How to Become an Ocean Liner Captain
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- čas přidán 26. 05. 2021
- Sea captains are glamorized and sensationalized in popular culture. As such, many young people wonder what it would be like to be the captain of a ship and how that goal could be reached. In this video, we look at how someone could become an ocean liner captain (if they had a time machine, that is, because the ocean liner era is all but a thing of the past). It was a long, difficult, and usually very uncomfortable endeavor and often began with an apprenticeship aboard a clipper ship.
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Sources:
1. “Men, Ships, and the Sea,” by Captain Alan Villiers. National Geographic Society. 1962
2. “Titanic and Other Ships,” by Charles Herbert Lightoller.
3. “Titanic Hero: The Autobiography of Captain Rostron of the Carpathia,” by Arthur Rostron. Originally published in 1931. Re-published in 2011 by Amberley Publishing.
4. “The Sway of the Grand Saloon,” by John Malcolm Brinnin. 1971.
5. “Down Amongst the Black Gang: The World and Workplace of RMS Titanic’s Stokers” by Richard P. de Kerbrech. 2014. - Auta a dopravní prostředky
"in other words this video is not intended to provide advice..."
*stops taking notes*
"... unless you have a time machine"
oh *starts taking notes again*
Wait you have aa time machine? EVERYONE LOOK FOR HIS HOUSE
I think there's at least a phase in every child's life when they want nothing more than too drive, fly, or captain some exiting vehicle. (For me this was a couple of years where I wanted nothing more than to become a helicopter pilot.)
Cosmos 42 I wanted to be a stagecoach driver!
@@mikeseier4449 Interesting!
I still want to be a pilot
I wanted to drive a steam train, and I went very close, I'm a fireman.
Driver and operator of both fire trucks and ambulances. Such a good feeling to accomplish that
I have a bachelor of Arts degree, worked a couple years of soul crushing office job, quit my job, and enrolled in my local sea school for 2 years. Afterwards, it's 18 months of cadetship onboard a Bulk Carrier company that luckily has ports of call around the world. I was 27 when I went to sea first. Now 30, I'm one oral examination away from getting my Class 3 (2nd mate) license. I love every minute of it
I was 23 when |I first went to sea as an Engineer cadet, after failing to get a job with my degree in Manufacturing Engineering. On my first ship we had a deck cadet who was only 16, straight out of school. He did not stay in the industry.
I recommend checking out Chief Makoi's channel for a look at the modern experience. He's a chief engineer for cargo ships, but talks a bit about the deck department and their career path. He also teaches maritime engineering when he's on leave.
He is also really entertaining, in a "guy that absolutly knows what he's talking about and is passionate about it" kind of way
This video could be 10 times longer and I would still watch it at least twice
Have you ever thought about becoming the captain of a ship or considered a career in maritime? Let us know in the comments!
Captain, no thanks! Chief Engineer for me.
@@alexcrawford6162 A different set of challenges, but definitely an interesting job.
I want to become cruise ship captain.
I’m an airline captain. I love ships, but there are a lot more aircraft.
@@Nickpilot318 actually I beg to differ: as of 1 Jan 2020 there were 55,655 merchant ships currently registered (according to Statista) whilst as of 18 September 2018 there were 29,398 commercial aircraft in service plus 2,754 stored (according to Fafard)
I've always wondered about this. Love your content!
nice video I've always thought of becoming a captain to. (its a bit hard though)
Greetings Florida man
Hello
Good morning, my good sir. Have a nice day.
The process to acquire one’s licence is basically unchanged to this day.
No it isn't. There are at least 3 different ways to obtain a license in the US Merchant Marine. 1) Start from the bottom and work your way up. 2) Join the Navy and get enough experience to sit for a license. 3) Attend a maritime academy.
I don't know enough about the British system to comment. Maybe some one who does can help.
@@Mondo762 I know the British system (the system to which both he and I were referring) having gone through it myself. It is, as I say, basically unchanged.
@@alexcrawford6162 interresting, so after a few years at sea you have to go back to college or just take an exam? i studied in ireland at nmci for a while and i know it works that way for them. I myself went to a maritime academy in germany, and after my bachelors degree i just get the higher rank license with accumulated seatime. i would think its quite annoying to have to go back to college after some time, since you cant really move away from the academy correct?
