I’ve vowed to myself that if I don’t have a clear goal in life within 3 years of graduating college, I’m going to try to get a job on a freighter on the Great Lakes. I have loved sailing and the Great Lakes my whole life, can learn how to do just about anything requiring manual labor or basic mechanics, have a good tolerance for inclement weather, and don’t mind long periods of boredom or cramped spaces. I think I would be an ideal crewman on a merchant ship, and it would be nice to get away from my yuppie surroundings for a while.
How do you get a job doing this? Is there some kind of union you have to join? How does the application process work? Is there a high turnover for these positions? Are they hiring frequently?
Admit you just want to wave to the people at the locks as the freighter leaves Duluth. You should look up one of the companies that ship on the great lakes and ask them what it takes to work on a ship.
Working on a Great Lakes freighter was a fantasy of mine years ago. I used to go down to the Toronto islands and watch the big boats sliding out into Lake Ontario through the Eastern channel. Sadly, I was informed that school was the way to go, unless I dreamed of a life of manual labor.
I have no advice, but I say go for it – at least a year. Just remember about those November gales coming early on Superior, OK?
No, but I did look into getting a Merchant Marine license. Understand that the licensing has changed since the MM is now under the Dept. of Homeland Security.
I have a few buddies who are charter captains on the Great Lakes and they had to go and take classes to be able to get that liscensing, and they said that most of the jobs as a merchant crewman on a laker requires schooling and that the romantic notion of wharf rats being picked up to crew a ship died out in the 1940’s or so.
I looked over the linked site and its further link to the STCW '95 policy and it appears that those are actually oriented to officers, not general crewmen.
When I sailed in '71 and '72, the union (in my case Steelworkers Local 1000) had only been through two contracts and had not yet asserted themselves. My Dad, working for GM, had a friendly business relationship with a man working for Pickands-Mather or Youngstown Sheet and Tube whose son had sailed the season before. My Dad suggested to his associate that I would be interested and that gentleman suggested I write to Interlake Steamship Company and ask for an application. The application came back for me to fill out with the notation, “Recommended Pete Hoyt III.” Since one of the ships was the Elton (P.) Hoyt II, I was not too surprised when my application was accepted and I was told to report to a ship in early May. I had to get a physical and fill out some Coast Guard paperwork, (you need a Coast Guard issued ID (Z card, maybe?) to work), but it was no big deal. Two years (and a contract renewal) later, my brother attempted to do the same thing and was tersely told to report to the Union hall. He did get on an Interlake boat, but the following year he found himself working on a Wilson boat.
It is my understanding that deck crews (and engine crews?) have a different union, now, but I would not be surprised to discover that the (current) union is the gateway to employment on the lakers for positions below that of officer.
I suppose it depends on when you begin to take you count. When I sailed, there were twelve ore companies each operating from five to fifteen boats (with US Steel operating 40). The vast majority of those boats carried between 11,000 and 14,000 tons of ore and required crews of up to 38 men. By 2000, several of the fleets had vanished and the remaining fleets relied much more on ships that carried 45,000 to 50,000+ tons of ore with a crew of 27 or 28. US Steel was down to 13 boats–probably hauling more ore, faster, than the earlier fleet with fewer than 25% of the number of crewmen. My old fleet (which, at the time, was already using, on average, larger ships with smaller crews than US Steel) is down from 13 vessels to nine, and from an estimated 480 crew to an estimated 245 crew.
If one starts the count around 1990, the traffic may not be down much, now, but if you move the beginning point back to 1980 (much less 1970), traffic almost seems to have evaporated on the lakes.
(The Canadians may offset the overall traffic picture. They were already heavily invested in boats carrying around 25,000 tons with crews around 30 and their need/desire to take ore (or grain) all the way to the mouth of the St. Lawrence has worked against them investing in huge ships that cannot navigate the locks on the St. Lawrence. I have no idea whether they have suffered the same loss of actual fleets, although they may not have since they are not using larger boats that eliminate the need for lots of 13,000 tonners.
Yup. The terminology may be different in relation to Lakers, but in my experience if you want to make it absolutely clear to someone in the shipping industry that you do not work in the shipping industry, you call a vessel a “freighter”.