Question

[vic mcclymont]

Mates and Engineers had to have so much sea time built up before they could sit their exams.
I know that daywork Engineers had a different build up rate than a watch keeper.
Sailing on coastal vessels, how does this compare with Deep sea for sea time?
Vic

[Ivan Cloherty]

It's a long time ago, but the rules were for deck were quite bizarre, say example for 2/m you required actual required 2 years 6 months sea time at sea which took normally 3 to 3.5 years (sometimes longer) to accrue. Seatime was counted from sailing UK to arriving back UK. Lets you went FG circa 6 months voyage, you sailed to New York 10/12 days, spent 2 months in port , sailed to another port a few days away and spent another 2 months in port and sailed for UK arriving after 15/16 days.. all your time aboard would count as sea time from sailing day in UK until arriving day in UK (not time on Articles). At the same time as you joined your FG ship your friend joined a HT vessel which traded every day for 6 months, in and out of port and at sea every day, signed off the same day as you from your FG ship, only 2 months of the near six months on HT would count as seatime towards your 2/m FG. Now who do you think learnt more about buoyage, navigation and traffic management

[j.sabourn]

I can’t remember the actual rules Ivan just a generalisation of them. It. Was accepted it was 4 years foreign going seatime for 2 Mate.. However if you did 12 months at a recognised nautical school you got 6 months remission of seatime. I did the 4 years as didnt do 12 months pre sea. However on the back of my indentures don’t show this , they show a number of voyages during those 4 years in days and months and think without checking they come to 3 years 4 months and so many days , will have a look tomorrow. Someone must have sat down and worked it out. All I was pleased about that it was accepted by the BOT as sufficient. The seatime in those days did not I think specify what position you held on the ship and could be a steward or fireman. This was for second mate only . For mate and master seatime had to be in a watchkeeping mode. If you sailed 2 mate on a second mates cert. you got more seatime than sailing as 3 mate , the same applied as sailing mate on a mates cert. most. Company’s one sailed 3 mate on a 2 mates cert and 2 mate on a mates cert, and mate on a masters Cert. so got no reduction in seatime. Normally it took going fairly fast at least 10 years seatime to get to get time in for masters , could be done in shorter time if sailed on cert. of rank. A mate of mine got masters at 24 years of age , however he had a good start and got 2 mates before he was 20 but not issued to him until 20 and then sailed with certificate of rank .Today I think they get cert. before going to sea , so try not to think about it. They used to say a Home trade Master used to crap himself if he lost sight of land, and a deepsea Master used to do the same when he saw it. Cheers JS

Vic I could never work out. why there was any difference in HT and FG for Engineers seatime. The only difference I Could see was the different sea temperatures . An engine is the same engine in whatever part of the world. JS