Deck Officer Roles

[CharlieDelta]

I'm curious...

Traditionally speaking, the 2O is the navigator and the 3O the safety person. With the likes of Carnival, where there's extra officers, who does what outside of watch hours? Or in other words, as a new 3/4O in a few years time, apart from being a "junior watchkeeper", are there any other responsibilities?

[Randomist]

Re: Deck Officer Roles

The roles vary from fleet to fleet, but generally the jobs stay the same, the rank names sometimes change tho.

On P&O
Captain/Commodore, Self explanitory really =] (4 Stripes)
Staff Captain, Head of deck department and in charge of all crew on board (3 and 1/2 Stripes)
Senior First Officer, Responsible for safety and training of all personell (3 Stripes)
First Officer, Sometimes called the navigator, has the delegated duty of passage planning from the master (Senior Officer of the Watch, Bridge Manager, 3 Stripes)
Senior Second Officer, In charge of the ship's log books and a certain amount of training delegated from the S1O (Senior Officer of the Watch 2 and 1/2 Stripes)
Second Officer, Responsible for the ship's charts and related publications (Senior Officer of the Watch 2 Stripes)
Third Officer (x3), varying duties ranging from checking LSA to Fire Equipment and other administrative, most dutys of this type are fufilled by the 4 ship's Coxswains. (1 Stripe)
Fourth Officer, These tend to be 3rd officers from Cargo ships, if you wish to transfer from cargo to cruise Carnival drop you a rank for your first contract. 4/O's will be 3/O's from cargo ships and have basically the same responsibilities as a 3/O (1/2 Stripe)

On Cunard the S1O is referred to as the Saftey Officer and the Senior Second Officer as the "Chief Officer."

Additional responsibilities of the Junior watchkeeper include slip testing (you'll find out what this is as you'll probably have to do it on 1st trip) Monthly checks of the boats, LSA, fire fighting equipment. 3/O's and 4/O's also prepare the "log of the cruise" and will keep the trip information up to date on the computer systems, including run-figures for the chief engineer. They also hold stations on the fo'csle, both mooring and anchoring and (on P&O) serve as the ships tender drivers along with 4 coxswains (on Cunard/Princess the seamen do this).

[CharlieDelta]

Re: Deck Officer Roles

Thanks for that, quite informative. Do they give any indication of how long one might expect to stay in the 3O role? I suppose you need to do the seatime and theory work for the mates ticket first.

[Randomist]

Re: Deck Officer Roles

You need to have 18 months seatime before you can sit your Cheif Mates exam and Carnival want the Cheif Mates ticket before you get promoted to second.

Peculiar to the company really, don't know of anywhere else that does that