Coffee Time

On a ship this stuff starts the morning, the watch and the day, a cup of coffee and off we go. Engines cannot be started without a cup of fine ground beans, navigators cannot look out of the window without a brew in hand and cooks cannot enter that deep freeze without having first switched the kettle on. Whether it be "instant coffee", ground, beans, the finest Columbian or the worst British coffee it does not matter as long as it is COFFEE.

Most seafarers whether they know it or not live on the stuff and consume a minimum of three cups a day. One in the morning to force the eyelids open, another at morning break and one for afternoon smoko! Serious contenders for the Coffee Consumption Awards manage to drink whilst working and one or two before bed.

Why not tea? Ach, the thought of waiting a few minutes for the teabag to infuse and make the water darker is not on the cards. As an Engineer going on watch or starting the day an instantly prepared, no hassle, cup of coffee is what is required to open the eyes and remove the sleep for another four hours or more. If one listened to various conversations around the ship, like a fly on a wall, they would invariably hear endless comments, statements, quips and just plain old orders like:

NB. The above are only a few coffee conversations nestled at the base of the mountain that contains the full variety of coffee cultured conversations often heard onboard ships.

I, like many live on the stuff. I also, like many, have a personal cup, one that I have purchased ashore and brought onto the ship for the pure and sole purpose of drinking coffee out of it. Wherever I will go the cup will not be far behind, full, half-full or empty it will be somewhere around me awaiting my orders. I usually leave that cup on the ship at the end of a trip, often still half filled with coffee as if I will be returning shortly to consume more. And for the next vessel I will soon have in my possession a suitably large utensil of dark color so that future coffee level marks are not so visible thus reducing the times required between washing the thing. It is a serious sin on a ship to use anothers cup. To get up in the morning and grab any cup from the rack and fill it with coffee. That is called Instant Enemies, not instant Coffee. Yeah, having a personal cup is very important and also of note is the cups general configuration. For example: I previously mentioned the darker color inside that allows the cup to remain unwashed for longer periods, but also important is the size and shape of the utensil. It must be large so that a large amount of coffee can be carried around from job site to control room or visa versa, that it can satisfactorily spend the whole morning at the work site yet still have some coffee remaining inside it at the end. The other shape factor that must be considered is the "surface area" of the cup in contact with solid earth, that is the base must be of sufficient size as to overcome gravitational effects caused by a rolling vessel. In layman terms we require the cup to be low and broad, not tall and slim, otherwise the thing will fall over and spill coffee.

So there we are. We have a personal cup of suitable dimensions as to allow it to hold sufficient liquid for a required period of time and of stable character as to remain in one position despite outside forces playing games. Okay, we have the cup, now we need the coffee to put in it!

Something that has always puzzled me is the design of ships with regard to available coffee facilities. The Galley and Bridge are usually well equipped with coffee machine and accessories. The Engine Room though remains sadly neglected, be it an old rust bucket resembling a sieve or the newest and most high tech vessel built today. The Control Room, why do control rooms never have decent facilities for making a cup of coffee? Somehow when designers come to fitting out this ever so important space they remained oblivious to the need of Engineers. I have joined so many vessels in recent years where the engineers have to toddle up to the galley to make a cup off the brown stuff and then to toddle all the way back again. The worst times for this are when rough weather descends. Out of the control room, up the stairs, change out of the working boots and into slippers, stumble along that long corridor, open that stiff and resisting door, stagger and slip along the next corridor and into the galley to get that cup. Now the return journey but this time with only one hand as the cup is being held securely with the other. And guess what? Yes, by the time you manage to return to the control room about a quarter of the coffee remains in the cup the rest lying in splodges along the route from the galley, which of course displeases the Stewards no end. So why is there never a nice automatic kettle, cups, sugar, etc. in the Control Room?

I have on many of these vessels made a table in the Control Room for a kettle and cups and then fought for the rest of the trip to include a kettle on the shopping list and having to explain to the Purchasing Manager why a kettle is required. Often the only way to obtain one in short order is to say that it is for the purpose of testing probes or equipment it then arrives at the next port of call. Why is it always me though that goes to this effort. There is this twenty-year old vessel having sailed the world non-stop and manned by a serious bunch of coffee drinkers, yet no facilities are available in the Control Room to appease there habit. Then I join this mighty vessel and I have to do is to get out the wood saw and chop off a nice flat piece of wood, varnish it, and fix it to a bulkhead in the control room. After that I will bribe, steal, appropriate or simply acquire through one means or another the required utensils for the making of coffee and place these on top of my table. And wo and behold all the other engineers then find it a great idea and start to make coffee in the control room. I did have the satisfaction of joining one ship and finding all the facilities available for suitable Control Room Coffee activities, but unfortunately one simple factor had been neglected in the overall design. The only suitable socket for the kettle was outside the control room, so either one took the kettle outside to boil it or rig up and extension lead from outside in. Easier to go up to the galley or bridge to get a coffee wouldnt you think?

