Members of the Merchant Navy, officers as well as seamen, work in a very well defined and specific environment: They command and operate ships on the high seas, they train for this job and they work and live on ships, year after year, decade after decade until retirement. By doing this, they gain (like any professional in his or her chosen field) a large mount of experience and proficiency. They have encountered dangerous situations, they know all about the weather, storms, shallows, ocean currents etc. and the day-to-day operation of a ship.
Naval officers and sailors on the other hand aren’t really that specialized. They spend significant parts of their careers in training (and that includes training/study in many subjects other than nautical) and in shore assignments.
I wonder if this results in a noticeable difference with regard to their competence in operating seagoing vessels. Are merchant mariners, on average, better seamen than naval officers and sailors?
The US Navy has several ships that cost literally billions of dollars each. They’re not going to let those ships be commanded or crewed by half-trained people. The Navy publishes its budget-- well over $1 billion is spent on training and education.
In looking at the wikithey are kind of very different animals. Is a long haul trucker with 20 years experience going to be more experienced with the roads and at transporting loads than a 20 something Army driver in the motor pool? Probably, but the Army truck driver has a lot of other things he has to be proficient at.
Is a Merchant Marine Captain going to be better at “seamanship” for routes he’s traveled for 20 or 30 years vs the aircraft Carrier Captain? For the ship he’s manning probably, but there’s big difference between a cargo ship, a tanker or a tugboat and an aircraft carrier.
The nautical prowess (i. e. seamanship) of Merchant Mariners is head and shoulders above Officers in the U. S. Navy. They sail more than Naval Officers do, much more actually, and they focus their training on being sailors, and aren’t distracted by other operations, weapons systems etc.
As a former U.S. Navy submarine officer, I wholeheartedly agree with this.
Navy personnel are certainly not “half-trained.” I actually think that the training I received in the Navy was excellent, and that was after I’d already received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from a top-notch private university (paid for by an NROTC scholarship).
That said, there is no way that a typical Naval officer or sailor can match the experience of a merchant mariner with decades of experience on the high seas. A typical Navy career is only 20 years or so for those who stay in until retirement, and most Navy personnel get out much sooner.
Serious question: once to the point of competence, how much difference in nautical prowess can there really be in the age of well-built large steel hulls, reliable engines, GPS, and satellite weather?
I’m sure there was a vast gap between ‘merely competent’ and ‘expert seaman’ in the age of sails, wooden hulls, daily position fix (if you’re lucky)+dead reckoning, and forecasting via looking out the porthole (and maybe using a barometer). But, on the other hand, the difference between one year and twenty years of experience of driving a truck is pretty minimal.
So, again seriously asking, is modern day big-ship operation more like driving a very big truck on a (usually) very wide road, or more like facing a lee shore with a strong gale and most of the foremast just went overboard?
Are you a different driver at 37 than you were at 17? How about if you drove on and off for 3 years, then took four years off, then drove again?
Seamanship is more than just GPS. It’s understanding sea state, conditions, how your ship handles under many different conditions and combinations of these factors. Amd U. S. Navy Officers just don’t drive ships all that much.
A Naval officer with 20 years in has not gone to sea for 20 years.
A merchant marine officer with 20 years of service will have 20 years at sea.
The Chief Engineer on a Naval ship may not even have an engineering degree or studied engineering. He may have served one or two years as an engineering officer. A Chief Engineer normally will 4 years at a maritime Academy, plus at least 365 days sailing as a 3rd, 365 days as a 2nd, 365 days as a 1st. The same for a Captain only with training as a deck officer.
I was on a DD that the Chief Engineer knew diesels in and out, but had a very limited experience with steam. And it was a steam DD.
A Naval office has to be a jack of all trades and a master of very few. Merchant Marine Officer is expected to be a master of his trade wheather in the engine room or the bridge.
At the maritime academy other than one Naval Science class per trimester we did not spend any time on guns, other stuff that the Naval officer would. As an Engineer I did not have to take any ship handling classes.
