The Mariners
Firstly most of us confuse the term mariner or a marine with some sort of defense personnel who fights against the enemies. Actually this is just part of the whole picture and you can learn more about marines by clicking on this article. There are other people who are known as commercial mariners and broadly speaking they can be divided into two categories namely Marine Engineers and Navigating Officers.
Marine Engineers
As the name suggests, marine engineers mainly deal with the maintenance of various kinds of machineries found on board ships. There is a long list of such machineries and they include the main engine or the main propulsion plant, the auxiliary power generators, boilers, pumps, inert gas systems and so forth. Needless to say when a ship is built these machineries are fitted at that time in the ship building yard but since a ship is almost continuously on the move these machineries require constant preventive as well as breakdown maintenance in order to keep those machineries in proper operational condition. Of course major breakdowns might occur as well which might require external specialist help.
Navigating Officers
They are the white-collared mariners whose main job is to carry out duties relating to the loading discharging of cargo, navigating (driving) the vessel (ship) and other administrative jobs. While most of the engineers sweat out in the engine room (except probably the chief engineer sitting comfortably in the air conditioned engine control room) the navigating officers are like pilots of an airplane guiding and controlling where the ship is going.
Miscellaneous Crew
Apart from these two main categories of marine officers, there are other personnel on board which are like fitters, welders, oilmen, wipers, cook, stewards and so forth.
Note
I know the above is a very brief description of the marine job profiles but do not worry for we will also be undertaking more detailed study of each of these in separate articles as it is not possible to load a single article with all the information. Apart from that if any reader has got any questions regarding a marine career, they can feel free to contact me with their queries
