Licensing or Schooling: The paths to officer ranks in the Austrian merchant marine in the age of sailing ship decline

Austrian efforts directed toward the eastern Adriatic were concentrated on strengthening Trieste as the main maritime and trading center and consequently the establishment of nautical schools along the Adriatic was aimed actually to provide adequately qualified personnel for Austrian merchant shipping and navy. The foreign governments’ maritime policy in the XIX and XX century (Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, and Yugoslavia) was in fact bargaining and surrendering to foreign capital, and least of all maritime, with a great caution consequently developed in the native population against the fatherly and false concern. Capt. Pavo Saltaric of Rijeka dubrovacka (Ombla) used to serve as an “authorized teacher of nautical science, hydrography and mathematics” and was one of the first competitors to the nautical science program at the Nautical School of Dubrovnik, whose private school (within the former General Hospital located at the Boninovo) had been active since 1843 and attended by more numerous students than the state school established in 1852. Full time teaching program of the newly established nautical schools started at Bakar (1849), Zadar (1850), Split (1850), Kotor (1850) and Dubrovnik (1852), in addition to already established schools of Trieste and Rijeka. Some time later, some of them were temporarily dissolved, i.e. nautical schools of Zadar (1860 and 1867), Split (1879), Rovinj (1860) and Dubrovnik (1860) due to shortage of students. Following the restructuring of education, the nautical school of Dubrovnik became “Nautical academy” in 1922, subsequently succeeded by “Nautical and Merchant Academy” in 1932. In 1947, the school was named “Nautical Technical Training School”. Based on the founder’s last will, the means bequeathed to the “Ivo Racic Foundation” were intended for the establishment of a Merchant Marine College, scholarships and grants for students, and have been used for that purpose until today. The premises of the present Nautical School was built at Lapad in the period 1952 - 1954. The Nautical Educational Centre was the result of the merger between the Merchant Marine College and the Nautical School of Dubrovnik in 1969. The Faculty of Maritime Studies of Dubrovnik was established in 1984. and the Polytechnic of Dubrovnik late in 1996 and early in 1997, later to develop into the University of Dubrovnik late in 2003. Under the sponsorship of the local shipping company “Atlantska plovidba”, Nautical School was recently equipped by simulators and similar equipment, as a contribution to mutual respect for the continued tradition of nautical education in Dubrovnik and the RC to be carried on.

The aim of this paper is to indicate some of the distinctive problems of executive leadership which surround the control of authority in merchant navy training schools in the United Satates, Great Britain, and Spain. On the basis of extensive field interviews with the staff and directors of two American, three British, and two Spanish, schools, our purpose is to suggest the conditions which give rise to the need for particular kinds of leadership styles, depending upon the manner by which nautical education is organized [1]. More specfi-cally, our thesis is that their organizationl chartering arrangements (defined as contractual and quasi-contractual linkages with variious third parties to nautical education) mandate specific kinds of internal structural patterns within nautical schools which, in turn, produce the need for different styles of executive leadership.

: The U.S. Merchant Marine is in trouble. It lacks the infrastructure, the ships, and the personnel to perform the mission laid out for it in the Merchant Marine Act of 1936. National policies have largely ignored the importance of this vital asset, and now it is time to readdress the issue. The Merchant Marine Act of 1936 calls for the merchant marine to act as a and military auxiliary in times of war or national emergency. Certainly, the 1990-91 Gulf War was such an emergency but if one infers from the wording of the Act that this naval auxiliary's task is to carry the majority of war materiel to the battle zone, then one must conclude that during the Gulf War the merchant marine fell grossly short of its mission. In time of national crisis, the operational commander will need force sustainment. That sustainment will rely on ocean-going cargo ships. The first wave of those ships is rightly placed in government ownership, but the bulk of the materiel needed in a crisis must be moved on U.S. merchant ships. The United States will not fight its next major war against a cooperative enemy, nor will we fight it with virtually the whole world on our side. Our potential future adversaries have learned well the lessons taught by the Gulf War; they will not repeat Saddam Hussein's mistakes. We must solve the merchant marine problem soon, or we will not be able to sustain the fight on our own in a major war.