@@Mondo762 Huh that's interesting. In the Greek merchant marine it's practically impossible to become an officer (or an engineer for that matter) if you haven't gone through maritime academy.
@@user-bi7xd8ry5p It is true that we see less officers (Engineers are officers) come up from the ranks. The qualifications have become more difficult as time has passed. There are more courses to complete just to maintain your license. To upgrade you must get the right type of sea time plus go back to school in order to pass the test. The majority of officers are maritime academy grads.
My previous post was only to say what paths are possible to get a license in the USMM. Is it not possible to come up through the ranks to study and qualify to become an officer in the Greek Merchant Marine?
Thanks for the very valuable career advice - now I'm off to construct my time machine to 1921.
Would be interesting if you did a video on how a person would become a chief engineer back in the days of an ocean liner.
Another excellent video again. Your knowledge is very impressive. The footage of the sailing ships is fantastic. Yes it must have been amazing (and probably dangerous) to wander around the docks of the various ports during the age of sail and early steam ships with the smell of the sea mixed with different cargoes and horse dung etc. What a period it was!
aww finnaly thx your videos are more in detail and go into the little facts nobody else would
Great Stuff!!! Keep on Going!!!!
Awesome video! Love obscure topics.
Great video as always!
Ooo new videdo! Can't wait til' I finish it!
I'm excited for this one!
The mentality that one is a glorious captain of his ship, with the lowly laborers required to make his business actually happen merely an obstacle to his profitability, still seems to be not an uncommon mindset in the modern corporate management world...
Perhaps the so called captains of industry are well named. All the empathy of Captain "Bully" Hayes while regularly displaying the competence of Schettino.
Lot of information and great narration. Video flows well from start to finish, a fun watch. Thanks for your time and work in posting your videos.....
Thanks, Mike! Glad you enjoy the videos.
I’ve never wondered about this before, yet it seems like something that every ocean liner fan needs to know. Thanks for sharing!
Great information
Good content love it
By seeing this video and your last series on Lightoller I am really surprised how similar was the career route of a captain back then to the one of an airplane pilot nowadays. Same cycle of accumulate experience to take exams for certifications and then back to service to gather more experience.
30k of us watched this, and there’s only 1 ocean liner… May the best captain win
i never really came to titanic from the 1997 movie strange neither the night to remember i just got intrested after getting recommended videos about it
Another great book on the subject is " Hull Down" by Sir Bertram Hayes. Started in sail then steam. Captained the Baltic, Olympic and finally the Majestic for the White Star Line.
You make these videos so enjoyable I like to watch them over and over when I am bored
Thank you for speaking in facts, showing images, and being a human. Thanks. Keep doing it
Great video! My grandmothers brothers where both capitans for the spanish line, one of them got stranded on the Atlantic and had to transfer all the passengers to another ocean liner in the middle of the ocean it’s amazing to hear of all their adventures
¿De qué buques fueron capitanes?
@@enalche2 del Montserrat y del Guadalupe en los 60s-70s
Hello! I greatly love your video and as an Marine Mechanic engineer, a video about how to became an Chief Engineer onboard Ocean Liner just like youy video about Captain could be a very good one :)
Tks.
Commodore of the Cunard Line. Nice! Aquitania, Berengaria and Mauretania.
I always thought it would be neat to work on a lake freighter. I live by Lake Superior so I’ve seen them around, like a lot. Apparently the weather on the lake can be brutal. Also, great video, I always enjoy them.
Same, I’ve been interested in the history and current day news about the lakers.
Love this
I'm just listening to CZcams videos on how to write sales emails and follow up on leads. Then I get a notification for how to become a captain of an ocean liner. Guess which one I would rather be doing
Thanks for this wonderful video as always---only if I had a time machine!! Really, born too late to be a sailor and born too early to be a "cosmoslor"!
Very well-done! I really enjoyed this, but then I love the whole topic of the Age of Sail and the early years of the ocean liners. The treatment of the surviving Titanic officers was disgraceful. Not one of them ever received his own command. But such was the way of some lines.
