We’ve had this discussion pretty recently. Leave KP as it is, just hold the graduates accountable. Instead of trying to overhaul an established federal academy, how about starting something new that supports your idea? We should be able to do both in the United States. Getting rid of KP wouldn’t help the maritime industry. It might save some tax dollars that are, in the grand scheme, a drop in the bucket.
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That’s a fascinating statistic. From one perspective, Marad’s focus is on providing product for an industry of 5,000. A number which will get smaller every year.
Of course any of the products could work in another segment of the maritime industry. Or another segment altogether. But since it is the Maritime Administration it would seem Marad should focus on what does the most good for the largest part of the industry, instead of focusing on what does the most good for the smallest part of the industry, many of whom won’t be staying in it.
Not that one part is any more or less important than the other. We’ve already settled that pretty much anyone with a MMC is a merchant mariner, full stop.
KP is a sacred cow. I get it. We all have one. You can make a new school anywhere. But the big picture is this: is it the Maritime Administration or the ROS Administration? Is the MM the 50,000 or only the 5,000-and-shrinking?
If it’s the 50,000 then change the education focus. The USA is developing all sorts of new professions for college educated people. Great jobs. A lot you can work from home. At the same time the proportion of young people in the country is dropping. So if you think you’re going to fill the industry with more young college educated people imo you’re wrong.
Better to tap the group of high school graduates who have already proved they want to be in the industry, and advertise they can make a lot more than many college graduates.
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Allowing MARAD to do the 1600ton master to 3rd mate unlimited is a cop out for them. It would be a way for them to artificially increase the number of unlimited tonnage mariners despite the ever decreasing unlimited tonnage vessels in the fleet. What is the point of having a bunch of unlimited seafarers without any experience on unlimited tonnage vessels?
There is no shortage of unlimited tonnage sailors right now. There are plenty to fill the ranks HOWEVER now shoreside there are other opportunities that pay more and have better standards for living.
Every shortcut that MARAD gives whether it is to cut the AB seatime in half or perhaps do this 1600ton- 3rd mate shortcut only hurts current mariners. Supply and demand! If everything is made easy then supply increases and wages decrease. The talent pool will suffer and even less people will stay in the job long term bc the money and lifestyle would be even less worth it.
Here is a revolutionary thought! Why doesn’t MARAD try to increase the number of unlimited ships.
Maybe give tax incentives or waive tariffs on cargos that are imported and exported on US Flag vessels/ US built vessels. If this was made law a bunch of companies would flag and build in the US.
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First, Marad has nothing to do with it. It is a proposal being contemplated by the USCG.
To answer the heart of your question: why does the USCG allow a MMA graduate with a 3rd mate’s license to sail on a ship? One reason . Because they passed a test. And the present 1600 ton masters test is more comprehensive than the third mates test. Take a peek at the CFRs. So what is the reason a 1600 ton master can’t sail as a 3rd mate?
The 1600 ton master has , roughly speaking, 4 to 5 years of seatime, or more. The academy grad has zip. So who is going to make a better watchstander out of the box?
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On the subject of payback for education, I went through a program in the USN called NESEP, which sent enlisted personnel to university for four years to get engineering or science degrees. We were required to ‘payback’ 1.5 years of commissioned service for each year of school.
Of course, most selectees had several years of service prior to the program, then the four years of university, then payback service, so we tended to stay for full careers. (28 years in my case).
Let me tell you a story:
I graduated from CMA. Never had much interest in deep sea. Sailed several years and made 1600 captain.
Kuwait war comes around in the 1990s. I get a call from a friend in the union. “Hey the union is begging for anyone with a license to sign up as a temp member for the duration. Can’t find enough sailors to man the reserve fleet!”
Sounded like an adventure. I never even saw a union hall. It was all done by phone. Next thing I know I’m in Bahrain joining a reserve fleet ship.
I was on there for months. Saw a number of third mates. Nice guys all. Some newly minted. Some had been around the block.