Coffee culture is not only found in the Engine Room though. It is important to remember that over half of the ships crew never go down that way and that Engineers also like to drink coffee outside of working hours. So where else do we find coffee making places? The galley and the Bridge of course! I joined one ship recently where they had this massive hot water boiler in the galley. It had two taps and I was most surprised one day to find the expected water coming out of the tap to be dark of color. Upon further investigation I found it to be coffee! Wow, a whole urn filled with the stuff and so simple to make anew. Just lift off the top pour another load of coffee into the already congealed and used coffee remains present and away you go. The cook generally looks after the water and adds milk and the coffee filter can be left until a new and eager Engineer joins. So there we have it, one simple way to get coffee in the fastest way possible. Just grab your cup open the tap and out it comes. I think that this is a very important part of the coffee regime, the ability to have it in your hands in the fastest time possible. None of this waiting for kettles to boil, coffee makers to sound steam, finding teaspoons and opening packets of milk yes, speed is of the essence.

In Japan a Tea Ceremony is something that is a deep routed part of their culture. Girls are taught the art of serving tea over many years and often never reach the desired pinnacle of their career, it being so hard to become a true and professional tea server. Coffee serving on a ship can be categorized in a similar manner, not that of style and serenity but that of speed and efficiency. From my way of thinking the true art of serving coffee is when "the thought of having a coffee enters the mind, the next moment it is in the hand. That is a true and desired manner of one who deserves recognition in the arts of coffee serving.

Strength of a coffee is often extremely unimportant. It can be weak or strong and nobody knows or recognizes the difference. That is until the end of the second cup when coffee shakes start to present themselves, the nervous and uncontrollable shaking of the hands and the inability of the coffee drinker to sit still for any length of time. This has often happened to me, too strong or too many a cup of coffee has entered my system yet for some unknown reason it has never effected my sleep pattern. Regardless of how many cups I have had that day and regardless of the strength of the fluid I have never had a problem drifting off to sleep. I am no coffee analyst so I will not delve deeper into that, suffice it to say that I am thankful that this pattern exists otherwise I would have to give up drinking so much and that would beaaaaaaahhhhhh.

I have some news though. I cannot quite get to grips with this news and am sure that it is bad, but then it could be good depending upon how you view it. The aparrant significance behind this news will have the effect of changing the Coffee Culture forever in a way never thought of before. A few years ago "creamer" products came on the scene and these in their way changed the Coffee Culture in a simple yet efficient way. No longer did Coffee addicts have to contend with sour milk, the search for a new carton of milk from the cook, or have battles with the pasty powder stuff that never mixed properly and ended up floating on top of the coffee. Yes, creamer products improved the coffee scene immensely and became accepted without falter into the system.

The news though that I have may bring about an end to all that we have known and it is called":

"COLD COFFEE"

Ahhh! Yes, cold coffee. I appreciate that "coffee culture" exists around three essential items or four if you add sugar. The three essential items are the cup, the coffee and the Hot Water. I have though been ashore for a while and in Taiwan and I one day realized that I was drinking COLD COFFEE. This product is readily available in Asian Countries and easier to obtain than a simple hot coffee in a cup. Just go into a corner shop and there you will find an array of cans filled with differing (or so they say) concoctions of coffee products. Some black, others with sugar, columbian, nescafe, marhling, etc. Any style and taste and cheap at the price.

So if Cold Coffee arrived onboard a ship I can only suggest that a whole culture would be wiped out in one fell swoop. Away would go the kettles, the perculators and the extension leads in the control room. Away would go those personalized cups that many a seafarer has spent hours in choosing ashore and packing nicely when preparing to join a ship. And away would go the careful sipping and tasting of a hot cup of char that has always been a deep routed and significant part of coffee drinking. Now all that any seafarer has to do is open the fridge, crack open the can and down the coffee at will. No more worries about kettles boiling, cups falling over and no facilities in the control room all that could be behind you with COLD COFFEE Products.

Ahhhhh, another culture that represents the Merchant Navy for what it is may soon join the rest in memory as COLD COFFEE enters the fray!