Another wonderful video! Sadly, Disney cancelled build #8, the Queen Elsa ocean liner which was to compete with the QM2 for transatlantic crossings. That certainly would have opened up a spot for an ocean liner captain LOL!
Nightmarish as the apprenticeship on sailing ships sounds, it’s very interesting. Thanks for the video.
Remember when Loyalty to a company was actually beneficial?
nowadays the advice is, "after a few years, change companies, and climb that ladder, by jumping onto a higher position at another ladder."
That nowadays advice is just a way to say “companies no longer reconize the hard work they have done over the years”
Being promoted following years of service is basically a way to reward a worker for their work. You do good work? You get a better job, better pay.
They earned their jobs
For a truly heartbreaking tale of life at sea and how the captain of a ship has absolute power over his officers and crew, the movie "Billy Budd" has virtually no equal. Terrance Stamp plays the title character and is the purest and most naive young man to ever go to sea. His heart is pure and he lives only to follow orders and be a good crewman. He is therefore so popular with the crew and many of the officers that he earns the literal hatred of the brutal master-at-arms who heads up the marines who keep order and enforce orders onboard. The master-at-arms has complete control of the crew, pretty much rubber stamped by the captain. That was kind of the original reason marines were onboard ships. They were the captain's enforcers and personal guard.
The book was written by Herman Melville who, of course, wrote "Moby Dick". Robert Ryan plays the master-at-arms, and if you are familiar with him as an actor, he has the ability to pull up some very bad stuff from way down inside. It's the unending, deliberate, psychological dismantling of Billy Budd that is so heartbreaking--especially when he never intended harm to a single soul on earth. The movie was made in 1962 and is right up there with the 1956 movie "Moby Dick" starring Gregory Peck and directed by John Huston. These are two very noteworthy glimpses at life at sea in times past. Both have a lot of good shipboard scenes and visuals of the ships at sea.
I wanted to be a destroyer captain back then but ended up on merchant navy so my goal now is to become a captain (any ship) someday. Im currently working onboard a bulk carrier and hopefully be transferred to cruise ships.
Thanks for the amazing content. I learned so much from you.
Good show old man
I grew up with my father Captain and as a boy sit and listen to stories when other captains come over and . I got my masters 1990 sea At sea 13. still at school only 14 days off but 21 day trips cold wet decks leaking no nav gps. Compass is the hart ..Anchour is the hand . Learn the way with out Help . Captain Cook didnt get here with Radar he.d say . i use all modern now but still do hour on chart . In case fall over side having a piss Ha . Great Doco i enjoyed Cheers. PS shut down power and see if they can get you home its fun
You can work on tall ships today and earn good money and experience. I'm gonna spend 6 months on sea with a tall ship and in the winter time I will do my steering license. It's hard work but if you love what you're doing. There's nothing holding you back.
Tbh it was a lot of paperwork and waiting due to the current pandemic. And I had to work on multiple ships to earn a reputation to work on a tall ship.
I too wanted to be a captain of an ocean liner because of Titanic
I remember being obsessed with it before the James Cameron film came out and I remember when they announced the James Cameron film and then it got delayed and then I finally came out and I went and saw the first day the first showing..
So many more people sorry loving Titanic because of the movie which is great..
Anyways excellent video!!
Thank you so much for this video. I’ve always wanted to know what the career path of a c.1900 merchant mariner looked like, but I could never find a proper timeline.
P.S. On an unrelated note, is Part 2 of your airships series in the works?
I wouldn't say it's in the works as I don't have it penciled into my schedule, but I do know roughly what I want to cover in it.
as your such a fan of liners imust share this with you
i wrote to cunard a hand wrtiten letter and a drawing of the queen mary,
cunard and Captain Aseem Hashmi (QM2) wrote back to me
Bully Waterman eventually founded my hometown, Fairfield, CA.
3:53 That looks like the Nantucket light ship.
Well right now the queen mary 2 is down my road as I live along the coast, so do I have a chance?
