Alright, I have a stack of paperwork to go through, so I put the cans on just for giggles.
First, there are numerous demonstrably wrong things that were said:
A question from an unidentified aircraft about ships at 19:30z plus 15:05
Then an identified request from 823J at 19:30z plus 25:19? about ships!(different voice)
This is a set up, someone is proving a point, or being an arsehole.
The ATC tapes are available.
The only thing correct here is that 823J did ask about Tall-Masted Ships.
For the rest:
The ATC tapes are not available. You are listening to the feed from LiveATC, which is a scanner. Since it is a scanner, and since tower is on more than one frequency, you are not getting "the full story". For example, at times, the first part of transmissions will be clipped: in this case, the "unidentified aircraft" is unidentified only because of the scanner. In any case, 823J was on ground at that time.
So there is no relation between the two transmissions, outside of the fact that there was a tall-masted ship in the harbor.
At other times, you'll miss whole transmissions.
Also false is this statement:
They offered him a couple of options, but he didn't take them.
The facts: they taxied to 22R, then called with their concerns three minutes after being instructed to monitor tower freq.
UA823J asked for 27, and TOWER replied unable.
From there, everyone sorted it out. After about a half hour, Tower offered that the ship was really more in line with 22L than R, and passed the number of the cab supervisor. At that point, UA was already in contact with company, and resolving the issue. There was no hysteria, no accusations, and no irritation, outside of sitting around for an hour.
Armchair Captains? Doesn't LiveATC have forums full of people who listen to scanners all day and can decipher it?