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Merchant Mariner


Lover of the sea and proud seafarer. Focuses on non-pony creatures. I write ship fics.

More Blog Posts6

Jan
17th
2020

Maritime trivia: some facts about crews. · 5:51pm Jan 17th, 2020

Good [fill in for appropriate time zone] folks,

Today I felt like sharing some little things about ship crews and shining a light on stuff that may not be known about in the wider world. You tell me if you like the random trivia, maybe that might become a thing later.

*The difference between navy and merchants: the ranks.

So that one tends to be overlooked because from an outside perspective, cargo vessels still have a rather hierarchical structure with ranks and multiple departments working together on the same ship (in most cases: deck, engineering and cattering), but they're definitely not comparable to the military.

Trust me, I've sailed on both. They're worlds apart.

For one: ranks. That's one thing I rather like with the maritime industry, and that's the simple rank structure. In many navies you have ranks like the lieutenants, lieutenant-commanders, chief petty officers and whatnot, with so many differences from country to country that you need to pull up a chart everytime you meet a new one. If you ever looked at a NATO ranks table, you know what I'm talking about.

In merchant service it's more simple. The system is mostly standardized the world over with little to no differences and as straightforward a system as you can imagine. For ratings, you have the O/S (Ordinary Seaman) at the bottom, and with some sea time they become A/B (Able-Bodied seaman).

All ratings are led by the Bosun, an A/B with some serious sea time who acts pretty much like a foreman. I'll also add that it can happen that a welder is assigned to the deck department, but their role will often mean that they spend a lot of time with the engine teams.

Officers are pretty simple too. Of course they're led by the Captain (who can also be called the Master), but then the hierarchy branches off between deck and engineering.

In deck, the Chief Officer (or First Mate, all terms are used interchangeably is at the top. Then going down... Nothing fancy. It's just Second Officer, Third Officer, and on larger ships with big complements maybe a Fourth Officer.

Engineering? Same deal: Chief Engineer, then Second, Third and Fourth. With maybe a fully-fledged Electrical Engineer sprinkled on top if the company deems it necessary.

There are of course variations depending on the company and the type of ship (cruise vessels for instance frequently have two sets of Officers and even two Masters), but the terminology is widely accepted by the industry and considered the standard.

*On the matter of nationality.

You probably noticed it in my story. Merchant crews are far from being homogeneous.

The change is actually relatively recent. I know it wasn't the case thirty years ago, but with the advent of multinational companies and the opportunity to gather crews from all over the world, single-nationality crews have been relegated to the navy and the fishing industry.

Nowadays you would be hard pressed to find a ship where all crewmembers speak the same language, which incidentally led to the implementation of standards regarding the knowledge of some basic English for ratings, and compulsory fluency for Officers. Is this respected by all companies? [snort] You wish.

Of course some nationalities are more frequent than others. Filipinos for instance are considered to be the gold standard when you're hiring ratings, with Ukrainians being very popular among companies that ply European ports, followed close behind by Croatians. Indians are also very common, if less sought-after.

Officers are a more mixed bunch. Multinational crews have mostly annihilated the rating supply coming from developped countries, but that has yet to affect Officers. Of course you still have an overwhelming majority of Filipinos and Ukrainians in the trade, but flag-state obligations tend to force some amount of variety in the mix.

I won't lie, the multinational thing isn't always easy to deal with. In my case? I've resigned myself to the fact I would basically never get to use my native language in a professional context, but it can be hard for some to go months on end without meeting a compatriot. Maintaining crew cohesion can also be a challenge, particularly when a crew has a dual split of two nationalities. Some sailors can start forming cliques, and once that gets going it's particularly hard for Officers to make the crew an homogeneous working unit.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

Comments ( 4 )

interesting vary interesting.

Fascinating. I know something about merchant rankings (thanks to a lifelong devotion to the works of A. Bertram Chandler), but this is the first time I have ever seen it spelled out like you did here.

Thank you!

so how do they maintain discipline on a merchant ship? at first one might think things are looser, but given they have less leeway to fuck that I'd imagine thats not the case. also what sort of punishments exist on a vessel, is it just unwanted duties or worse?

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In my experience it is looser in terms of discipline and you usually get more leeway on merchant crafts. Across the board you get more freedom to use your time (or what little you have thereof), but of course there still is a code of conduct you're expected to abide to. You still follow orders and run your watches, but there's a whole lot less of the formality the military comes with.

It's still present and hierarchical, but I'd say it's at the halfway mark between military and shore-civilian life?

Unwanted duties, actually, are something I've seen either on cadets (and school ships), or in the military. Merchant crews usually operate on such minimal crews that if you were to pile punitive duties on a guy, you'd get in the way of labor laws regarding rest periods and you'd just shoot yourself in the foot. Sure, have him peel potatoes for the whole crew, but then he can't run his watch because he's worked too long for that day and you're punishing someone else by giving them his watch.

The military can afford that because you'd have nearly 200 folks on a ship the size of a frigate... but a 150m dry bulk cargo probably only has 20 souls on board. Maybe 30.

So instead it's more... corporate I guess? Lesser breaches in conduct will start with informal warnings, warnings at department level and may reach all the way up to the Captain who has an investigation procedure to follow to examine the grievance. If it escalates, punishments can reach fines of 1 to 3 days' pay, and if that's still not enough, dismissal upon reaching the next port of call where repatriation costs may be billed to the offender up to a maximum of one week's pay.

Note that this 'fine' is on the company sides of things and can (and will, most likely) be escalated to court in extreme cases like gross negligence, assault on fellow shipmates, etc...

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