I was born in the wrong era. thanks for taking me on a trip back in time.
btw, you made a vid. on airships once, will that have a secuel?
Yes, it will. Not sure when, though.
Just want to say that I love your channel :)
Great content!
Will we ever get Airships part 2?
That's a trips! You are into ships!! 👊💯😁
Hey if naval architect doesn't work out for me this video will help me become a captain
I also wanna be a naval architect, lol
Hey naval architect is were you build or design ships
@@RankKnight16 yes, designing the the ship, all the systems on board (radars, propellers...) Are designed by a maritime engineer
I wish you good luck for naval architect
yess i will drive and ocean line
I was interest to be captan of ship bc Titanic ,but when i found that there isnt only won ocean liner left
While there may not be "ocean liner" captain jobs available, there are similar captain jobs available on equally large ships making the exact same journeys.
You sure picked a doozy of a title frame picture. What were you thinking?!
Not sure what you mean?
01:31 I wouldn't need an ocean liner if I had a time machine, smarty-pants...
Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't 20 knots the cruising speed of the Titanic? Being able to push a sail ship to that speed is insane
Yes, the fastest clippers could approach the maximum speed of the Olympic Class ships. Pretty incredible, I agree.
Sorry to point this out a year later, but isn't the first half of this video almost exactly the same as your clipper video? Almost word for word in fact.
Lead photo: E.J. Smith who helmed the Titanic's sole disastrous voyage!?🤔 How about Captain Rostrum of the Carpathia who risked lethal ice damage dashing to save Titanic passengers?
1:04 MV ASTORIA and MV FUNCHAL, although old and repurposed, I believe were/are transatlantic liners also.
She was built as one, yes. I actually don't know if she was operating at one in her final years (I think she is currently being scrapped).
@@TheGreatBigMove Oups, seem to have added MV FUNCHAL while you were replying. But you are still correct for both.
@@sapede While I appreciate those ships, it still wouldn't be as satisfying to serve as captain aboard them while they're operating as cruise ships unfortunately! At least in my opinion.
I want to know how Scatino became Captain...then do it.
How about how to become cruise liner captain?
hi
now i want to become a clipper captain 😂
It' videos like this that remind me why humanity chose to end the so-called gilded age.
But then again we never seem to learn from history 🤔
@@TheGreatBigMove We did. Not everyone as an individual (not everyone knows history to start with) but humanity as a whole... definitely. Slower than would have been possible, but we still learned.
I fear we also unlearn time and again though.
Mikosch2 I would say that we’re already in the process of unlearning.
I dreamd to be an captian of an ship
A little off-topic, but I just wanted to say that people had to be extra tough in the past to counter the high levels of bullying they experienced. If someone wanted to complain, who would even listen to them? How would they prove it? Today, everybody with a phone in their hand can take to the Internet and expose their bully, often with videos, pictures, and screenshots of the exchanged messages, although the complainant isn't necessarily right just because he's exposing someone.
Im in the first year of maritime school now,, nice video!
Best of luck to you, Tim!
@@TheGreatBigMove thank you!
You could become the Capitan of the qm2
It's heartbreaking to hear that Charles Lightoller was penalized for what happened to the Titanic. The sinking was in no way his fault, and he performed admirably in the evacuation. It makes you wonder if perhaps he wouldn't have shouldered so much blame in the White Star Line's eyes if Murdoch or Smith had lived as well.
I'm a Truck Driver so thats close to becoming a captain, of the ship.
not all it seems. it's like living in a shitty mobile home
Can you do a video on the Atlantic
yeah please do a video on atlantic
Dont sail at fulk speed in the night through an iceberg field.. simple
Why were the captains so hard on their crews? It doesn’t make any sense
I would rather be a Tug boat captain
I love the water, boating and ships but i cant imagine ever serving on a ship as a career. Being away from home for extended periods, broken relationships, no family or social life and no time for your self. No thanks.
