In the early morning hours of July 30, 2025, on one of the final nights of SUNY Maritime College's 2025 Summer Sea Term, the second mate of the Training Ship Empire State VII allegedly groped a female first-class cadet at Paddy's on the Bay, a bar near campus where dozens of the ship's crew members had gathered on liberty to celebrate the end of the 75-day international cruise.
A crew member standing a few feet away turned and saw the second mate grope the cadet "plain as day," according to a written account of the night obtained by MLAA. Moments later, according to a person who was standing beside her, the cadet who was targeted broke down in tears before telling a staff member "I need to go home. I don't feel safe."
The officer, Thomas Kiernan, served as the ship's second mate during the 2025 Summer Sea Term and was also a member of the college's shoreside teaching faculty, where he taught navigation and marine transportation courses, including "Nautical Operations: Safety" and "Introduction to Navigation."
Within weeks, Kiernan was gone from the college. So was the ship's master, Captain Morgan McManus, a six-year veteran of the training ship’s wheelhouse who had been promoted to Vice President of Regimental Affairs less than a year earlier. McManus left the college shortly after the incident. Sources agree the captain was informed of the incident but differ on his reaction: one believed he "didn't want to be associated with it," while another told MLAA that McManus seemed "completely disgusted" when he learned what had happened and quickly made clear that it was the last the school would be seeing of Tom Kiernan. MLAA has not confirmed whether McManus's resignation was connected to the incident.
Nearly a year later, the college has never publicly acknowledged that the incident occurred. And according to a source with firsthand knowledge of the 2025 cruise, SUNY Maritime may never have reported the officer to the U.S. Coast Guard at all, raising questions about whether federal sexual assault reporting requirements applied, and whether they were followed by the Captain and SUNY Maritime leaders.
A Second Mate Too Drunk to Stand
Multiple eyewitnesses described the same scene to MLAA: a licensed officer aboard the Empire State VII entrusted with training cadets and standing navigational watch who was so profoundly intoxicated that he had lost the ability to perform the most basic physical functions.
By 10:00 p.m., according to one source, Kiernan was already "trashed," and staff and cadets in the bar began attempting to convince Kiernan to return to the ship. When the bar's staff cut him off and stopped serving him, he began picking up other people's drinks off the bar and drinking those instead.
For the next three to four hours, sources say, various crew members, staff members, and cadets tried to get their own officer to leave the bar and return to the ship. But he stubbornly refused to leave. Instead, he grew extremely agitated, cursed at the bar staff, and yelled expletives at the students he was responsible for training. At one point he planted himself on the bar's flower planters and would not move.
"This wasn't out of the norm," one crew member wrote in an account obtained by MLAA, "because he is known to have a drinking problem, so we paid him little mind."
It was in the middle of this scene, sometime around 1:15 a.m., that Kiernan stumbled up behind the female first-class cadet and began harassing and touching her.
"Plain as Day"
The crew member was standing at the bar a few feet from the cadet when Kiernan lurched past behind them — and stopped.
"I turned around to look at him to see what looked like him grabbing her butt," the crew member wrote. "He pulled his hand back for a few seconds, now directly looking at him I see him plain as day groping her."
The cadet spun around. According to the written account, the cadet said words to the effect of: "Who's touching me? Oh my god, was that Mate Kiernan?"
Kiernan was already "stumbling his way back out to the patio like nothing happened,” according to the source.
A second source, who was standing with the cadet when Kiernan groped her, corroborated the account. The grab was not the first contact of the night: the cadet reported that Kiernan had been hovering around her and brushing up against her repeatedly for some time.
"At first I thought it was an accident," the cadet said, according to a source. "It clearly was not."
"I need to go home," the source recalled her saying. "I don't feel safe."
Then she broke down crying.
"They're Saying I Touched Girls"
What followed, according to multiple sources, was an ugly standoff outside the bar.
Bar staff were told what had happened and Kiernan was told to leave. Two cadets tried to walk their own ship's officer out of the building. Barred from re-entry, Kiernan began screaming at the top of his lungs that "I'm not going fucking anywhere" and that if the "assholes" wanted him out, they would "have to call the cops."