Classical merchant marine navigation practices are being revolutionized by the advent of the ‘new technology’. The increase in the number, size and speed of ships, the consequent growth in traffic density, and the tendency toward automation have introduced new requirements in navigation for merchant ships. At present, shipboard navigation procedures range from the antiquated to the most sophisticated. We are in a transition period and studies of future time frames indicate the strong possibility of eventual traffic control of ships in certain traffic lanes by the use of satellites. A start has been made in this direction by the introduction at present of recommended traffic lanes in certain areas of the Atlantic. The man-machine relationship becomes increasingly important with more automation and its implied compression of time for decision making on the part of the nagivator. A prime consideration, therefore, is the human engineering aspects of both techniques and technology. The Maritime Administration, in consonance with its mission of fostering a healthy U. S. Merchant Marine, has undertaken research and development work in this direction which has already culminated in projects which offer great promise for the future. This paper will relate the usual practice of navigation on merchant ships stressing the hardships and the needs of the merchant mariner. At the end, a brief look will be taken at the Maritime Administration navigation projects.

: Merchant shipping and shipbuilding have been of vital importance to Americans since their colonial beginnings. Today, the United States depends on sealift, along with airlift, to project and sustain U.S. military overseas. The U.S. merchant marine is of pivotal importance to America's sealift capability. Over the past several years, America's privately owned merchant fleet has declined in numbers and in ships which are considered by the Navy to be useful to the military. America's private shipbuilding industry has also declined, particularly in regard to the construction of merchant ships. This treatise addresses the U.S. merchant marine and its importance to American sea power and the national defense. It provides a brief history of the U.S. maritime industry, an overview of recent trends, and recommends a general direction for future U.S. maritime policy. The importance of competition, technological application, and creative government policy is stressed.

: At present, there are three primary sources of sealift available to meet strategic mobility requirements. Two of these sources, the vessels of the Military Sealift Command (MSC) and the National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF), appear to be destined for a lesser role in any future conflict. Congressional disapproval of new and efficient Multi-Purpose ships for the MSC reduces the chances for a substantially modernized or enlarged sealift fleet dedicated to military needs. The present NDRF, consisting of ships built during World War II, will be scrapped before the end of this decade. Thus, the remaining source, United States commercial shipping, will be the principal source of sealift for meeting strategic mobility requirements in support of military operations in the years ahead. The current deplorable state of the U.S. merchant marine is well known. American ships are generally old and only marginally competitive in world commerce. Fortunately, In October 1970, the Congress approved a major new program aimed at revitalizing the U.S. merchant marine. This program is designed to provide up to 300 modern new merchant ships over the next 10 years. Most American ship owners interested in obtaining dry cargo vessels under the new maritime program are planning to build specialized ships capable of carrying cargo in barges or containers. All of the commercial dry cargo ships now under construction in domestic shipyards are either barge or container carriers. These ships are designed to make a profit in international maritime trade and not to move military cargo per se. The introduction of these specialized ships into the commercial fleet raises two fundamental and related questions for the military planner. First, are they suitable in terms of design and operation for strategic mobility requirements? Second, given that these modern specialized ships will be available, is the Army capable of employing them effectively in a strategic mobility role?

We compute the interannual fluctuations of the surface heat budget of the North Atlantic using the trimmed monthly summaries of the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere DataSet (COADS) for the period 1950–1979. The presence of long-period trends in the heat budget imply large variations of the northward cross-equatorial heat transport over the years. To assess the reliability of these variations, we compare the COADS climate signal to that derived from the ocean weather stations (OWSs) of the North Atlantic. The sea surface temperature, air temperature and sea level pressure show good correlation between the anomaly time series derived from the merchant ship monthly summaries of COADS, and those derived from OWS monthly summaries, except for northernmost locations during winter. In contrast, the sensible and latent heat parameters, which require simultaneous measurements of various variables, have merchant ships and ocean weather stations anomaly time series that are poorly correlated. Only in heavily travelled latitudes and during winter, when the air-sea heat exchange anomalies are large, are the merchant ship measurements able to reproduce the interannual fluctuations of the heat fluxes. The long-period trends in the surface heat budget of North Atlantic equatorward of 40° N implied by COADS thus appear unrepresentative of true climate trends. The COADS trends result from a gradual increase in the magnitude of the reported winds over the years due probably to variations in the ratio of measured to estimated winds, as well as from long period fluctuations in the near surface vertical temperature and humidity gradients.

