What do Marine Engineers do?

What do Marine Engineer's do?

What do Marine Engineer’s do? To get some perspective on this, let’s look at the day to day life of someone at home. When you wake up, typically you have running water, your toilet works, and you have electricity. At a minimum, these are three basic things that modern society needs to operate. The power is produced at the power plant and then distributed out to the city’s power grid, water is treated and sent out to the city’s water system, and sewage is taken from people’s homes and processed. In this way, a ship can be thought of as a floating city…

Marine Engineers are highly skilled engineers that serve as a jack-of-all-trades, if you will, that manage, operate, and maintain all of these utilities for a ship. Ship’s also have some extra systems that cities do not, such as the Main Propulsion System, Central HVAC and Refrigeration Systems…etc. Most Marine Engineers are skilled in, or at least have a some experience with, Power Generation and Distribution, Diesel Engineering, Steam Plant System Engineering, working knowledge of Gas Turbines, Compressed Air Systems, hydraulics, electrical motors, cranes, winches, motor controllers, Fuel Oil and Lube Oil processing and care, Potable and Distilled Water Generation, transfer, and distribution systems, sewage treatment and processing systems, plumbing, welding, brazing, and many other machine shop skills.

Why are all these skills needed? Well, quite frankly, when you’re in the middle of the ocean, there you can’t exactly call a plumber to come fix a toilet, and you can’t call a diesel engine mechanic to come work on an engine that has broken down. Therefore, it is necessary for engineering departments onboard ships to have the skills required to fix problems that arise as equipment develops wear and tear as time goes on. Most of the time, when problems occur, they need to be fixed quickly so the ship can stay on schedule.

All mariners, not just engineers, are also required to be trained in both damage control and shipboard firefighting as it is the crew’s responsibility to address situations where there is a fire onboard a ship. Fire is one of the worst situations that can happen onboard a ship. Therefore, everybody is required to be trained in ship-board fire fighting procedures. The entire ship’s crew regularly rehearses donning firefighting equipment (yes, it is mostly the same equipment that you see regular fire fighters wear when fighting a fire) and fighting fake fires in the most common places that a fire might break out, such as in the Galley where a grease fire may occur.