Is Money Enough?

One of the great appeals of merchant shipping is lifestyle design, where people with wanderlust could take extended trips unthinkable to those working a 50-week-a year grind. The other appeal is paying off student loans in 5 years or less. Use Mom and Dad as a mailing address, and sleep and eat on the employer’s dime. Port visits are open again, but seeing the recent difficulties for recruiting and retention in the maritime field, something else is going on. We are a decade past “peak college”; enrollment is declining in both absolute numbers and percentage. Where maritime academies burst at their seams ten years ago with students hopeful for solid employment, today, there is more space in the dorms and hallways. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I’ve seen posters from the 1920’s proclaiming the need for more education. Slacking students in the 1980’s (see “A Nation at Risk”) were a threat to national security and economic prosperity. In the post-NAFTA era, education would be the lifeline for workers displaced from uncompetitive industries and outdated factories. Populists like Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump countered this assertion with a more authoritative model: the government could pay for infrastructure programs and subsidize the construction of new factories for the titans of industry. The construction of new oceangoing training ships under recent Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, the first of which launched last year as the “T/S Empire State VII”, is an icon of this model. Yet, more recently under President Biden and his state-level allies have accomplished the same populist improvement through a different model, by raising the minimum wage and tipping the scales of arbitration towards labor. With the floor as high as $20 per hour in California, or $15 per hour elsewhere ($30,000 per year), entry-level workers without college degrees are earning similarly to college graduates five years ago, who would accept subsistence wages to get a foot in the door. Likewise, entry level shipboard jobs can pay close to what newly-graduated officers earn. Traditionally, many seafarers hailed from high cost-of-living areas such as New York and Boston; today, recruiting focuses on the lower-cost Coastal South, and not requiring municipal services much of the year, many experienced mariners establish residence in states without an income tax, predominately in Florida and Texas. There is less pressure to become an officer for the higher pay, or to dedicate a career to a field where Sundays are often spent at work, rather than at church. For now, higher education has lost its end-all, final-word status as an economic proposal. But as I have stated before, the growth of understanding is still essential to the modern mariner.

Good Crews and Safe Skies

Large passenger engulfed in flames at Haneida Airport in Tokyo! Everyone survived! I call it a pleasant miracle; others prefer to give credit to the flight crew and passengers. Quick evacuation of the aircraft was indeed necessary; the aircraft's interior was fire retardent but not fireproof. Passengers followed directions, and correctly left their belongings onboard. What seems like an anomaly of good disciple to Americans is the expected response by the United States' Federal Aviation Administration. Evacuate a full aircraft in 90 seconds. Are we up to the task? The common Boeing 737 was first evaluated in the 1960's. Since then, passengers have become bigger, seats narrower, and no longer trained with military discipline. But didn't the 2009 landing of Flight 1549 on New York's Hudson River prove that we Americans could do the right thing? Kind of; this plane was on a "banker's run" between New York and the finance-driven city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Before videoconferencing hit its stride in 2020, businesspeople used to take weekly plane trips to routine meetings. So you had a lot of experience fliers who were not predispositioned to rock the norms. A bit different maker than a tourist flight to Orlando. I think, overall, that Japan Airlines Flight 516 is a wake-up to pay attention to maintaining standards of passenger safety.

Eggnog Thoughts

I've never done a Christmas at sea. My ship was always in port, or I was on vacation. Such was the case last year, when I was in a Singapore shipyard. Many of us went 'out to town' and came back to the officer's mess with stories of our adventures in the city-state, where most venues and activities are open on Christmas Day. For Christians, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus; but in the broader societal sense, is about connecting with people, friends and family. In contrast to my experience with United States public vessels, most ships do not take a day off for Christmas. You might need a tap on the shoulder to remember that it is a day of joy and merriment; at the same time the folks back home are caught up in their Christmas activities- shopping, church, and gatherings. Here's to the seafarer in your life.

First Class Cabins for All

On the ships Titanic and Olympia, First class was not a monolith: while the titans of empires and businesses enjoyed a luxurious experience with multi-room suites and ocean views, many cabins could be assigned to either first- or second- class passengers, with the difference between the two classes being the public amenities available. Notably, the ship was constrained in both food refrigeration capacity and freshwater production. In terms of dining, adherence to the set menu was expected; and outside of top tier suites, bathtubs were supplied with saltwater, and tap water was rationed by cabin stewards. Third class accommodations, mainly occupied by working-class immigrants, were spartan, and meals predominately made of porridge, bread, and potato stew. In the postwar United States, the builders of the liner SS United States considered a two-class arrangement, breaking from the pre-war and European class divisions. Third class was retained, however, to allow economical transportation of enlisted military personnel. Today, on modern cruise ships, class distinctions have fallen away.