A foremost authority has written the first comprehensive reference about the U.S. Merchant Marine and American shipping from the introduction of steamships to today's diesel containerships--showing the impact of politics, economics, and technology on maritime history during the last two centuries. Over 500 entries describe people, private companies, business and labor groups, engineering and technological developments, government agencies, terms, key laws, landmark cases, issues, events, and ships of note. Short lists of references for further reading accompany these entries. Appendices include a chronology, diagrams of government organizations, and lists of business and labor groups by founding dates. An unusually extensive index lends itself to the varying research interests of students, teachers, and professionals in maritime and economic history, business-labor-government relations, and military studies.

Piracy has been threatening international sea trade and creating risk for crews and passengers worldwide. The problem is largely confined to the Somalia coast, West Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. The targets are merchant ships, cruising yachts, and passenger ships with several thousand people on board. Such attacks can result in loss of lives, short- and long-term health problems, and can further be complicated by the consequences of hostage situations on shore. The purpose of this article is to present the problem of piracy, its relevance to the field of travel medicine, and help travel medicine practitioners to deal with its specifics before, during, and after attack. Comprehensive literature research was done and published data from 2002 until 2012 from the International Chamber of Commerce specialized division-International Maritime Bureau (IMB)-on 3,806 attacks and 7,635 incidents involving human victims are analyzed. Available occupational health data in merchant marine and epidemiological data acquired on board cruise ships were used to estimate the health risks. From 2002 until 2012, 3,806 ships were attacked including 82 yachts and 13 passenger ships. A number of reported piracy attacks worldwide continued to threaten security and lives on sea. In 2012, 297 incidents of piracy and armed robbery were reported, a total of 585 crew members were taken hostage, 26 kidnapped, and 6 killed as a direct result of the incident.(1) CONCLUSION: The risk of being injured or killed by pirates on board cruise ships is actually very low. Piracy on the world's seas is in decline and remains a reasonably localized issue. While this improvement is a result of continued efforts of international naval forces, that protection is only partial and fails to suppress piracy completely. Piracy still presents significant threat to international travel, and future involvement of travel medicine practitioners in providing advice to travelers to piracy regions or victims of piracy is expected.

The objective of the research was to study the determinants affecting the decision to study nautical science program within a Thai maritime institute in preparation for working post-graduation as a ship officer on a merchant ship. The samples are classified by institute, academic year, cumulative score level, domicile, and parent's monthly income. The total sample of study was 386 Thai merchant marine students. The data collection method was a one to five rating scale questionnaire. The statistical methods applied in analyzing the data were percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, one way analysis of variance and a Sheffe's test. The study shows seven factors that influenced the decision in descending order; expectations, tuition and scholarships, selection system, quality of the institute, background and private capability, generality of the institute and external influences on the decision. The decision to select an institute was classified by institute and revealed that different institutes had distinct determinants that led to the decision. The students were from The Merchant Marine Training Center and from The International Maritime College, Kasetsart University were differences. There were no dissimilarity between academic year, cumulative score level, domicile, and parent's monthly income.

Over the past few decades, economic and maritime historians have shown growing interest in the wages earned by regular seamen in merchant shipping. Due to a lack of sources, however, the composition and size of these earnings remain an elusive topic, as are the economic, demographic, and political processes that shaped them. In this article, I conduct a micro-history of seamen’s earnings in Ostend’s merchant marine during the early 1780s, a period of commercial uptick in the principal port town of the Austrian Netherlands. I show how a confluence of wartime circumstances and domestic economic policies led to extraordinary wage levels. From a micro point of view, I show how individual seamen reaped the returns of this runaway port economy by successfully wrangling over wages and harnessing the mobility of their profession, both between and within ports. As such, this article provides a perspective on wage-formation from a neutral and small maritime power, as well as a novel history from below of Ostend’s boom years.