When the crew member who witnessed the groping went outside and tried to talk Kiernan into returning to the ship, Kiernan denied everything: "They're saying I touched girls, I don't touch girls, call the cops they'll tell you," Kiernan reportedly said.
The confrontation escalated. Kiernan puffed out his chest and got in the crew member's face. According to multiple witnesses, Kiernan called the crew member a "worthless piece of shit," screamed a homophobic slur, threatened to give the crew member "a fucking problem," and gestured as if to start a fight. Throughout the exchange, the account says, Kiernan was slurring his words, wobbling on his feet and repeatedly falling into the bushes outside the bar.
The crew member tried to phone another officer to come collect Kiernan; the call went unanswered. A member of the college's full-time staff who had left the bar earlier returned to help talk his colleague down. He was calmer with the college staffer, but still belligerent, still refusing to leave, still demanding the police be called, and still hurling slurs.
Finally, at approximately 2:30 a.m., two cadets physically picked up the ship's second mate and carried him towards the ship. Eventually, Kiernan demanded they put him down and stumbled off alone in the direction of the ship. A source who saw him that night told MLAA he made his way back aboard the training ship, alone and in that condition, up the gangway.
In the days that followed, according to a source, Kiernan's parents came to the college to pick him up.
She Was Scheduled to Stand Watch With Him
The cadet had been having a great summer, a source told MLAA. "She was happy, she was excited to graduate and go on with her life."
In the wake of the incident, "she was in a sense ashamed," the source said. "She was like, what did I do to make this happen to me? What did I do to provoke this?"
There was also an immediate, practical problem: the cadet was scheduled to stand watch with Kiernan early in the morning. The man who had just groped her held a position of direct authority over her training.
"I have a watch with him," she said, according to a source. "I don't want him to fail me for not showing up for watch, but I don't want to be around him." Staff members quickly maneuvered to solve the problem and she was quietly taken off the watch.
And there was the calculus that so many women in the maritime industry describe — the fear that reporting carries a heavier professional cost for the victim than for the perpetrator.
"There are so few girls on the ship that no one wants to have a reputation as someone who reported someone and still be out on the open water," the source said. "In the victim's eyes, she didn't want to be that girl."
Sources believe a report about the incident was ultimately made to college administrators. One source said their understanding is that a Title IX complaint was filed against Kiernan and that he was fired. The college has never confirmed either.
The Coast Guard Question
The most consequential allegation comes from a source who contacted MLAA after reading our recent reporting on the July 2026 arrest of a SUNY Maritime cadet on six charges including attempted first-degree rape of a physically helpless person. The source told MLAA that, according to officers with firsthand knowledge of the 2025 cruise, SUNY Maritime did not report the incident to the U.S. Coast Guard. The source acknowledged they could not independently verify the claim.
"If that is the case, it is either gross negligence or a cover-up of the incident, and both would be abhorrent," the source said.
The legal stakes of that question are significant, and they expose an unresolved gap in the law itself.
Under 46 U.S.C. § 10104, as amended by the Safer Seas Act, “responsible entities” of U.S.-flagged vessels are required to report complaints and incidents of sexual assault and sexual harassment involving crew members to the U.S. Coast Guard. Sources say the cadets and shipboard officers, including Kiernan and the cadet he is accused of groping, remained part of the sea term's ship's company and had not yet been discharged from the vessel's articles. They were ashore on liberty, but they had not been signed off the ship.
The statute defines “responsible entity” to include the master of the vessel, along with the vessel's owner and managing operator. Whether Captain McManus, the college, or anyone else ever made the report to the Coast Guard that the statute contemplates is unknown.
Whether that reporting mandate reaches the Empire State VII, however, is a question the maritime academies have never publicly answered. The same definition turns partly on a vessel being documented and engaged in commercial service — and the training ship is a public vessel, federally owned by the Maritime Administration and operated by SUNY Maritime.
Does 46 U.S.C. § 10104 apply to public vessels?
Do the state maritime academies believe themselves to be exempt from the reporting obligations that Congress imposed on the rest of the industry in the wake of Midshipman-X?
