Jerry Nehl Boylan, the skipper of the Conception dive boat whose negligence at sea led to a deadly inferno and the loss of 34 souls, has been sentenced to a four-year stretch in the big house. The 70-year-old captain from Santa Barbara was found guilty of seaman's manslaughter for his role in the 2019 tragedy off California's coast, as announced by the Justice Department's office.

Boylan presided over a 75-foot float of failure that would meet its watery grave near Santa Cruz Island, following a fire while 34 people slept below deck. According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's office, the captain's "cowardice and repeated failures" were to blame. Judge George H. Wu hammered down the sentence, while a restitution hearing looms on the horizon for July 11.

Prosecutors didn't pull punches, depicting Boylan as the architect of tragedy through his gross negligence. "The fate of the victims on the Conception might have been different were it not for the negligence of the defendant," said Mehtab Syed from the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. A suite of charges painted a damning portrait of his inaction: no night watch, insufficient fire drills, and crew training, and a failure to direct a firefighting response as flames devoured the vessel.

When the flames raged, the captain bolted, abandoning the ship and leaving the doomed passengers trapped below deck, the prosecution claimed. United States Attorney Martin Estrada said in a released statement, “The defendant's cowardice and repeated failures caused the horrific deaths of 34 people.” Investigators from the FBI, CGIS, and ATF were integral in the probe that culminated in Boylan's conviction.

As families of the victims endure an irreversible loss, the law's gavel provides a semblance, albeit incomplete, of closure. The case prosecution team, led by Assistant United States Attorneys of various sections, sought to ensure Boylan's actions didn't escape the grim shadow of justice.