HE personnel of the American merchant T marine has always been one of popular interest,because there is a widespread realization that life at sea is abnormal and that seafarers endure social and economic disadvantages. It is an established fact that until recently the native American left many positions on board ship to be filled by persons of foreign birth, but that this condition has changed noticeably within the past ten years.' The alien has almost disappeared from the forecastles of ships flying the American flag, and naturalized Americans are now greatly outnumbered by native Americans. The purpose of this study is to learn, within limits, the social, the educational, and the economic background of a group of the men who now occupy the accommodations set apart for the crew in the American merchant marine. We say new because the conditions of work at sea have been almost revolutionized within the past decade. These changes may be attributed to the enactment and the administration of various federal laws which have strengthened the seamen's unions and increased the bargaining solidarity of the different departments on board ship. A questionnaire was compiled seeking information concerning date and place of birth, the occupation of the father, the age at which the seaman had left school, the school grade he attained, the age at which he entered upon his first job, and at which he went to sea for the first time, the number of years he had been employed on board ship, the kind of work he did ashore and on board, and also the position he had occupied on his trip and the highest rating he had attained in his work at sea. The questionnaire was submitted to 326 men who were either residents of or visitors to Seamen's House Y.M.C.A. in New York City. This building has sleeping accommodations for that number of seamen. The number interviewed appears to afford an adequate size of sample, while the diversity of the occupations engaged in by the men interviewed and the variety of the merchant ships on which they worked suggest that the sample was representative of the merchant service. Merchant ships in the large are engaged in services which are either passenger, passenger-cargo, or cargo-carrying. Their routes may be either ocean-going, coastwise, inland water, or on the Great Lakes. The type of sea service in which the seaman was engaged was inferred from the name of the last vessel on which the seaman was employed. This is the customary procedure in the merchant marine industry. When the interviewed were assured that the questionnaire had no bearing upon military or naval issues, they became interested and cooperated well in answering it, and in many instances, showed supplementary data to confirm the accuracy of their statements. Another approach was undertaken in 1938 by Hutchins2 and the results have been collated in a thesis, Emotional Stability of Seamen, presented for the degree of Master of Arts at Columbia University in 1939. Hutchins submitted his questionnaire to 199 seamen in the lobbies and lounge rooms of the Seamen's Church Institute of New York and the Seamen's House Y.M.C.A. The studies are remarkably similar, and when there is any divergence it may be attributed to the fact that Hutchins included licensed officers and licensed engineers in his group, whereas the collaborators in this study confined their questions to seamen whose discharge showed they were in the unlicensed personnel. In some few instances those questioned had at one time or another served in the capacity of licensed officer or engineer but at the time of the interview both in their union affiliation and in their prospects had reverted to the status of and expected to reship as unlicensed personnel.

