Story: Join The Merchant Marine and See The World... Maybe?

With promises of exotic ports and impressive salaries the decision to enroll in a Maritime Academy was an easy choice for a me but, unlike a career in art history, the fact each graduate gets a Bachelors of Science degree in addition to an officer's license enabling them to sail the world's largest merchant ships made the choice easy for my parents to accept. So in May of 1996 I chose Ft. Schuyler, New York's Maritime Academy. It's location just past the terminus of NY's Number 6 subway sweetened the deal and soon I was spending summers aboard the school's training ship crossing the atlantic each year and spending weeks in an myriad of European port cities. The time spent with friends exploring new cultures was priceless but the real prize laid just past graduation day.

Four years from the day of enrollment I received my Third Officer's license and a list of job offers aboard all types of vessels from Alaska Cruise ships to huge lumbering VLCC's (Very Large Crude Carrying oil tankers) and brand new container ships. Each job offered six moths vacation per year to compensate for round the clock schedules at sea in addition to benefits including all-you-can-eat freshly caught seafood, housekeeping and a five figure paycheck paid in cash every month. But each of these jobs lacked one feature; port time.

From the dawn of time until the age of shipping containers ships where loaded and unloaded by hand. As apparent in the Marlon Brando masterpiece "On the waterfront", this was a back breaking and time consuming process for the gangs of longshoremen who descended daily from nearby homes to daily job calls at the port's union hall. A ship might be in port ten or even twenty days while these men lightened her load and the need to load the cargo on trains and other ships meant it had to be discharged close to a city's transportation center. For a ship's officer this translated into lots of port time within walking distance of the downtown social scene.

Today even the largest container ship like the Emma Maersk, can offload her entire cargo of 16,000+ containers in just a few days. The need to temporarily store these containers as they await customs clearance and ship delays requires large amounts of unused land while the ease of which a container can be trucked to its destination negates the need to locate ports near a city's center. New York's shipping center is now Newark, not Manhattan and most of Seattle bound cargo goes to Tacoma, both lacking the cultural interest of their neighbors. For an officer this means less time to see the sites and fewer points of interest within range of a modest cab fare.

Despite the romance of port visits being all but gone, the life of a mariner is still rewarding for those who enjoy the outdoors and love travel. The first benefit of this non-traditional life is you can live anywhere in the world. Your ship, being a mobile office, could be loading freight in Singapore when your due to return or discharging in Hamburg when your due to get off. Shipping companies realize this problem and know that whether you live in Houston of Timbuktu the costs of air travel will be a roll of the dice. As an added bonus if you get off the ship in Labuan Malaysia but spend a month finding your way to Singapore the company is happy to foot the smaller bill of airfare from a major hub. If you're really lucky they may just give you the cost of a full priced ticket in cash.

Work aboard ship is not scarce and recreation is limited. Most ships have a cinema, weight room and recreation area. Some have basketball courts, swimming pools and (my favorite) racquetball courts but with hitches ranging from 75 to 180 days boredom sets in so volunteering to work overtime quickly becomes an attractive alternative to SSDD (Same Shit Different Day) recreation. This translates to 12hr work days and, although technically illegal, some officers work as many as 18 hrs everyday they are aboard ship. This includes weekends, holidays and even days you might be feeling sick.

To compensate for the 84 plus hour work weeks two people fill every position aboard most ships. While I'm navigating the Magellan Straight my opposite, a ship's officers with the same qualifications, is sitting at home getting full pay. The more adventurous officers are traveling the world staying at low cost seaman hotels, hostels or the house of a friend who's at sea.

While travel is nice and the benefits are good the most compelling bonus is not paid by the company, it's paid by mother nature. The sight of a whale surfacing nearby is only trumped by a turtle swimming slowly a thousands miles from land. The water at that distance is, like the Grand Canyon, too rich in depth and color to be captured on film and the sun setting over a motionless sea is breathtaking.

five years ago when shopping for real estate in an overpriced section of San Diego my wife and I came upon a run down house of modest size. Excited at the prospect of finding a house within walking distance of the beach we walked past the open house sign and entered with big grins only to be told by a friendly realtor that this ramshackle abode cost $1.2 million. Discouraged we turned around and started walking out when the realtor announced "Wait.. the price isn't that bad considering you get to see the sun set over the pacific every evening."

To this I replied "No thanks I get to see the sun rise AND set over the pacific... and I get paid well for the privilege."

To this day I doubt the realtor has any clue how that could be possible. I didn't have the heart to tell her the other sites I get paid to see.

-Captain John Konrad
http://gcaptain.com