Do the academies have any written policies implementing or disclaiming those obligations?
MLAA has put those questions to SUNY Maritime, MARAD, and the Coast Guard.
If the maritime academies consider their training ships exempt from § 10104, then the thousands of cadets who sail aboard them each summer are sailing outside the very reporting regime Congress built to protect cadets.
Separate from any reporting mandate, the Coast Guard has authority to suspend or revoke a mariner's credential for sexual misconduct. That is the mechanism that determines whether an officer accused of harassing and assaulting a cadet can simply move on to another ship, and another crew. If no referral or agency action ever occurred, there may be no public Coast Guard credential record alerting a future employer, or future shipmates, to the allegations against Kiernan.
A Captain's Abrupt Exit
Captain Morgan McManus was not a short-timer, and he was not just the ship's master.
A SUNY Maritime alumnus with a bachelor's degree in Marine Transportation, McManus was appointed master of the training ship in April 2019 after a career that included more than a decade sailing as master on commercial vessels and nearly ten years running dynamically positioned drillships in the Gulf of Mexico. He led the Empire State on multiple training cruises. In September 2023, he became the first master to take delivery of the brand-new NSMV Empire State VII — the flagship of the federal government's new training-ship program — and in September 2024, the college promoted him to Vice President of Regimental Affairs, a senior administrative post overseeing the cadet regiment itself.
McManus was described by one source as "a great captain" who “trusted staff to do their jobs.” Days after the incident at Paddy's on the Bay, he was gone.
"He had spoken about retirement, but it was a very quick ‘I'm done,’" the source said. He departed before indoctrination for the new class began, and an email went out announcing that he had resigned.
According to the source, McManus knew about the incident, and, in the source's view, "didn't want to be associated with it." Another source disputed that characterization, telling MLAA that McManus did not leave to protect Kiernan — that when informed of the incident, the captain seemed "completely disgusted with it all" and was quick to say it was the last the school would be seeing of Tom Kiernan. MLAA has not confirmed whether his resignation was connected to the incident.
As of this writing, McManus's biography remains live on the SUNY Maritime website, identifying him as the master of the training ship. The college has never publicly announced his departure or explained it. The current master of the Empire State VII is Captain Christopher Zola, who also serves as Vice President for Regimental Affairs.
Questions for SUNY Maritime, MARAD, and the Coast Guard
MLAA has submitted questions to SUNY Maritime College, the Maritime Administration, and the U.S. Coast Guard, including:
- Whether the college received a Title IX complaint or any report arising from the July 30, 2025 incident at Paddy's on the Bay, and how it was resolved;
- Whether Thomas Kiernan was terminated, permitted to resign, or otherwise separated from the college, and on what date;
- Whether the ship's master, the college, or any responsible entity reported the incident to the U.S. Coast Guard under 46 U.S.C. § 10104;
- Whether SUNY Maritime and MARAD consider the reporting obligations of 46 U.S.C. § 10104 to apply to the Training Ship Empire State VII and other state maritime academy training ships, and whether any written policy addresses those obligations;
- Whether the Coast Guard has taken, or is taking, any action against Kiernan's merchant mariner credential;
- Whether the victim was offered the accommodations, protections, and reporting options required under Title IX and New York's Article 129-B;
- The circumstances of Captain McManus's August 2025 resignation and whether it was connected to the incident;
- What alcohol policies applied to licensed officers and crew during the 2025 Summer Sea Term, and whether any officer or staff member was disciplined for alcohol-related conduct during the cruise.
This story will be updated with any response.
MLAA sent a request for comment to Kiernan and McManus’ last known email addresses, which were no longer active. If either mariner sends a comment to MLAA, this story will be updated to include it.
MLAA does not identify victims of alleged sexual misconduct without their consent. MLAA's sources spoke on condition of anonymity.
If you have information about this incident, the 2025 or 2026 Summer Sea Terms, or misconduct at SUNY Maritime or aboard the Training Ship Empire State VII, contact MLAA's tip line at tips@maritimelegalaid.org. All tips are handled with extreme confidentiality and can be submitted anonymously.
