Inspired by my own post here, in which I mention the ability to book passage on a container ships. In some cases the ship can be at sea for as much as two weeks between ports.
Never mind paying passengers - what do the crew do during this time? I imagine they’re fairly busy when departing or arriving, but when cruising the open ocean, what’s their workload like? What kinds of tasks are they doing? What do they do for entertainment during their off-duty hours? Is alcohol allowed for those who are not on duty? Musical instruments? sexyfuntimes? Do they run laps on the deck for exercise?
Alcohol: Depends on the ship. The Aussie merchant ships all had alcohol. We of the US Navy were jealous of them.
The time at sea is going to vary by ship but standard stuff would be watch standing and routine maintenance and repairs as needed.
I see no reason why not on musical instruments. We had plenty on a Carrier. Many owned by crewman including a few bagpipers. The ship also had some instruments in the Rec/Game cage. I’m fuzzy on those details though. I only recall ever getting chess sets from there.
There is a fairly good chance of a gym on the large ships. Jogging around the deck would be an option.
From my experience:
The stevedores handle all the work loading and unloading. They don’t travel with the ship so the ships crew can be quite small.
The majority of the “unskilled”* crew were all foreign and looked to be from the same place (SE Asia?) but not the country in Africa that the ship was recognized as being from.
The had a machine shop on board and cranes and hoists that were capable of servicing motors the size of my first apartment.
The actual officers were from other different country(s).
Nobody waned to look at us or really talk to us.
They could be really highly skilled machinists for all I know, but everyone was really stoic, looking at the floor and not talking. I assume nobody wants to cause trouble. When you’re foreign, on a ship flying a different countries flag, in a third country, and all the bosses are from a fourth or fifth country.
In the 70’s, the Australian seaman’s union used to offer work to ex-convicts out of jail. As a social service for guys who couldn’t get work elsewhere because of their prison history, (and probably because their sympathies lay with ex-cons, rather than with the establishment and the existing social order).
So there were guys on board who were stoic, looking at the floor and not talking. And you kinda did not want to do stuff that might antagonize them, because you were in the middle of a wide ocean.
That was long ago, on domestic cargo. No idea what it’s like now, or somewhere else.
That would make me a bit more nervous.
We were 4-5 low level government employees on tours looking at the end result of our work. I always figured that depending on the language difficulties and cultural background of the employees “Government officials touring the ship” might mean way different things.
I would think a container ship’s crew would be busy doing the following in between ports:
Engine maintenance and other mechanicals/electrical to keep the ship running and afloat.
Ensuring cargo cannot/does not come loose.
Captain, co-captain, and navigators, etc. responsible for navigation and routing around hazards and weather.
I believe each ship has a cook and kitchen that would be staffed to serve said other crew handling everything else.
In recent years, security. I understand crews are now trained and armed in case of pirating or hijacking (a la Captain Phillips).
I don’t know what they would do for entertainment and/or exercise. It would be interesting to hear any women’s experiences working on one of these ships.
I have friends who paid for passage on a container ship, going from Hong Kong to California. They were newlyweds, and I gather a lot of the time they engaged in sexyfuntimes. They took some cool photos, too. The ship looked pretty empty - it’s a huge vessel with a small crew.
They are often very large but the crew is small. Half a dozen officers and 15/20 crew.
There should really be two officers on the bridge at all times, but one or both may well be fast asleep, relying on the electronics to keep them out of trouble.
The crew will have routine stuff: checking load security, checking motors on refrigerated boxes, etc. Engine crew will have their own tasks and there will be a cook and a steward for the officers.
What they do in their spare time will be pretty much what you would expect from a bunch of men with little to do. Officers and crew will usually be apart but both will drink (whether its allowed or not), gamble, read, watch videos etc. There may well be some sex, even without any women on board - mostly, any women would be wives of officers.
Actually, as I’ve mentioned before, I was told a story about a cargo ship that was old enough that it didn’t have a pool – so they’d rigged up one. After a few drinks, some one jumped out the wrong side of the pool, and landed in the ocean. Ships that size are hard to stop or turn around, and they lost him.
Fortunately, and this is the awesome part, another ship going by that day found a man just floating by himself in the wide wide ocean…
No doubt there are tasks that the crew must perform from time to time, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. And I would guess at least some of the crew have enough to keep them busy 40 hours a week.
But is everyone on the ship working 12-hour shifts to keep the vessel from sinking, or do most of the crew members have a lot of spare time?
A quick Google shows that the Emma Maersk, one of the largest container ships out there, operates with a crew of 13. So yes, these things are pretty thinly populated.
The writer John McPhee spent several months aboard a cargo ship, asking that very question. He wrote about the merchant marine, and the men who crew it, in Looking For A Ship.
According to him, there’s always something that needs maintainence on a ship. The Able Bodied Seamen he watched would stand an eight-hour watch, then spend another shift doing maintenance for the bos’un at overtime rates. Removing rust with a power descaler was apparently a perennial chore.