My Ship in 2020

The first ship that I joined had no Control Room in the Engine Room. It is now a few years ago but I clearly remember having to struggle without relief from the heat and even more the struggle to hear somebody clearly on the other end of the phone. The phones were positioned in this little half cubicle and there where four of them. Each with a different colored light so that one would know if it was a call from the Steering Gear, the Bridge or the Chief. It may have only been the Bridge asking for the Sea Temperature or ther Chief asking if there was a movie arranged for the evening but I struggled to choose the correct phone and then to understand what was being said. I usually resorted to either saying, "yes" and hoping for the best or running up the 90 steps to the bridge and asking direct.

Then one fine day the Control Room was invented and became an established feature on most vessels. Communication with the Bridge became easy and only one telephone was required for all Cabins and Spaces. And Engineers could at last escape from the heat and have a cup of coffee in a quiet, air-conditioned room and sue the telephone with success!

It gets even better. Control Rooms have started to be either integrated with the Bridge and called the Command Center or have at least moved upstairs to better positions that the Chief Engineer can easily access without going anywhere near the Engine Room itself.

Imagine this though: We have gone from a hand crank telephone in a sweaty engine room, to a clean and quiet environment where one telephone covers all possibilities. Lets go a bit further up the tree, say to the year 2020. One telephone covering everything and connected to a central computer. Dial one and you get the Office all those miles away. Dial two and you get the Galley to order your eggs sunny side up! Dial three and you can talk to your wife who was unfortunately asleep but forgives you. Every cabin has a phone and every cabin has instant access to home and friends, the galley or the bridge, as the situation requires. The future could bring possible constant access to the outside world for all the staff on the ship. A cheap and easy service from which all those at sea and ashore would benefit from and bring the outside world in. It would bring the Internet with possible computers in every cabin and email and phone access to anywhere in the world.

NB: Asking the wife for two fried eggs and telling the cook that you are looking forwards to being together again is a small technical problem that I am sure can be solved when one gets to the year 2020.

Coming back to the present and the past one thing that I always hated alongside of my early dislike for flashing lights and countless phones was when problems occurred in the Engine Room. I have not enough fingers and toes to count the amount of times that I became extremely annoyed and even furious when the office interrupted my attempts to regain lost power on an engine or to overhaul a pump that was desperately required to stop the ship from sinking. There I would be sweating away and thinking overtime when the engine rooms phone would ring. Getting up from my cramped position under the floor plates I would answer the phone to be informed that the Captain wanted me on the bridge. Sweating profusely and trying to get some much needed blood into my right leg I would pull and haul myself up to the Bridge. There the Captain would tell me that the Office wanted to talk to me. Calling the office back and getting the correct person could often take half an hour or more and cause serious frustration on my part, now shivering in the air-conditioned environment of the bridge.

The point of explosion on my part usually came when the Office eventually arrived on line and asked me "how long do you think it will take to fix"?

How long will it take to fix? One hour less, should you not have called me, I would often feel like shouting. And after that call I would have to drag myself back down to the Engine Room and back into my cramped position under an engine or something, having completely forgotten what I was going to do and what the problem was.

This has happened so many times and has seriously caused me to think about ripping the phone off the wall and throwing it in the noggin. In this sense phones have been a pain to all concerned. The Office with a new found ability to contact the ship when and where they wanted had a new toy and the ships staff found themselves without the peace of mind to control their own lives without constant pressure and harassment. But from this type of situation it can only improve. What about conference calling? The type of call that teenagers caught onto very quickly ashore and often five or six teenagers would spend hundreds of pounds in one night, to their parents utmost consternation. Yes, conference calling, the ability for the Captain on his bridge, the Chief Engineer on a remote speaker or headphone and the Office to be all connected into the same line! Or at the very minimum, to remove the necessity for the Chief Engineer to transplant himself from his work to answer pathetic questions, a phone installed in the Control Room or Engine Room Space that is connected to the outside world. Take it even further, have video calling linked up so that the Office can check that the Chief is actually working and not sleeping in the bilges or drinking beer in the control room, that he is actually trying to fix the problem! Watch him while he works sort of thing!

The rate of change in technology is often too fast for ships staff to keep up with! Not long ago I was at College doing my Chief Ticket and I was shocked that never once did we come across anything remotely to do with advanced electronics and systems. In fact we barely got passed looking at the inside of an alternator before being shoved backed to the classroom for a session on boilers. This lack of keeping up with the times on the part of Maritime Colleges has seriously effected the ability of ships staff to solve the more technical and advanced problems associated with electronics and communications. I recall one Offshore Anchor Handling Vessel that I came across only last year. A new building with the most advanced equipment on the market today. Two lovely main engines controlled by computers great, fantastic, and an engineers dream!

Sadly all was not as it seemed! Problems arose that caused all of the computers to go on the blink, the computers and a back-up system and along with them the ability to start the engines. I am not joking! The Engineers on that vessel searched and scratched their heads endlessly for a way to manually start the engines but none was found! A computer was needed to crank those engines into life, and yes once they were started the computers could be switched off and the engine controlled manually, but to start was a mere impossibility!

Where does this take us? Where does this lack of ability and means to control an engine by levers and sticks take us to in the year 2020?

Well, I have already mentioned the ease through which all the ships staff could communicate with the office, their wives and with each other. Great stuff! But did I mention the fact that there is only three people onboard my ship in the year 2020? A Captain, a Chief and a Cook are the only personnel onboard this large vessel as it plies across the Atlantic Ocean.

In the Office all those mile away a man sits at a computer and watches a screen. Every so often he leans forwards and clicks rapidly away on his mouse. His achievements: transferred fuel to the daily service tank, started the oily water separator and taken a log. Different screens allow him to have various views of the engine room, the deck and the bridge, sensors and probes fitted on the ship give him constant information as to the state of the machinery, the speed of the vessel and its situation. All that he needs to monitor the performance and state of the ship as it plies through the water is there in front of him.

After a cup of coffee the man returns to his computer and after a moments thought starts clicking away on the mouse again. In the middle of the ocean the ship slows down slightly and changes course by about ten degrees. The man in the office checks the new course and position and nods his head in satisfaction. A few more clicks and he has stopped the oily water separator, run a systems check on all the machinery and bridge equipment and sent an email to the Port Authority advising them of the ships arrival time!

On the ship meanwhile the Chief wanders up to the bridge where the Captain is busy using the rusting calipers to clean under his nails. The Chief says to the Captain "lifes gone down hill from the old days hasnt it Bob"? The Captain, pulling himself up from his lazy position on the chart table points to the Video monitor and speaker on the wall and motions that they should go outside and talk, away from the prying eyes of the office. Nodding their heads sadly they move to the bridge wing only to hear a voice following them from the speaker on the wall, "we will soon be fitting speakers on the bridge wings Captain, you can run but you cannot hide!"

That is the year 2020!