Recently, I went on a Saturday jog through one of Monmouth County, New
Jersey’s leafy neighborhoods. This is “Leave it to Beaver” America, a pleasant
suburb away from the perceived crime of the city and the ticky-tacky of exurban
living. This is the America that our military defends, and the birthplace of
its officer corps. Of the 18 members of my Modern American History class at the
Academy, where all graduates are commissioned, 17 came from suburbs or small
towns- I was the outlier. It was a Saturday, and some residents were going to
synagogue. There was also a yard sale. This Saturday morning experience was
coupled by the realization that the weekend could be my last for several
months.
You see, a ship operates round-the-clock, seven days per
week. While sailing aboard as a cadet, I needed weekends in order to complete
‘sea projects’, or correspondence courses for the Academy. Commercial ships
operate on the thinnest of manning margins. As a permanent crew member, your
presence is required every day: in port, you can have up to sixteen consecutive
hours off the ship, and no more. On commercial ships, “you go to sea to work”.
Or to say it nicely, “work prevents boredom”. If two mates were to become too
ill or injured to stand a bridge watch, the remaining mate and the captain
would be pulling two six-hour shifts per day, with six hours to sleep.
Government ships carry a larger crew that can cover manning gaps, allowing for
realistic contingencies for illness and injury, and for crewmembers to take
weekend passes when the ship is in port. For mates and engineering officers, I
heard that 32 hours is the length of a weekend pass; depending on their job and
manpower needs, other crewmembers can clock out on Friday afternoon and come
back on Monday morning.
Fortunately, by union contract or custom, many ocean-going
American shipping companies have avoided designating seafaring mates and engineers
as salary employees: this clarifies the weekly work schedule, and allows for
overtime. While seafarers are exempt from the 40-hour workweek law, union
standards helped make “time-and-a-half” an expected custom in the merchant
fleet. With time-and-a-half, a 56-hour workweek effectively doubles earnings
from a 40-hour workweek.
Young people like myself are
inexperienced, overconfident, and irresponsible with money. Yet there are
certain advantages of youth: agility, freedom from familial responsibility,
having little to lose financially, and- this
one is from Albert Einstein- time for compounding interest. The
manifestations of the opportunities of youth change over time; they include
going West in the 1800’s; searching for Yukon Gold in 1900; joining the
military; trekking around the globe with just a passport in hand; and working
at a Silicon Valley start-up for stock options and an air mattress in the
office. While I will find new seafarers with previous life experience on the
same boat as myself, I couldn’t miss out on optimal timing. After graduation, I
had the opportunity to “settle down” and get an 8-to-4 office job. But it was
too soon…and I had the rest of my life ahead of me. So what did I do? Go to
sea.