Reviewed by: A Call to the Sea: Captain Charles Stewart of the USS Constitution Spencer C. Tucker A Call to the Sea: Captain Charles Stewart of the USS Constitution. By Claude Berube and John A. Rodgaard. Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2005. ISBN 1-57488-518-9. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvi, 299. $35.00. An icon of the early U.S. sailing navy, Charles Stewart is best known as the captain of the frigate Constitution, although his naval career spanned more than sixty years. It is thus quite surprising that this is the first published biography of Stewart. Fortunately for those interested in the period, it is a splendid book. Stewart was born in Philadelphia on 28 July 1778. His father and stepfather both made their living from the sea and his close boyhood friends were future naval luminaries Stephen Decatur, Jr., and Richard Somers. Stewart joined the merchant marine as a cabin boy at age twelve, but in March 1798 at nineteen he secured a commission as a lieutenant in the new U.S. Navy. After a stint on the frigate United States, in 1800 during the Quasi War (1798–1800), while commanding the sloop Experiment, he took two French privateers and also recovered a number of U.S. merchant ships. [End Page 510] Stewart's fine record led to his retention in the downsized peacetime naval establishment. He participated in the war with Tripoli (1801–5) and took part in Lieutenant Stephen Decatur's expedition to destroy the captured frigate Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor in February 1804. Advanced to captain in 1806, Stewart spent several years overseeing gunboat construction. Following several furloughs with the merchant marine, Stewart returned to the navy just before the War of 1812 and took a number of prizes in the brig Argus. He then assumed command of the frigate Constellation at Norfolk. Unable to escape the British blockade, he was transferred to the Constitution at Boston and in December 1813 got to sea and captured several prizes. In December 1814 he again ran the blockade. Off Madeira on 20 February 1815, the Constitution encountered the British 32-gun frigate Cyane and the 20-gun sloop Levant. Skillfully maneuvering his own heavier vessel, Stewart was able to rake both British ships without ever exposing the Constitution's bow or stern. Within an hour both his opponents had struck, although a pursuing British squadron subsequently retook the Levant. Returning to New York in May, Stewart was hailed as a national hero and voted a gold medal by Congress. After the war, Stewart held various commands ashore and afloat. In 1830 he served on the Board of Naval Commissioners and also commanded the Philadelphia Navy Yard between 1838 and 1841 and again between 1854 and 1860, then advised President Abraham Lincoln at the beginning of the Civil War. Stewart died at Bordentown, New Jersey, on 6 November 1869. Fittingly, his headstone reads simply, "Charles Stewart, U.S.N." Authors Claude Berube and John A. Rodgaard are to be highly commended for this splendid book tracing Stewart's life and accomplishments. It is both thoroughly researched and engagingly presented. Both men have contributed articles to Naval History but this is their first book, and it is a major accomplishment. Its great strength lies in the authors' ability to present a clear picture of Stewart's public and private lives within a grander setting. Alas, the foresight that served Stewart so well professionally did not carry over to his personal life. Desperate for marriage, he chose badly and it ended in divorce. He was, however, devoted to his five children, three of whom were by his mistress. The authors do a fine job of setting the surroundings. Thus there are descriptions of the Philadelphia of Stewart's youth and discussions of the formation of the U.S. Navy and the background of the wars of the period, as well as of the sea fights, which the authors handle deftly. Stewart also made major contributions in other areas, which the authors detail. An important addition to the literature of the U.S. age of sail, A Call to the Sea will appeal to all those with an...

Science education in the nineteenth-century Philippines has been portrayed as highly deficient, yet pockets of respectable scientific education existed. The Escuela Nautica de Manila, which opened in 1820, offered such an education. This article narrates its establishment and discusses its changing curricular offerings in relation to empire-wide initiatives and constraints internal to the Philippines. Its quality of scientific education can be glimpsed from reports related to three episodes: the earthquake in 1863; the planned closure of the school in the late 1880s; and the advent of American colonial rule in the early 1900s. This school survives as the Philippine Merchant Marine Academy. KEYWORDS: PILOTAGE • NAUTICAL EDUCATION • SEAFARING • COLONIAL SCIENCE, SPANISH COLONIALISM

Modern research into the history of education in the British Isles in the eighteenth century has often reflected modern cultural concerns and thus has explored, for example, the establishment of new scholastic opportunities for classes of children other than the noble and wealthy. Rather than treat the better-known public, or “classical,” schools that dosed their pupils with sufficient Latin to make them eligible for university and careers in the law, the church, or the government, such research has described schools sponsored by various Christian denominations— for example, Hackney Academy— or vocational institutions that prepared young men for trades such as accounting or the merchant marine. And considerable research has been done on the relatively meager opportunities for women.1 This limited range of scholarly treatment of schools and their curricula has misleadingly seemed to cover the topic fairly well, or at least mark its boundaries; yet it is easy to forget that a great deal of the tuition for young boys was private rather than institutional and that many a family of rank, fashion, or means employed a bright young man, fresh from the university and seeking preferment or eventual ordination, to tutor its male children in Latin, literature, and mathematics, perhaps some geography, and maybe a little elementary science. Private tutoring was, in fact, the preferred option among the upper