ducks Philadelphia announced it was suspending operations indefinitely. The company, which had run tours since 2003, cited a 330 percent increase in insurance premiums and said continued operations were “not financially feasible.”¹⁵

The Wider Duck Boat Safety Problem

The Philadelphia collision sits inside a longer record of fatalities involving these modified World War II-era DUKW amphibious vehicles. In 1999, thirteen people drowned when Miss Majestic sank in Hot Springs, Arkansas; the NTSB found a continuous canopy roof had trapped the operator and most of the passengers underwater and recommended canopies be removed during waterborne operations. The Coast Guard declined to make that a formal requirement.¹⁶ In 2015, a duck boat collision with a charter bus in Seattle killed five college students. In 2016, a woman was struck and killed by a duck boat in Boston.¹⁵

The deadliest incident came on July 19, 2018, when Stretch Duck 7 sank on Table Rock Lake near Branson, Missouri during a sudden storm with winds of 73 mph, killing 17 of the 31 people aboard. The NTSB found the probable cause was the operator’s decision to keep running waterborne tours despite a severe thunderstorm warning, and that a fixed canopy and closed side curtain impeded escape. Of 56 life jackets aboard, 41 were still attached to the canopy framing when the vessel was recovered.¹⁷

Congress responded. The Duck Boat Safety Enhancement Act passed the Senate in December 2020. In March 2022, the House passed the Don Young Coast Guard Authorization Act, which included the Duck Boat Safety Improvement Act sponsored by Congressman Andre Carson. Its provisions covered reserve buoyancy and watertight compartmentalization, adherence to severe weather alerts, removal or reconfiguration of canopies during waterborne operations, personal flotation device requirements, improved bilge pumps and alarms, and stronger crew training and certification.¹⁸¹⁹

Mongeluzzi, who represented families in both Philadelphia cases and in Branson, called the repurposed military vehicles “deathtraps operating on land and in the water,” and said the recurring tragedies traced to operators putting profits over safety and to the Coast Guard’s failure to act on NTSB recommendations that had been outstanding for two decades.²⁰

1
NTSB. Collision of Tugboat/Barge Caribbean Sea/The Resource With Amphibious Passenger Vehicle DUKW 34
2
CNN. Settlement Reached in Philadelphia Duck Boat Accident
3
Philadelphia Inquirer. Both Victims of Delaware River Duck-Boat Accident Found
4
NBC Philadelphia. Duck Boat Victim Threw Her Life Preserver to Deckhand
5
U.S. Department of Justice. Devlin Plea Agreement Press Release
6
CBS News Philadelphia. Tug Boat Pilot Takes Stand During Sentencing Phase
7
Professional Mariner. Operator of Tug in Fatal Duck Boat Collision Pleads Guilty, Sentenced to a Year in Prison
8
CNN. Duck Boat Crash Operator Sentenced to Year in Prison
9
NBC Philadelphia. Parents of Duck Boat Victims Speak Out on Eve of Trial
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CBS News. Video of PA Duck Boat Tragedy Shown During Trial
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NBC Philadelphia. $17M Settlement Reached in Duck Boat Crash
12
PR Newswire. Kirby Corporation Completes Purchase of K-Sea Transportation Partners
13
Billy Penn. Philadelphia’s Ride the Ducks Tour Boats Have Abruptly Shut Down
14
WPVI-TV (6abc). Lawyer of Victims in Deadly Philly Duck Boat Crashes Calls for Shutdown
15
NBC Philadelphia. Ride the Ducks Philadelphia Suspends Operations
16
NTSB. Safety Report on Amphibious Passenger Vessels
17
NTSB. Sinking of Amphibious Passenger Vessel Stretch Duck 7
18
U.S. Congress. Congressional Research Service Report on Amphibious Passenger Vehicles
19
Office of Congressman Andre Carson. House Passes Carson Bill to Make Duck Boats Safer
20
NBC Philadelphia. Duck Boats’ Deadly History