Training at Sea

by Jeffrey Musk

A few months ago I returned to my rotary job onboard a Roll on/Roll off in the Pacific Ocean. Along with the familiar faces of the crew I had been working with for several years was the even more familiar face of my younger brother. He had just finished the first phase of his training program at the Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship. As it happened, my ship was sailing foreign the same day that he was to be assigned to his first vessel. He had the good luck to talk to the placement officer at the school and was sent to my ship as soon as he had said that he had a brother who was an officer in the Merchant Marine.

As an apprentice his time would be split evenly between the deck, engine, and stewards department. While working with the deck department he would take his job assignments from the Boson and work alongside the unlicensed crew. To assure that he received ample hands on training beyond needle gunning and cleaning holds, I arranged a training schedule to have each of the two Ordinary Seamen and the Apprentice come to the bridge on a rotating schedule during my watch with the Captain’s permission.

This on the job training was not mandatory for the novice crew, but my brother was eager to learn as much about standing a watch and steering as he could. I strongly encouraged the ordinaries as well. They were more than happy to spend an hour on the bridge once or twice a week and still get their overtime.

First up was one of the ordinaries. English was a second language for him so I went slow being sure he retained what we discussed. We first covered the basics of how a lookout reports objects and how the compass repeaters functioned. Then I began to explain the mechanics of how the ship’s course was controlled. Each time I mentioned the rudder I would find a quizzical look on the ordinaries face.

After some questioning I was surprised to learn that this particular mariner, whom had been at sea for nearly a decade, had never understood how a ship’s heading was changed.

This bothered me for two reasons. First as a hard working ordinary seaman, I felt that he would naturally take an interest in learning anything new about the way a ship worked. Secondly, his lack of knowledge was probably perceived on other ships as a lack of intelligence and this perception likely hindered any encouragement for him to move up the hawse pipe. Fortunately I had a folder of shipyard photos on the bridge computer so we looked at those before going any further.

It was almost an identical situation for the second ordinary. He too spoke English as a second language and was fluent, but when it came to the basic mechanics of ship construction, rudder and propeller interaction for example, he was completely at a loss. [Continue Reading →]