A container vessel I served in was awesome if you used more than 2 degrees of rudder at 27 knots. The third mate tried it an ended up with the full complement of mates on the bridge plus the master as he instructed the mate in general terms over future use of the rudder and the less than pleasant prospects of the third mates happy life if he failed to learn and inwardly digest.
Holy moldy, Cap’n Kirk! If I’da known…
Let me rephrase: I am a Navy puke. Enlisted in '59 got commissioned in '67 via an appointment to OCS. I was a Mustang line officer so I was going to do some driving eventually. As I recall, there were two, maybe three days on YP training tubs, same yachts, really, the academy people used at the time. There was rapid rotation from bridge, CIC and engine room and that was it! I learned more single screw shiphandling from a Bo’sun second class years later than on any ship. Well, that may be a SLIGHT stretch but most of the training was OJT moving up on the bridge over a period of years. It is one thing to drive merchies nuts by continually asking “what ship are you” in deep water while actively avoiding collision and quite another to enter port and actually get pierside without removing the pier. My question really applies to all the schools and that got answered.
In my opinion, NO ONE has any one-on-one training for actually handling the ship either on open water or close in. Near the end of my truncated navy career I started civilian flight training and ALL of that was one-on-one. Navy flight training and all services use a common syllabus and a single instructor per student for each training session. The ship people don’t do it that way for some reason.
Thank you for your service! OJT is the best course.
I have no idea what purpose giving cadets shiphandling training would serve, aside from possibly giving them a false sense of security that would inevitably end badly.
It would seem that an academy would be a good place to drill in the fundamentals and characteristics of different propulsion systems that they might encounter throughout their career. The handling of any individual ship is going to be dependent on too many variables for ‘stick time’ in the academy to matter. Learning to handle a new ship is a very individual process. Having the fundamentals down solid is something you take with you everywhere.
You are welcome, Cap! But thank you all for your sea service haulin’ nearly everything including military loads! 'Twas a merchie that put me on to Tamaya when I was Navigator! Got me own in Singapore for $180 US in 1970!
Well, maybe to add to the conversation hopefully some insight I must tell a sea story!
Back when I was Navigator on a single screw cargo ship (18500 max gross tonnage) we had a San Diego pilot on board for tying up between mooring buoys. I was curious why this guy was gazing intently off to starboard and asked him what he was looking at. He said he was watching the floodlight poles in a parking lot ashore. Before I could ask why he said those poles like ranges could be used to tell when the ship was stopped! I thought that was right practical and said so. When asked what he did before becoming a SDO Pilot he said he retired as a Chief Boatwain’s Mate! That told me the Naval officer corps could learn a thing or two other than where they were getting their info!
The pilot was using local knowledge that he is paid for. In British, Aussie and NZ navies the Navigating Officer is responsible for Pilotage and for Navigation training of junior officers and radar plot ratings. In my day all junior seaman officers had to obtain an ocean navigation certificate. Senior Lieutenants were selected for training for the navigation specialisation and the course was a year. The last three weeks were practical and failure was a wash out. The tasks required were brutal and much was demanded from the boiler room and engine room. The commanding officer was a full captain with a well deserved reputation as a ship handler. With nerves of steel he remained silent and in his chair until the last possible moment that a recovery was possible. His subsequent command was normally the Royal Yacht on his way to flag rank.
The use of ranges ( transits in our lingo) was encouraged. We were preceding to an Anchorage and I informed the CO that we would be altering when a hotel and a water tower were in transit. We rounded the point and the hotel had burnt down the night before.
Question here is what level of shiphandling do we expect a cadet to have been exposed to and what can maritime students learn in a simulator.
It would be helpful if a new mate could turn the ship successfully. Or at least understand that it’s a thing. So should be able to:
-
Have the ship on a track-line within a reasonable cross-track error after a course change .
-
Know how to make a constant radius turn off a navigation mark.
-
Know approximately what Rate of Turn is appropriate in different circumstances and how to control RoT using helm commands.
-
Have a rough idea of how much room the ship needs to make an unplanned turn.
-
Have a working understanding of the concept of a pivot point.