As a Naval reserve officer I ended up standing a JOOD watch on the bridge. I am color blind to red. At night I mistook the red running light of a freighter crossing our course as a white light. Missed identified the ship. I passed the Navy’s color blind test but I would have failed the USCG color blind test for a mate.
There are major variables here. There is a massive difference between someone who has spent their time at sea on say a very small GP vessel operating amongst the reefs of Micronesia, or the shallow and heavily tidal waters of coastal Europe, as compared to someone who has spent most of their time at sea on capesize bulkers or VLCC’s.
The former will have a heap of tricky navigational and ship handling experience and will have been highly vulnerable to bad weather.
The latter will have travelled entirely in relatively open waters or with a pilot on board in ports or canals or straits. Their watches will have been spent staring at endless ocean, with nothing short of a gale able to upset their lumbering travel.
Well, depending on where you are from etc, you will probably have only been at sea somewhere between 3/4 and 1/2 of that time, the rest of the time being shore leave.
It obviously depends on what vessel you are assigned to, but my submarine’s “OPTEMPO” rate was 85%, meaning we were only in port for 15% of the time. That time in port was not spent on “shore leave;” instead, it was spent doing all of the maintenance unable to be performed at sea. During my whole time assigned to a submarine, I would be lucky to get a single weekend day off during the 15% of the time that we were were in port. (You can’t send everyone home, even when shut down in port.) You might get one or two multi-day “shore leaves” per year (like for a long weekend).
On the other hand, ships and subs go into the shipyard for refit and major maintenance every few years, so if you are assigned to a vessel in the shipyard, the workload is high, but it’s not at sea, either.
Yes, of course there are, mainly because if there were not, everyone would get out after three years of the sea tour described above. A 3-year sea tour is typically followed by a 2-year shore assignment, which is long enough to forget how bad it was at sea and to consider staying in and taking another sea assignment.
So anyway, to get back to the main point of this thread, Navy personnel don’t spend their whole career at sea.
What is the “Merchant Navy”? The US navy has a number of non-combatant supply and transport ships that is a vanishingly small percentage of the world’s merchant shipping. Is THAT the merchant navy?
If not, then what? I don’t think there is such a thing. There are a bunch of private companies running ships, there are some qualification standards for operating some ships in some ports, or ships operating under certain “flags”, but it’s a huge hodgepodge.
US Merchant Marine. The standards are quite high, there is a Merchant Marine Academy where officers are trained. The Merchant Marine can and has been called into service during time of war. As noted in this thread these are professional seamen, far more qualified at seafaring than most of their naval counterparts.
So what are these guys doing when they are not “called into service?” I’m sure some of them are out sailing on commercial vessels, but I’m imagine some of them drive trucks or work in offices? Is this like the National Guard where the people could be doing anything at all outside of their NG assignments?
I don’t really know, but I think they are primarily involved in marine operations where their credentials count. Think of airline pilots, they are professionals, some were military pilots but many have no military background now, you wouldn’t wonder if they were spending their time as baggage handlers.
As others have stated, the U.S. Merchant Marine is a completely different entity than the U.S. Navy (though there is some overlap regarding MSC ships, as noted below). It is made up of U.S. civilian and federally owned merchant vessels.
The non-combatant supply and transport ships owned by the U.S. Navy are managed by the Military Sealift Command (MSC). These vessels are distinguished by the prefix of USNS (United States Naval Ship), as opposed to commissioned warships with the prefix of USS (United States Ship). MSC ships are typically manned by civilian crews who are in the U.S. Merchant Marine. There are approximately 110 vessels in the MSC.
The U.S. Merchant Marine only includes ships that are registered and operated under the U.S. flag.
Per the above links, as of 2006, the United States merchant fleet had 465 privately owned ships of 1,000 or more gross register tons. Nearly 800 American-owned ships are flagged in other nations (often by nations such as Panama or the Bahamas under a so-called “flag of convenience.”)
So American-owed ships that are flagged in other nations are not part of the U.S. Merchant Marine, but neither do they have to follow U.S. regulations regarding working conditions or wages. In fact, the crews often come from developing countries with lower wages.