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DECK DEPARTMENT |
See also: 'Ship-Know-How' |
 Your image of the deck
department may include swarthy mariners scaling the
rigging or their latter-day counterparts stacking up sun
loungers. However the real workings of the Deck
Department are rather different. One could say that the
members of the deck department are ultimately responsible
for getting the ship safely from A to B. They include the
deck officers navigating on the bridge, the
quartermasters at the wheel, the deck 'ratings'
(non-officers) chipping and painting the
hull [Image 23 KB], and the
ABs (Able Seamen) [Image 28 KB] manning the launches to shore. |
| Deck Officers |
 The head of the deck department is also the master of
the entire vessel, the Captain. He has absolute
rights of control over the ship and all those (passengers
as well as crew) who sail in her. In other words, what
the Captain says, goes. As well as overseeing the navigation, a Captain's daily
routine is largely taken up with paperwork, inspection
tours, attending social events and meeting with the
various heads of department. Also, international maritime
law dictates that only the Captain is allowed to sign
verification of the daily entries in the ship's log book,
such entries providing an important record of nautical
and navigational data, together with reports concerning
passengers and crew.
The Captain's assistant is the Staff Captain and
it is he who is second in command of the vessel. The joke
is frequently told that the Staff Captain does all the
work and the Captain takes all the glory, and certainly
much of the day-to-day running of the ship, together with
disciplinary and crew matters, will fall onto the Staff
Captain's desk. The Staff Captain will also be a
certified Master in his own right and able to take over
command at any time, if necessary.Third in Command is the Chief Officer, whose responsibilities include overseeing the maintenance of the body of the ship, i.e. the exterior paintwork, the decks and the hull. He may also arrange for supplies of fresh water and fuel and the disposal of sewerage and garbage, vital services to which most passengers remain oblivious. The First Officer (there may be several of these) will spend most of his working hours on the bridge doing watch duty. The bridge is always manned, even in port, and the navigation and safety of the vessel are the responsibility of the officer on duty. Watch duties on ships always follow the sea-going tradition of four-hourly cycles, i.e. 8am-12 noon, noon-4pm, 4-8pm, 8pm-12 midnight, midnight-4am, and 4-8am. This way, an officer on the 4.00 to 8.00 watch, for example, must be on duty from 4am to 8am and again from 4pm to 8pm, so that his watch hours total eight in every 24. The job of Safety Officer is either held by one of the senior officers alongside their other duties or, on larger ships, is a full-time position in its own right. The Safety Officer is responsible for the training and implementing of all safety procedures at sea, including the prevention and combat of fire, possibly the worst hazard on any ship. Note that the master controls for the fire-detection system (including deck plans with indicator lights to locate the problem area) and the watertight doors, which can divide the lower part of the vessel into compartments, are generally located on the bridge. |
