What Crew Should Know About Vessel Arrest After an Injury on Board

When a crew member is sexually assaulted aboard a yacht, they are often told they have no recourse. But a potential remedy does exist, and it speaks the only language the industry can't ignore.

In February, Dockwalk reported on a yachting industry searching for ways to make itself safer. But most of that effort asks the industry to police itself; policies and training are easy to announce and easy to ignore. When the companies that own these vessels hide behind flags of convenience, shell corporations, and constant movement between jurisdictions, what can actually force an owner to make a yacht safe?

In our experience representing crew against some of the largest maritime companies, we have seen the pattern again and again: owners take sexual misconduct seriously and invest in creating zero tolerance workplaces when failing to do so becomes expensive. Real change does not come from better intentions. It comes from consequences. Anyone serious about safer yachts must understand how to create those consequences.

Sexual Assault is an Injury

We tend to think of injury at sea as physical and accidental: a fall, a collision, a crushed hand, or a line parting under load. But a sexual assault is an injury, too. It is a violent act against a person’s body, and the harm it leaves behind is real and often takes longer to heal than any physical wound: trauma, the loss of any sense of safety, a career cut short. In the United States, maritime law recognizes this harm. A crew member sexually assaulted in her bunk is injured in the service of the vessel just as surely as one hurt on deck.

The Claim Travels With the Ship

When a crew member is sexually assaulted aboard a vessel owned by a large, established company based in the U.S., we can sue the company. There is a real entity in a known place, with an address, assets, and insurance. But yachting rarely works that way. The vessel flies the flag of one country, is owned by a shell company in a second, which is held by another company in a third, and the human being who actually owns the yacht may be almost impossible to identify — let alone serve with a lawsuit. The whole structure is designed to make sure there is no one, in any jurisdiction, who can easily be held accountable.

But maritime law has an ancient way around that shell game: it treats the vessel itself as responsible for the injury, not just the company that owns it. A serious injury on board creates a “maritime lien” against the ship — a legal claim against the vessel itself that secures the injured seafarer’s right to compensation. The lien arises automatically, at the moment of injury. It does not depend on the flag the ship flies, where the owner is incorporated, or whether the assault happened in U.S. waters. It attaches to the hull and travels with her.

That is the feature the industry's offshore structure cannot easily defeat. A yacht can fly a flag of convenience and hide behind a wall of shell companies, but after a crew member is sexually assaulted, a maritime lien automatically attaches to the vessel, waiting. The first time the vessel enters a U.S. port, it can be seized by the U.S. Marshals Service and held until the owner posts security or the claim is resolved. The ship itself is made to answer for what happened aboard.

A Case in Point

In early 2025 we were contacted by a 25-year-old woman who was sexually assaulted aboard a St. Vincent–flagged yacht while it was docked at English Harbour, Antigua. It was her first contract at sea. She joined as second stewardess and was made to share a tiny cabin with the chef, a much older man and a stranger to her. The only other woman aboard was the chief stewardess — her supervisor and the captain's partner.

She had been aboard less than two weeks when the chef came back from a night ashore and entered the cabin where she was asleep. He forced himself into her bunk and assaulted her as she fought and begged him to stop. The next morning, he apologized by WhatsApp. She reported it to the chief stewardess, the captain, human resources, the St. Vincent flag state, and the Antiguan police. None of it made her feel safe. Within days, the chef had quietly flown home, and she had resigned and been repatriated. The yacht kept working, and the chef, in time, returned to his job aboard. She was left to rebuild her life: out of work, far from home, and only weeks into the career she had just started.

The Arrest

That is where these stories usually end. But this one was different. A few months later, the yacht docked in Fort Lauderdale. We filed suit in U.S. federal court in the Southern District of Florida, and the court issued an arrest warrant for the vessel. The U.S. Marshals Service arrested it at its berth, and the captain and crew were ordered off without their belongings — among them the chef, who by then had returned to work. An arrest is aimed at the vessel. It does not single anyone out: the whole crew loses their home aboard, whether or not they had anything to do with what happened.

The Bond

A seized yacht disrupts all the yacht owner’s plans: the vessel earns nothing, runs up custodial fees every day it sits, and cannot move. Had the owner done nothing, the court could have ordered the yacht sold at a U.S. Marshal's auction to satisfy the assault claim. After three and a half months under arrest, the owner posted a $1 million bond, which stood in place of the vessel in the litigation.

The arrest also forced a hidden owner into the open: someone had to appear, hire counsel, file a verified claim identifying the owner, and post a bond. The shell companies stopped working once the yacht was in custody.

The Fight to Make the Case Go Away

The owner fought back twice. First he moved to vacate the arrest, arguing a U.S. court had no business seizing a St. Vincent–flagged yacht over an assault in Antigua. The court disagreed: a sexual assault aboard a vessel on navigable waters is a maritime claim, and a U.S. court can hear it even when it happened in foreign waters aboard a foreign-flagged vessel. After months of written briefing and court hearings, the arrest stood.

Then came the more serious move — asking the court to dismiss the case entirely and send it to Antigua under the doctrine of forum non conveniens. Had it worked, our client would have been pushed toward a foreign court which the owner never showed could offer a real remedy, and a practically impossible place for a repatriated crew member with no money to pursue her claim.

But the burden was on the owner, and he could not meet it. He offered no evidence that Antigua provides a comparable remedy for an assaulted seafarer, and no explanation of how an Antiguan court could even arrest the vessel. The evidence was the yacht — which regularly enters U.S. waters — and the crew who worked on board, none of whom lived in Antigua. What kept the case in Florida was the vessel’s own ties to the United States. The motion was denied.

The Resolution

With the arrest upheld and the case staying in Florida, the litigation proceeded to the discovery phase like a standard civil lawsuit. About a year after it began, the parties went to a court-ordered mediation, and the case was confidentially resolved. The $1 million bond was discharged and the matter closed. The crew member who had been told she had no recourse had answered that claim in the only language the industry reliably hears.

Why This Case Could be Made

A vessel arrest is only as strong as the proof behind it, and much of what made this case work came from what our client did in the days after the assault and before she ever spoke to a lawyer. None of it required legal training.

She reported through proper channels: to the captain and chief stewardess, HR, the St. Vincent flag state, and the Antiguan police. All of these reports created a dated record outside the company’s control. She preserved her messages, deleting nothing. The chef’s WhatsApp apology, sent the morning after, corroborated her account in a way testimony alone rarely can. She kept her own dated notes and copies of her employment paperwork. And in one instance she recorded a call with HR, with permission. (A word of caution: recording laws vary by jurisdiction. Some require the consent of everyone on the call, so know the rules that apply before recording anyone without their permission.)

What ties these together is simple: our client created a permanent record while events were fresh and kept it in her own hands. By the time the yacht entered Fort Lauderdale, the case was already built.

More Than Assault

This remedy is not limited to sexual assault. The same maritime lien reaches serious physical injuries aboard and unpaid wages, which is one of the oldest and most automatic claims a seafarer has against a vessel. Severe sexual harassment or bullying can support a claim too, but only where the conduct is serious and the psychological injury is real and documented. That area of law is still developing. Vessel arrest is not an exotic maneuver. It is a core seafarer’s remedy, and sexual assault sits squarely within it.

The Shield that Wasn't

The flag on a yacht’s stern can shield it from scrutiny. It does not shield it from accountability. As more crew learn that the remedy travels with the vessel, more of these cases will be brought, and the foreign flag and the foreign harbor will turn out to be far less of an impediment to justice. That is how yachting actually becomes safer: not through promises, but because misconduct finally carries a cost.