The ship’s deck crew has officers who play a leadership role and keep things running safely. The first mate is responsible for the crew and supervises the boss of the deck crew. The second mate determines the ship’s location and heading, while the third mate is responsible for security. All officers have a four-hour sailing watch.
It takes a lot of people to safely man a ship. At the top of all the departments on the ship is, of course, the Captain. The Captain of a ship is responsible for everything that happens and for every person on that ship. However, in the deck department, a ship’s deck crew has officers who play a leadership role and keep things running safely.
Directly below the captain in the deck crew is the first mate. The first mate is responsible for the crew, but still reports to the captain. The first mate also supervises the boss, or foreman of the deck crew. The chief is usually the highest of the deck hands, and in this way the First Mate indirectly supervises the skilled seamen and normal seamen of the deck crew.
Also, the first mate has specific responsibilities related to load and stability. He or she must determine where the different types of cargo will be stored on the ship so that the ship is balanced and sitting high enough in the water to see the load line, or the line painted around a ship that shows how low. You can be in the water and still be safe. The first mate calculates this mathematically, taking into account both the load line and the depth of the different ports, and writes a load plan.
In the deck crew, the second partner is the navigator. He or she has been trained and passed a Coast Guard boating test, using modern and traditional boating equipment. The Second Mate will generally use GPS and other modern instruments to determine location and heading, but it can fall back on such time-tested and traditional instruments as a sextant, like many generations of sailors before it.
The third mate is another deck crew officer and is specifically responsible for security. He or she maintains and stores all the equipment necessary to fight fires and save lives. The Third Mate is also responsible for the maintenance of all security equipment.
In addition to their specific duties, all deck crew officers have a sailing watch, which is typically a four-hour shift, twice a day. The clock is usually the same time both in the morning and in the afternoon, for example, the first partner might have the 8-12 clock in the morning and the 8-12 clock at night.
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