We went around the world twice. Straits of malacca, straits of Gibraltar, Rotterdam, Alameda, Bayonne. And here’s the thing. It was all easy. Straits of Gibraltar/ English Channel? Cake. Straits of Malacca/ /Jupiter? Cake. Easy compared to the runs I’d been doing. The newly minted thirds were white knuckled. Even the experienced ones thought they had done something. But every time an actual navigational challenge presented itself a PILOT was called in, so how challenging could it be?
So I’ve seen both sides. And the idea that a newly minted academy third is somehow a better watchstander in some way than a 1600 ton master is imo nonsensical. Because I’ve actually seen the reality.
Here’s the kicker: that was a war. The reserve fleet was activated. And they couldn’t find enough sailors. The union was pulling 70 year old men out of retirement homes. If you’re fighting a war with 70 year old men you’ve done a piss poor job of planning.
If there were a whole industry of 1600 ton masters/3rd mates to draw officers from the whole crisis would have been greatly eased.
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100 hundred ships with two complete crews of 25 each would equal 5,000 crewmen. So that 5,000 number seems plausible to me.
Supposedly, there is something like 10,000 towing vessels. That number seems high to me, but I recall reading it somewhere. Tug crew sizes vary from one or two men on little day boats up to about 10 men on SOLAS class ATBs. I don’t know the total number of tugboat mariners, but 50,000 seems like a plausible number, many of them don’t need an MMC.
We have these crazy tonnage measurement rules that bear no relationship to reality. This results in tugs of similar size that might be 299 GRT, or most commonly 199 GRT, and even 99 GRT that are in the 100-150 foot range and up to 7200hp.
The trend is to build bigger tugs that are only 99 GRT. No MMCs or Med Certs required for the deckhands and unlicensed engineers, MMCs are only required for the Master and the Mate.
This explains how there could be 50,000 tugboat mariners, when there are only 50,000 MMCs. It’s because there are a lot of tugboat mariners that are not required to have an MMC.
Uninspected Fishing Vessels up to 199 GRT do not require any MMCs. How many under 199 GRT FVs are there? I don’t know, but it’s certainly hundreds of thousands.
On UIFVs up to 5000 GRT only the officers must have MMCs. A modern 5000 ton factory trawler is a complex 300’ ship with a crew of around 100. How many are there? Not many, perhaps what, 25? However, 25 factory trawler is a good portion of the US flag vessels over 1600 GRT.
US flag deep draft shipping and unlimited licenses are a very small part of the US maritime industry.
Thats not to say that they are not important. They are.
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MSC is having major retention struggles, everybody knows that. KP should have to send new officers active duty into the Navy or Coast Guard. No more AF, Army, or Marine Corps options. If not, the graduates should be required to go to MSC for 5 years post graduation. These waivers shouldn’t exist in the first place.
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Why not? The rest of us get fleeced.
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To further my point:
We have an institution whose main focus is to supply product to MSC and the ROS. Am I wrong in this?
Yet many of the graduates of that institution don’t want to work for MSC. In fact, some people advocate forcing them with threats to work for MSC. Do I have this right?
Who wants to be a member of a workforce staffed with people who are only there because they were threatened?
So, why does Marad keep churning them out? Because that’s the way it’s always been done? Seems to me there is a fundamental disarrangement in the way mariners are being produced and utilized. And the evidence is this: threatening MM officers to force them to go to sea, and this in peacetime, not war.
One way to alleviate the problem is try a new, different production line for MM officers. That’s the way you would do it in business. And if it didn’t work you’d shrug and try something else, and something else, until you got it right. But if you tried doing the same thing you’d go out of business.
There are seven MMAs, a system developed to staff a MM of 1000 unlimited tonnage ships circa 1945. All seven still exist, but the fleet is now 84 ships. Am I the only one that sees the disparity there? Keep all of th MMAs open if you want, but why doesn’t the Maritime Administration swivel its focus from the 10% of the industry to the 90%, and in doing so help the 10%?
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I mean, what experience do fresh 3M’s have out of school? If you’re headed through Hormuz at night who do you trust more: green 3M on their first watch or a 1600 crossover guy?
