Devlin will surrender Jan. 5 at a federal prison.
"You were pushing a barge the size of a football field," Davis said. "Very few people are entrusted with that level of responsibility."
Devlin, of Catskill, N.Y., pleaded guilty in July to the federal maritime-law equivalent of involuntary manslaughter in the collision that killed Hungarian students Dora Schwendtner, 16, and Szabolcs Prem, 20.
The students drowned in the Delaware at 2:37 p.m. July 7, 2010, when Devlin's tug, pushing an empty municipal waste barge, ran over and sank a Ride the Ducks amphibious vehicle carrying 37 crew and passengers.
"I know what I did," Devlin told Davis, "and I know I feel responsibility for the deaths of these two students every single day with my heart and my mind."
Neither victim's parents were in court. But both families listened to the sentencing by phone with a translator and lawyer in Hungary.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Zauzmer played a video in which the parents toured their children's bedrooms and talked of their loss. Both victims were their families' only children.
Devlin testified that he had been upset and distracted after his wife called him at 12:50 p.m. with news that their son Jacob, then 5, had been deprived of oxygen for eight minutes while undergoing corrective eye surgery.
"I shouldn't have called him, but I was so nervous and panicked," Corinne Devlin said, sobbing. Her husband wept listening to her.
Though the child recovered, Devlin and his wife testified that they were hysterical, fearing he was brain-dead.