The Year of Yes

If I look over the past year, I could tell you that I've broaded my horizons. Not so much through international work travel, since that was already happening, but through journeys undertaken in the United States. What was the reason for doing it now? There was the fear of turning 30 and entering middle age (by some peoples' definition). It felt like the right time to complete items off the bucket list. There is also the fact that the quality of travel and accomodation services are returning to pre-COVID norms; more hospitality, and less travail. Supplementing my actual vacation time, this year I also received weeklong interludes of basket leave - or administrative leave- while awaiting training classes and travel to and from the 5 ships I have spent time onboard this year. In April, I submitted my package for a Chief Engineer's License, issued by the US Coast Guard in Baltimore. In May, I hiked the first 100 miles of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Maryland, with an interesting 5-day Turbo Activation of a reserve ship in-between the two hiking trips. In June, I learned how to dig holes with an excavator. I was surprised the construction equipment company rented it to me without proof of training. In July, I visited Tijuana, as my ship was in San Diego. In August, I drove an electric car long-distance to see the giant rubber duck in Crisfield, MD. This is where I boarded the ferry to Tangier Island, a historic community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. In November, I attended a family Thanksgiving in Seattle. This was the first large reunion since 2019. And I am writing this blog post from Amtrak's southbound Crescent Train, an overnight trip from Washington, DC to New Orleans.

Signing Off the Ship

There I was, standing awkwardly on the MacArthur Promenade at Naval Base Sasebo, six hours before my bus was due to depart for the airport. I'd forgotten that most ships, especially those overseas, are in a continous state of motion. While I was packing to leave, the ship was preparing to go to sea for underway replenishment. You're with the mission, or you're left behind at the pier. For the past year, I'd ridden the edge cases: the ship that had a 50% crew turnover leaving the Singapore shipyard in January; two based in Norfolk that rotated officers every month; and another that shed most of its crew as it headed into the Portland, Oregon shipyard. But the shock was getting to me; there was no time to unwind while still onboard- I had to demonstrate equipment, evaluate crewmembers, and replicate or delete computer files. I'd be away from the ships until after the New Year; and I was unlikely to return to Japan - or to those characters on the USNS Yukon- in 2024. While no day onboard was the same, there was a particular routine. Be in the engine room at 0530 to check people in for overtime, come back at 0800 to handle urgent issues, and then attack the monthly preventative maintenance worklist. There was also the guilt of bounty: while the deck officers were counting their days overdue for relief (43! 90!), I was getting off early, as one of the other engineers onboard was promoted into my position as First Engineer, allowing one of us to leave. Although all the officers are US citizens, many grew up overseas, so there was confusion over why I wanted to sign off the ship before a red letter day (as seen on government calenders) called Thanksgiving. Red letter days were overtime days, after all. Then I remembered what I wanted to do, if I ever had the time in Sasebo. This was the best opportunity to take the train to Nagasaki; those in less senior positions, with time to spare on weekends, had often talked well of the city marked in history. The train station had baggage lockers; due to security concerns little need, there really is no public place to keep unattended baggage on military bases. Once my train was outside of Sasebo, I relized that I was a tourist on a paid vacation in Japan.

The End of Overtime

Overtime pay, “time and a half” by law, and sometimes higher by employer-labor agreement, has been one of the building bricks of the postwar middle class. The first working-class beneficiaries of this provision in the 1940’s were familiar with six-day workweeks, and for those who grew up on the family farm, a seven-day workweek. The 40-hour workweek was foremost a job-sharing measure to end the Great Depression, but was also recognized as a move that gave the workforce more time for rest and recreation. White collar professionals, domestic workers, and many small-boat mariners do not receive overtime pay. Over the decades, retail managers have also found themselves as “exempt” workers. At least one maritime officers’ union has switched contracts from overtime-eligible to pure salary. For those still eligible for overtime pay, the allure has lessened, especially among the youngest generations. Time-and-a-half doesn’t go as far as it used to. Oliver Anthony sung this year: “Overtme hours for bull---- pay”. Baby Boomers worked long hours to buy grown-up toys: seldom-used RVs and boats that are still in shape to be used by the next generation, no new payments needed. In the past, overtime hours were often voluntary, in that you opted to stay to finish a job, of signed up for an extra shift. But in a time of staffing shortage, mandatory overtime offers less flexibility. Where there might have been a sense of obligation for a sole breadwinner to earn a little more money after-hours, today’s more-than-likely two-income household must share domestic chores, and passing jokes in the air-conditioned control room may appear more enjoyable than Saturday diaper duty. To cope with these changes in expectations, factories that were once running 60-hour average workweeks are adapting to a two-shift schedule. As far as practices in deep-sea shipping, weekly workhours have probably increased in the past 50 years, with the reduction of dedicated positions such as Radio Officer, Purser, and Machinist. However, tours of duty on American ships have fallen from an average of 6 months to 3 months; work harder for fewer months per year. Reliable automation, like the new cargo winches onboard USNS Arctic requiring half the operators as older systems; and increasing the mean time between equipment failures, do hold promise for freeing up mariners’ time, while at sea.