Aside from these basics the third mate should know the basics of how to conn a ship. How to give clear commands, course orders vs rudder commands. Controlling RoT with rudder orders vs allowing the helmsman to control RoT,
I didn’t attend TAMUG, either, but spent a lot of time there as an ABS Surveyor for the Clipper (yeah, it was a while ago) and some of the research vessels. I am not sure if the vessels in the basin are used for boat handling training or not. Their marine biology track has the use of several vessels.
Conversation between two officers with local pilotage and a trainee.
Junior officer with pilotage: “I start my turn when the point dead ahead is exactly one mile by radar.”
Senior officer with pilotage: "You’ve never noticed that little red cabin in the woods? I start the turn when that cabin is on the beam.
Junior officer with pilotage to the trainee: "How about you? Did you know about the red cabin? When do you start your turn?
Trainee: No, didn’t know about the red cabin, don’t use the point ahead. I start the turn when I see the captain start to lean forward in his chair.
I looked up the course catalog at Kings Point and there appears to be 3 courses that deal with ship handling to one degree or another, Integrated Navigation 1 (Naut210) , 2 (Naut215) and 3 (Naut310). I don’t know the specifics or just how hands-on it is. I will leave that to those who may know as that is outside my field of endeavor.
https://www.usmma.edu/sites/usmma.dot.gov/files/2019-12/USMMA-Catalog.pdf
Just to be clear, yes the small boats in the boat basin at TAMUG are used by cadets in various boat handling courses such as tugs and towing, FRB, lifeboatman, etc. There is also small powerboat handling just as an extra during down periods.
Academy grads going to tugs pushing barges by necessity get their handling chops way faster than those going to ships. It would be interesting to know the percentage of grads who go that route.
I know that CMA’s deck cadets spend time on the school’s tug moving a barge around. @freighterman1, where they doing that when you were there? I remember doing some minor maintenance on the T-boats when I was there as part of one of the Ops classes. My Ops class probably wasn’t as good as it could have been, since we were pulling pistons on a propulsion engine that we were going to start up when we were done putting it back together. Pesky training ships, y’know. 
That fits in with what I saw. A CMA grad I met who was pushing a hopper barge in San Francisco Bay had impressive handling skills right out of the academy.
Certainly more that in the past. Even back in the 80s, as an engineer, I ended up on tugs/ATBs. Back then, the LAST thing I wanted was a shoreside job.
Yes, Cal Maritime still has semester long on-the-water boat classes, most of them on the T-Boats. We actually added another course about 10 years ago. Cadets take Marine Survival (i.e. rowing), Small Craft Operations, Navigation Piloting Lab, Tug and Barge, and Shiphandling. In addition, they take two full-mission simulator courses, and sail on commercial ships for 100 days. During two training cruises, the 3/c cadets steer and the 1/c cadets stand the bridge watch as the watch officer (under the supervision of a licensed mate, of course). We have two senior cadets on the bridge per watch and no one is just standing around watching. Each cruise we spend days on cruise doing nothing but going in circles doing shiphandling exercises around a marker.
I wouldn’t necessarily expect a new third mate to recall from class or cruise how to make a constant radius turn. It would be good however if when it’s explained it would refresh his memory rather than be hearing about it for the first time.
When I explain to the mate to watch that during the turn that the relative bearing change is not towards the bow I get the impression that the new mate thinks I believe that somehow the buoy is going to overtake and pass us.
This. Hammer in the fundamentals. Hammer in the math. Anything else is entirely subjective to the ship one is maneuvering at the time, it’s loading condition, local current conditions and unique local current variations.
You’ll never remember everything you learn, but if you put the work in you’ll remember there is a thing, and you can refresh your memory prior to crunch time. Literal crunch time in this case.
Kept a personal log and drawing of every dock I went to. Also the different currents, winds and how they affected the vessel…Some conditions were routine, many more were not. Did I pick up “Ship Handling in Narrow Channels” before an approach to a dock I was familiar with? No, I looked back in my individual log a bit before to refresh my memory… Most of my teammates had a similar log, written in their own interpetations. When in mate training, those captains pounded that in my small brain. And most appreciated the book by Captain Plummer.