Generally speaking the chain of command went from tug or barge captain to port captain/port engineer. Port captains were pretty much equal to port engineers. Port Captains were administrative, port engineers were responsible for the mechanicals. A Port captain/engineer team would be responsible for several vessels.
I can think of only one real jerk I had to deal with as a port captain and he was a Lulu. When I changed companies after a decade he stayed put and I didn't have to deal with his ignorance and stupidity any more. Thank God! I did make a fool out of him once when he pulled a 'Captain Queeg' and practically tore up the fleet trying to find a missing sledge hammer.
I had witnessed some poor deckhand lose one over the side and a couple of days at the company pier later saw the same deckhand pick one up off the dock that some mechanic had left behind. He took it back to the tug and I watched him spray a quick coat of paint on it and put it back in the holder on the towing winch.
Later on the mechanic went looking for it, didn't find it and simply reported it missing. The port captain in question went nuts hunting for it. He went from boat to boat asking people and making stupid threats.
When he got to me I managed to settle him down by telling him I'd keep my eyes and ears open and let him know. "Word will go through the fleet and I'll hear about it and let you know," I said.
My plan was to just let it go away and die. I knew something else would come along and overshadow it soon.
That afternoon I told my barge captain about it and told him I had half a mind to write the Honolulu Police Department and ask where Charlie Chan is so he can come and solve this little mystery.
He laughed and said ''You should''. So I did.
I wrote a long letter describing the mystery of the missing sledge hammer and asked for contact information for Charlie Chan so we could hire him to come and solve the Big Mystery. I made a couple of copies of the letter, saved them and threw the original in the mail. I actually didn't expect an answer.
When I go home there was a letter waiting for me.
Now the best I can make out as to what happened when the HPD got the letter is that some sergeant that was pissed off at a couple of jaded robbery detectives ordered them to answer it because it sure didn't sound like the answer had come from the public relations department.
The letter said that the HPD had been looking for him since 1956 for back child support after he ran off with a Rio de Janeiro showgirl and skipped out on his wife and 14 kids!
I made copies of this letter, too.
When I went back to work I pinned both letters to the port captain's bulletin board and reported back aboard my boat. Needless to say, the port captain was after me and tried a couple times to hang me because he was now the laughingstock of the entire fleet when word got around of what I had done.
Fortunately one of my admirers got me out from under him shortly after when they reorganized a few things and I had little contact with him afterwards. I never did leave his radar, though and later on when the company reorganized and sold a lot of its equipment off he found himself out of a job and I found myself working somewhere else.
I don't believe he ever returned to the industry because his reputation preceeded him.
As for the sledge hammer? I later complimented the kid for having enough sense to slap a coat of paint on it and, of course, he feigned innocence. Still, I knew I had made a friend that would look out for me.
Some time later I switched companies and it became night and day. It was like going from IBM to a Mom and Pop operation. What a joy the change turned out to be!
I remember asking the CEO once to have supply stop sending us Chinese wrenches because they broke too easily and that got fixed fast. I told him quality was like buying oats. Good, fresh oats cost some money while oats that have been through the horse come a lot cheaper.
For the first 10 or 15 years I worked there everyone was approachable. Still, up to my last day it never got as bad as the first place I had worked. What happened is that it just got to be too big for my tastes.
When I arrived inside a short period of time I knew everybody, their wive's names and how many kids thay had. When I retired I knew a handful of the old sweats and there were a lot of nameless faces running around.
Basic day to day leadership wasn't too bad in the new company and we did enjoy a lot of communication from top to bottom for the first decade or so but eventually as we grew it turned into another large company and lost a lot of its 'small town' flavor. Even so, it never got to become too impersonal.
Still, by being one of the 'old hands' I still had the ear of a lot of people that had been there for years. It was also a two way street. Once every so often I'd get a call from someone asking me something like how to do something. It's be along the lines of, "Hey! How do you Old School guys secure the anchor?" or "Hey! Can you run over to the such and such (an old barge with obsolete rigging) and show the guys how to re-rig it?
I very, very seldom called my friends upstairs but one or two times I did I got results. I can only think off the top of my head of having done this twice. A new (short lived) port engineer came aboard and started throwing his weight around. When he started the 'I was a Marine and..." crap I knew I had to deal with it.
Looking him square in the eye I made a phone call. I spoke my piece and said, "Here. Talk to him," and handed him the phone and watched him deflate. After he stuttered and stammered a bit he returned my phone and skulked off.
Later i was telling my relief about the new port engineer and my relief wanted to know his name which I didn't remember because I was too annoyed by him. It might have been Anthony or something. Anyway, I said to my relief, "It's Antonio Banderas or some damned thing, I forgot it."
It stuck and that's what we referred to him as the short time he worked there.
The person I had called was someone further up the chain that had been on board recently and complimented the condition of our equipment.
One time a port captain mentioned a problem that the company had no simple mechanism to fix and I simply said, "I got this but it's gonna cost me out of pocket, maybe $75. You can reimburse me with a couple of hours of overtime."
I quietly fixed it and found an extra full day's pay in my check.
I ran a lot of my career on goodwill and back channel favors which paid good dividends and always tried to solve my own problems without dragging the office into things.
Actually even though now and then the office would come out with something annoying, we'd generally get basic support. They were, for the most part, not stupid and they wanted us to be successful and did what they could to help us. I always figured that they were told to do things by the customers and were just passing things down. Later that was usually confirmed.
One thing I noticed fairly early on is the guys ruin things for themselves.
At the first place where I worked when the company had to put someone up in a hotel for whatever reason they put put them in a fairly nice place.
Needless to say, some jerk tore up one of the rooms and after that incident they put us up in an inexpensive basic motel afterwards. Actually I blame the vandal less than I blame the office. The guy got to keep his job. Had they fired him and kept putting us up in decent places that would have made things a lot nicer.
The other thing that comes to mind is the company used to take us out for a really good meal annually. It was in one of the nicest places in town.
The last time they did that a couple of clowns started smoking in the men's room because it was cold out and that pretty much ended that. AS USUAL the guys had ruined that one for themselves.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this:
http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
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