Bingo. But, alas, MARAD is a government agency no one outside our industry has heard of, let alone gives a shit about.
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You have it right, but there’s a deeper issue here than guys graduating and not wanting to sail. It’s specific to MSC and that a whole other thread that would derail this one in about two posts. It’s been discussed ad nauseam what needs to change in that institution for it to become a place people would want to work.
Yes and no. Again, it fills their billets for when war comes around and they need to man their ships. You just have an example of why we need guys with the ticket. It also fills the Navy’s want/need to have licensed mariners as officers in their ranks.
It’s peacetime on paper, but we’ve got troops everywhere in the world. We’ve got assets in Israeli/Palestinian waters. We’ve got warships patrolling the Red Sea/Arabian Sea/Persian Gulf.
Yeah, but again, people graduating very clearly do not want to sail on those ships, as evidenced by the 100’s of jobs on the union boards. That’s another discussion as far as quality of life, crew comfort, compensation, etc.
At the end of the day, I think your idea of a crossover isn’t a bad one. In the very least it should be easier for a 1600 master to get an unlimited ticket. I don’t think opening/reorganizing KP into an entire school dedicated to that really makes sense. I don’t meet a ton of guys itching to go from 1600 to unlimited. Not sure the market is there for it.
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Having worked tugs, ATBs and Unlimited, I couldnt tell you a major operational difference between the tug and the ship. Maybe they get confused and walk into the wrong mess, or make off a line to the bitt a way the captain doesnt like, but nothing thats a show stopper. If anything, unlimited work is easier.
Unless you’re referring to fresh 3rd mates, who have maybe 180 days of unlimited experience as a cadet.
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I mean, they aren’t getting drafted to go to Kingspoint. No one is forcing them to apply and go to school there. Its like saying you’re forcing people to be in the Navy after going to USNA… that’s kinda the point. With KP grads being in the Navy Reserve and MSC being the Navy Auxiliary it really makes sense to put them there.
Sure, because because of the status quoe it might not be fair to send 100% of the class of 2024 to MSC, but if they made it clear the class of 2028 would be going directly to MSC, I think that would be fair enough. They would probably have a similar enrollment problem as CMA, but its worth a shot I guess.
I think we all know this is why half of what happens, happens. Im sure someone in an office somewhere that vaugly oversees Kings Point, when asked would say “oh, well of courses, they make up Strategic Sealift Officer program, very important part of the Navy Reserves” but has no real knowledge of whats happening, so has no motive to change it.
If they realized that the program is just a handfull of guys in Norfolk with a 5 grade reading comprehension fucking up everyones paperwork and playing video games all day, maybe they would do something about it. Especially if they knew the said paperwork being fucked up is probably orders to send a 3rd mate to babysit government cargo, bother a ship’s crew with facts about submarine warfare, and doing radio checks on barely working equipment for 2 weeks.
Sending them to MSC to be actual navy/civmar crossovers would be much more useful.
The reason they wouldn’t do this, is probably some complicated red tape surrounding what they can or can’t make a reservist do. From what I’ve found there is no actual mechanism to draft a mariner and require them to report to a ship. It would probably take a literal act of congress to achieve what folks are asking for here.
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One concept with academy grads not going to sea is this, and it is difficult to understand, but well-known by people who do hiring for the profession:
If you try to recruit every young person you can find to join the MM by trying to tell them how great the job and benefits are, you’re wasting time. You’re going to have poor retention.
Take college-bound young people. The world is their oyster. They can work anywhere. Even from home. But most people have no interest in living a monastic life away from home for months at a time. At no time in human history has going to sea been attractive to most people. Trying to convince someone to go to sea instead of IT is a waste of time and energy, because they have no calling for it. 99 out of a 100 workers will never want to go to sea, no matter what inducements you offer them. Accept that fact.
