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Here is a series, a lament in three parts, that originally appeared in WorkBoat Magazine. Joel Milton writes a regular column “On the Water” for this marine trade magazine. Articles used with author’s permission. All text © 2006 Joel Milton. A ONCE & FUTURE MARINER? – PART I By Joel Milton, Workboat Magazine - Contributing Writer After signing in for my appointment at the Coast Guard’s New York R.E.C. to pick up my renewed license and Z-card*** , I walked into the waiting area and took a seat. A young man with close-cropped hair who was sitting in front of me, in his early to mid-twenties and looking like he was either in the service or not long out of it, waited only a few seconds before turning around and asking me if I was in the Merchant Marine. I replied in the affirmative and he then asked if I could explain the Able Seaman certification to him, and what it meant for his employment prospects. I began to do so, but was called to go receive my new credentials. I promised him, however, that I would talk to him when I was done.
Fifteen minutes later we walked out the door and down to the seawall at the Battery. It turns out that the young man had recently been discharged from the U.S. Navy, where he had served four years at sea in the deck department on various vessels, including an aircraft carrier. His naval experience had qualified him for an Able Seaman’s ticket, which he was in the process of getting. He was also looking for a decent job, and missed working on the water. He had looked into shipping out with the Navy’s Military Sealift Command as a civilian mariner, but was recently married and the idea of months away from home didn’t appeal to him or his wife. He was also considering transferring over into the Coast Guard, but wasn’t overly keen on that either. But his current job ashore wasn’t cutting it pay-wise and he needed to do something soon. He was looking for alternatives. He asked me what I did. Pointing at a big Moran boat rounding the Battery towing a light barge on a short wire, I told him I worked on tugboats. “How long do you go out for?”, he asked. When I told him I worked a 2-week on / 2-week off schedule his eyes lit right up. A ONCE & FUTURE MARINER? – PART II The young man was excited by the very idea that he could return to working on the water with a schedule that would potentially allow him to lead some kind of a decent home life, while pursuing the career of his choice. “College isn’t really for me”, he said. “I want to work on boats again! But I also want to raise a family, and see my kids grow up.” He was sharp, and asked intelligent questions. You might expect him to be an especially attractive recruit for an industry that is literally strangling itself for a lack of new blood: young, willing to work, possessing some relevant working and life experience, accustomed to the close-quarters living conditions typically found on workboats, and soon to be the holder of a Z-card with an AB’s certification as well. What more could you want? For an industry that has long been recycling it’s own garbage, he looks like a star. But I had to give him the whole picture: the good, the bad and the ugly. I had to explain that, despite the dire need for people just like him, despite chronic shortages of both qualified mariners and viable new recruits, the marine industry is collectively very reluctant to make the changes that have long been needed to attract them away from all of the other choices available to them. I had to point out that there are often no real apprentice programs within which a green deckhand can comfortably learn on the job, without the pressure of being forced to fill a position that is supposed to belong to a qualified seaman. That STCW requirements have made obtaining the now often company-required 500/1,600-ton deck licenses practically impossible. That if he was interested in becoming an engineer he was not likely to find a place where he could work as a dedicated apprentice, an assistant to the Chief Engineer, and really learn the job properly from the bottom up. The bloom came off the rose pretty quickly. A ONCE & FUTURE MARINER? – PART III But still he persisted with his questions, not willing to give up on the idea. And he made a statement that tells you pretty much all you need to know about the current state of affairs. First he thanked me for my time, saying that no one else he had tried to talk to coming or going from the R.E.C. during his various visits could or would be bothered to answer any of his questions and point him in the right direction. I find that to be pathetic. We all know what state the industry is in, and everyone complains about the low quality of new-hires. We hurt only ourselves if we won’t spare a little time to help out someone who is trying to make a go of it. Secondly, he said that he had never heard a word about the tug & barge or oilfield sectors of the marine industry. They simply were not on his radar as even remote possibilities until his chance meeting with me at the Coast Guard. That this is so should be a wake-up call to the industry. If young men and women leaving the armed services, especially the Navy and Coast Guard, are largely unaware that there is a possible career awaiting them in our areas of the Merchant Marine, then there is something seriously wrong. These potential recruits don’t read Workboat, or Professional Mariner, or any of the other trades. They don’t see the now constant help want-ed ads, some of them full page and in color, that can found in them month after month, year after year. Those ads, if they succeed at all, succeed only in aiding companies in their attempts to steal personnel from one another in a shrinking labor pool, and that clearly is a dead-end street. Young people need to know that there are careers to be had here. And then the companies offering those careers need to do the hard work necessary to make them attractive and sought after by those young people, as they once were.
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