"when asked why for so many years this nation has prospered like no other nation in history, it is because here we unleashed the power of the individual like no other place on earth. we should not underestimate the power of free men and women, it is a weapon that our enemies do not have. it is a weapon WE DO HAVE! at times the cost of that freedom has been high but, we have never been unwilling to pay that price! when people say we live in a time without heros, well those people just dont know where to look. the sloping grounds of arlington cemetery with its row upon row of crosses and stars of david make up but a small fraction of the cost of our freedom. these men lost their lives at places like belle wood, normandy, bastogne, flanders, and across the oceans in places like guadlcanal, tarawa, iwo jima and in a thousand rice patties in a place called veitnam. to the enemies of the united states and those who would practice terrorism understand this, peace is the highest asperation of the american people. we will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it,BUT WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER FOR IT NOW OR EVER!
president Ronald Reagan
I'm the kind of guy who will give their car keys to a sober friend when I'm getting drunk and then when I'm actually drunk I'll insist on getting them back. All l need is the talent and ambition and I'm quite sure that I'd be a fine captain.
The Medic was pronounced MEE-dic, not MEH-dic, I think.
Hm, why do you think that? I assumed it was simply after the word medic, but maybe it’s something else.
@@TheGreatBigMove because it was named after the Media region of Persia .
@@HesJustSteven That could be right and would fit better with the names of the other ships of the Jubilee Class. Still, I've only ever heard her name pronounced the way I pronounced it in this video.
@@TheGreatBigMove well, you were misled my friend lol
@@HesJustSteven I mean, do you have a definitive source indicating that that is what she was named after?
Came home from The flying P-liner Pommern 10 minutes ago!
How to Stay an Ocean Liner Captain
Go around icebergs
There are no Passenger Liners in the world now.
You could argue that ferries are passenger liners, but not ocean liners. I would classify QM2 as an ocean liner even though she’s only a part-timer if you will.
@@TheGreatBigMove The last one was the RMS St Helena, retired 3 years ago. Ferries are not Liners nor Cruise ships.
Waterman..........I'm sorry but why do people from the past have names that coincide with their jobs/occupations.
this is gonna be hard for me
9`20 No stock footage of actual seamanship manuals? Just flip the bible!
How to be captain of an ocean liner...
Don't be like Captain Smith.
Lightoller was also abit of a rigid idiot, he, while yes did the women and children thing because he couldnt hear any better as the boilers of the titanic were venting and making tremendious noise when he tried to talk to the captain, as per his story as theirs actually audio of an interview he did with the BBC back before the war on here, but he also separated a ton of families, and even openly nearly shouted at two guys for getting into an empty life boat right before the bow was about to go down, as they waited on the side of a ship, saw it, hopped over and boarded it
and one of the key things about a disaster is you have to be flexible to deal with any situation that occurs, and theirs a good chance he might have inadvertently lost the ship valuable minutes
as he ordered a door open on the lower side of the ship so they could help put people into the boats with it, and was never told it was open and forgot about it, which when the water reached it, cost the ship valuable time.
and it gets even worse when you read that the cause of death with some of the victims of this disaster was cardiac shock from going in the water, as when people got into that icy cold water, they had 15 minutes to live before dying from cardiac shock caused by how damn cold it was, like it literally bricked the heart and the body sheerly from the cold.
which is most likely how smith and alot of the other passengers really died on that ship, it was the water more than anything else, which makes people pillaging the outside of the wreck site even worse if you really think about it, as oh were not disturbing a tomb if were outside of the ships wreck
BULL!
and if he probably didnt do that, the ship would have lasted atleast another 15 or 20 minutes probably, which right then and there, would have saved many lives in addition to that.
as theirs a reason why he was never made captain, and he's really damn lucky he wasnt charged with negligence and manslaugher, but I guess with everything else that happened that night from the radio officers screwing up, to a radio man being asleep
and some idiot on a ship named the california screwing up and screwing up bad as per what anything that has california on it as a descriptor always does
it was kinda like well sheeet.
Ok..... I'm in; where does a 40 year old man sign up for it?
Seamen and Cape Horn
I'm wondering how much modern moolah would it cost in today's capitol....to build an ocean liner (with today's safety whatnot) in today's age I even have a name for it....
Vintage-Waters.
Does being an apprentice involve sitting in a barrel with a small hole on the side one night a week? Read a joke like that years ago on the internet.