The key is to advertise as widely as you can, but in that advertising dwell on the reality of the job, good and bad. Find the aspects of the job which appeals to your present mariners and lead with that. Find the guy who thinks he wants to go into IT until he learns about going to sea, and it lights up the back of his brain. One guy out of a 100.
Target your efforts on the very small number of people who feel an actual affinity for the seagoing life. And, at the same time, scare all the rest away by telling them all the bad bits. Both are key. The attracting, and the scaring. Otherwise, you’ll waste time with tire-kickers.
How do you get into an academy? An OK GPA and a nomination from a Congressman who doesn’t know you from Adam. Neither have anything to do with life at sea. Hence, a lot of tire-kickers who last four years and don’t join the profession on graduation.
There are people out there that want the job, but don’t know it even exists. You have to find those people, and at the same time scare away all the tire-kickers. Do that and you will end up with a small stream of recruits, but they will want to be there, and therefore stay around longer. Then you bend over backwards to keep those people in the profession, because they are a rare few.
The U.S. Marines get this. All Marines have to offer is blood, sweat, tears–and Pride. Much of their recruiting visuals are along the lines of How-I-Got-My Ass-Kicked-Today. Yet, the Marines don’t concern themselves with trying to attract everyone. All they care about is reaching The Few.
In the USAF ads, count on clean fingernails and air-conditioning. Their advertising is all about gee-whiz planes and drones and cool stuff, and what you’ll do after you leave the USAF.
The USAF, along with Army and Navy are all falling short on their recruiting goals. But the Marines, alone of all the services, are reaching them. Why? Because they try to attract the Few while scaring away the rest.
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That’s great and all but going to sea is a hardship and it used to be in the US for the last 40-50 years (maybe even longer) that workers would put up with the hardship of going to sea in return for vastly more money than they would make ashore. Thats been done away with now due to inflation, stagnant wages, and remote work/tech influence. And the company’s that do business with US mariners are still trying to pay yesterday’s wages and wondering why that doesn’t work anymore? It’s selective ignorance at best. No wonder very few want to do it anymore. Who would? It’s back to criminals, crazies and oddballs, like it used to be 100 years ago or more.
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Where you work, apparently. I’m full-up where I work, with a great workforce.
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Why do we keep glossing over the fact that the 1600 ton mate’s test is in fact the same test as the 3M test. In fact 500/1600/3M Unl are all the same test if for the same route. The only difference is sea service on tonnage, and whatever gap-closing STCW courses may be required.
And I don’t know that the Master 1600 GRT test is “more comprehensive” than the mate; I Sat both, in the same week, and it was mostly the same stuff in different proportions (master had more “managerial” questions; mate more “operational.”).
I think the testing isn’t the issue. The tonnage is. Which, to my mind, makes even less sense.
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At the NMERPAC meeting I attended the mariner who brought up the issue debated the matter with a retired academy professor. The professor’s initial argument was that the 1600-ton master test was less “comprehensive” (my term entirely) than a 3rd’s test.
The mariner argued the other side. CFRs were pulled out. The mariner’s argument held the day. Now, I don’t know if that meant more questions or whatever than the 3rd’s test. I had no dog in the hunt, though I found the discussion fascinating. But the professor gracefully conceded the point after referring to the CFRS, and the NMC rep concurred. Maybe someone here will direct us to the point in the CFRs.
(By the way these NMERPAC meetings are a beautiful thing. Only place I know where a mariner off the dock can directly influence changes in CFRs etc.)
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This is where we can compare what topics are up for grabs on each test.
https://www.dco.uscg.mil/nmc/exams/oceans_or_near_coastal_endorsements/
Some of the Q codes are different, but from what I understand/have observed from testing for 3/M, 1600 master and C/M, is that the questions for the topics are generally the same. Anchoring and Mooring in Q120 is comparable, if not the same as Anchoring and mooring in Q111, and Q101. There are really only so many questions they can ask about anchors.
I’m on mobile so I cant do a nerdy deep dive comparison, perhaps I can earmark this as a rainy day project. At a surface level glace it would appear 1600 master may actually more comprehensive than 3/M.
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