I'd be much less sanguine about this if any of my people had been on the ferry. But my ex, my daughter's mom, was on the ferry that crashed—with this crew—the very run before the crash.

Two witnesses to the Staten Island ferry crash this month said they saw the ferry's assistant captain erect and alone at the controls about a minute before the vessel slammed into a pier, killing 10 people, an official briefed on the investigation said yesterday.

The witnesses ? a crew member and a man on a nearby tugboat ? also said that the ferry's captain, Michael J. Gansas, was not in the Staten Island pilothouse of the Andrew J. Barberi, as he told investigators, the official said.

The witness on the tugboat saw Captain Gansas running across the top of the ferry ? from the Manhattan pilothouse to the Staten Island pilothouse ? after the accident, and the crew member, who was in the Staten Island pilothouse, said Captain Gansas was not there roughly a minute before the boat crashed, the official said.

The two accounts throw into question some of the earlier versions of events that led up to the Oct. 15 crash. Those include one provided by the assistant captain, Richard J. Smith, who suggested to the police in a brief initial statement that he had lost consciousness, and another by Captain Gansas, who said on the day of the crash that he was in the pilothouse and tried to stop the boat from ramming into the pier.