Electro-Technical Officers/Cadets

[Bulman]

I'd just like to get some information what ETO/ETC do on cruises. There isn't much info out there about them (guessing it's because it's quite a new thing?) especially from people who are actually doing it as a career. Just a overall idea of what the job actually entails. Like the sort of things you do day in day out, ups and downs, where you're mainly working on the ship like domestic, control room, engine room or deck. Any information would be useful

Thought i'd post it here instead of the aspiring cadets as this section is pretty blank!

[ETwhat?]

As a cadet it is pretty varied, so that you get a little expereince of everything on board, and its probably the one role where you do spend a lot of your time all over the ship (basically anywhere with wires)
The job is mostly routine testing of things with then planned work which can be changing brushes to overhauling a motor, then theres the fault finding which can be pretty much anything but obviously is hard to plan.
When working cruise ships tend to go for a similar plan to how the engineers work, so 2nd,3rd,4th all have set responsibilites (propulsion motors, Nav equipement, Lifts and galley) with a chief looking after the grand plan. theres obviously a lot more electrics on a ship with 3000 people compared to a tanker with 30 but thats why its a department instead of one or two people.

[chris]

thats a better answer than I would have written

[ETwhat?]

thats a better answer than I would have written

Sadly all the cruise ship cadets are out at sea so your only getting second hand what i remember from talks over coffee.

[alistairuk]

Don't forget the other glamourous side; you'll be nicely disturbed in the early hours of the morning (read: 3am - 5am) to go fault finding / fix the fire alarm system when it goes haywire and the OOW gets fed up hitting mute. Or to resolve other issues caused by OOW pressing the wrong button.

[ETwhat?]

I believe thats why your still allowed to drink on such ships so that the said officer can and an incentive to getting you out of bed