Train Our Own Mariners

Government shipping agencies; which include the Military Sealift Command, NOAA, and the US Army Corps of Engineers; have long benefitted from the skilled experience of military veterans and retirees. It is essentially a Service Life Extension, allowing these mariners to serve a second career at sea. In exchange for the US Navy's terms of enlistment (typically 4-6 years today), young adults finishing high school are offered a vocational training program with an in-service apprenticeship. Based on reports of those who attended both military and civilian training, these Navy "A" and "C" schools exceed the rigor of comparable private maritime training programs, whose students are often the paying customer. The US Navy is set up to be a training institution: even on highly-automated ships built from the 1990's onwards, crewing scales allow for extensive on-the-job training, or time served "under instruction". Chief Petty Officers are responisble for evaluating new recruits under Personal Qualification Standards (the PQS), and commissioned Training Officers ensure that these qualifications are completed in a timely fashion. Do we have anything comparable in the civilian world? The Military Sealift Command is giving it a try with civil service mariners. When I was first hired as an engineer in 2015, the youngest entry-level hire was 23 years of age; at the time, they could expect people to bring career skills- in warehousing, foodservice, or equipment maintenance- to the ship. In a different kind of employment market, the agency has been recruiting high school seniors with on-the-spot job offers for family-wage jobs. At least 300 offers have gone to young adults from the Hampton Roads region of Virginia in the past year as Steward Utilitymen, Wipers, and Ordinary Seamen. On paper, this is the right thing to do, in order to alleviate the skilled trades gap with homegrown talent. In reality, this new on-the-job training mission adds additional duties for those expected to provide the training: the officers and skilled ratings, who are often covering for a vacant billet themselves. To earn Merchant Mariner Credentialling as a skilled rating, new entrants must complete sea time, onboard skills assessments, and classroom training. The Wiper Advacement Program and Ordinary Seaman Advacement Program are now contractual commitments on the part of Military Sealift Command, to provider personnal training and two career promotions. Compared to intermittent training efforts made in previous years, the Military Sealift Command has assigned significant and continuing financial resources for vocational training at the private Mid Atlantic Maritime Academy. In my short time as a First Assistant Engineer, I have overseen three onboard promotions through this initiative. If there is a limitation, it is that the Military Sealift Command cannot guarantee prospective mariners a constant annual hiring quota. These on-the-job career advancement programs are a necessary solution for skills gap between young people and workforce demands. Once such a program is institutionalized and fully appreciated by an organization, it's unlikely to stop.

Book Review: The Greatest Beer Run Ever

I have read plenty of merchant mariners’ novels that collect dust on bookshelves at ship’s libraries and maritime museums. But there is one I read recently that has reached broad acclaim: The Greatest Beer Run Ever, written by John “Chick” Donohue. In the mid-1960’s, hundreds of American merchant ships were employed in the Vietnam war effort, to bring food, fuel, and ammunition from the United States to the front lines of conflict. Many of these ships were small-tonnage relics of the Second World War, and needed a large number of American mariners to crew them. In contrast, our war materiel buildup in the 2003 liberation of Iraq required a few dozen merchant vessels of large, modern tonnage. In the former era, carefree young men accepted the dangers of North Vietnamese enemy attack- which did happen too frequently, in exchange for twice the usual rate of pay. While Chickie’s true-blue membership in the National Maritime Union (NMU) facilitated this adventure to wartime Vietnam, the book is very approachable for landlubbers. We could say that our protagonist, Chickie, came from a different time when, in a transient and essential workforce, you could actually work a voyage onboard a freighter, without career consequences. Using the more-lenient rules of the pre-connectivity era, and his diplomatic tongue, he pulled a legendary shore leave feat to bring beer and morale to his fellow hometown soldiers in and around Saigon. While you’d likely be tossed by the union today for flagrantly violating shore leave policy, most mariners know a colleague who’s willing to venture beyond the pier, and official liberty restrictions, in Djibouti or Okinawa. Chickie’s spirit lives on.