GP Crew

[Richard Cotton]

John
I watched that program. The ferry concerned was actually a Red Funnel one. Different company to Wightlink, but the conditions of work are similar. W/L, when I was with them anyway, had four crew. Skipper, Mate, Engineer, and Crewman. Mainly four because of the manning levels required by law on their larger capacity catamaran ferries.

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Good to see you too John

[Gordon Turnbull]

Would have to dig out my old contract but pretty sure even us caterers signed the company contract saying we would work on deck or down below. Never did get out the galley except for a bit of OT painting on deck :-)

[Richard Cotton]

Would have to dig out my old contract but pretty sure even us caterers signed the company contract saying we would work on deck or down below. Never did get out the galley except for a bit of OT painting on deck :-)

Yes, I seem to recall that caterers signed up to the same work conditions as others on a GP ship, but it never happened in practice, on tie ups, wheel, deck, or ER. What the Catering side DID do was an Emergency Medical Team for First Aid and so on. I'm not sure if BP trained up Catering staff in the same way that they did deck and engine staff anyway.
Also, I'm not sure whether the GP Training School continued for all GP personnel after sufficient crews were aboard to train up in house, as it were. It didn't take very long, it seemed to me, before BP had sufficient GP crews to go around.

[John Brooks]

Joined BP as a GP1 Had been an EDH before that .I did two trips as GP1 then moved to the North Sea with BP and reverted back to AB rate.After 4 years went back to main fleet so back to GP manning again.They had done away with GP1 rating and we werenow Seaman 1.Enjoyed my time as General Purpose rating with the variety of work we did.Eventually promoted to PO and enjoyed the extra variety of work.Daywork at sea and cargo watches in port.The nine years I spent with BP were very memorable even to this day.

[Yung LS Nam]

I must say after working on various different type of cargo ships as Decky. I really enjoyed working as a GP 1/Seaman 1 with BP.