How to Hawsepipe - From no Merchant Mariner Credential to QMED with STCW RFPEW & ASE

Engineering Officers that have come up through the ranks to become officer, or Hawspipers, have played a major part in US Merchant Marines since the steam engine made sails a thing of the past. Hawsepipers have garnered much respect over the years due to the experience they gained while coming up the ranks. This has allowed many of them to become good leaders, knowledgeable engineers and experienced hands. This is however, a generality and not a rule, something that will be discussed more another time

If you are reading this than the chances you are toying with the idea of making this your own career path and have likely already become a mariner or at least contemplating it. You may be wondering what the prospects are of moving up the ranks to make "the big bucks". Afterall, this is why we do it, for money right?

You are in the right place, but I should mention that we can not cover every single circumstance and situation that may affect you in this article, this is something that we are only able to do on an individual bases. We encourage you to reach out to Consult@howtohawsepipe.com for more information on creating your own personalized career plan.

There is more to Hawsepiping nowadays than ever before, primarily due to new international requirements laid out in the Standards of Training and Watchkeeping or STCW code created by the International Maritime Organization or IMO. It makes sense for many reasons to have these rules to be in place, most of them have come about due to tragically hard learned lessons. For you as an individual it mostly means you must invest a lot more of your time and money to become an Officer. Yes, even despite what the old salty Hawsepipers tales and recommendations on how they did it 30 years ago might have you think. I should also mention that’s its going to become a requirement that you get to know the CFRs for many reason as a Marine Engineer. You don’t need to memorize a word of them, but you do need to know where to find the answers to your questions, after all the CFRs are our rule book. I myself learned this the hard way and took some poor advise from an respectable and well intending engineering mentor that burned me, If I had taken the time to read the CFRs and answer my own questions, it wouldn’t have ever happened.

You can think of your MMC as two sperate “endorsement” types, a Domestic one and an International one. If you are going to sail Deep Sea for the "big bucks" in international waters you MUST have both. This is not so for the Inland Ferries, Fishing boats and most Tugs however. Therefore, you must adhere to two similar but (Mostly) sperate sets of requirements together and plan the most efficient use of your Seadays and "Homedays" to navigate both. How fast you become a Licensed Engineer with both Domestic and International licenses hinges on your willingness to work on and off the ship for the Pay off. A tough Pill to swallow for some, but when $700-$1100/day, working 6 months a year, living anywhere in the world you want is looming on the Horizon it’s well worth it for some, it was and still is for me.

For my own personal journey, the investment I made in myself proved to be an excellent move right off the bat at my first job as a Third Assistant Engineer. I was able to pay off the High interest loans and debt I had taken on to get my licenses in the first 6 months I had increased my salary by 50% the first year. I also earned money, traveled the world and gained valuable professional experience while working to get the entry level officer endorsements, something I feel very lucky to have been able to do.

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Before we get into this deeper you should keep the following in mind. The upside to the absolute nonsense that is required of us is this, the harder it is to get and the more training that is required, the more money you are going to make on the tail end of this. So don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and hear me out on this. The USCG and IMO have done a great service to the USMM, the more they require, the higher our wages will go because the fewer of us there are. The IMO and USCG are creating scarcity while trying to keep sailors safe, as well as justify their own existence. This is not to say that there aren’t cons to this, but we can’t do anything about those can we, so no use in getting worked up over it then.

We have broken this article down into to separate pieces. The first being the Entry level steps“The Beginning” and the second being the “Big Jump”, intended for the current QMED. However, we would encourage you to read both if you are truly serious about any of this.

Here are 5 simplified steps to becoming an engineering officer nowadays that we are going to discuss more in depth in following pages.

The Beginnings

1) Obtain your Entry Level Credentials.

2) Build your Seatime in the most time efficient manner.

3) Stop and determine if this is the right career for you, it may not be.

The Big Jump

4) Begin your STCW classes - OICEW

5) Obtain your Domestic and International Licenses

So without further a dew lets dive a bit deeper into the nuance of the first 3 steps.

1. Obtain your Entry Level Credentials.

This will consist of your MMC, TWIC and Med Cert, these are very easy applications to complete, and most of them can be done almost entirely online. For your first MMC or Merchant Mariner Credential you really only need to follow the simple checklist the USCG National Maritime Center (NMC) has created. This will give you the Basics of your Entry Level ratings which will be Wiper, Food Handler and Ordinary Seaman, the bottom man on the Totem Pole so to speak.

Next you will need a Transportation Workers Identification Credential otherwise known as a TWIC card. To get a TWIC card you will need to go to the TSA. The TWIC is essentially a standardized background check certificate of sorts that will allow you to enter Port areas and work on ships. It may do more, but it probably will never matter that much to you, it hasn’t to me or anyone I know or have worked with.

You also need to get a Medical Certificate, which essentially is a credit card sized plasticky slip stating that the USCG has determined that you meet the minimum physical requirements to work at sea. The bar is low here so don't worry too much if you have some minor health problems, Narcoleptic bosuns, Half Blind Oilers, Deaf Electricians, Liver disease and Heart failure are all the norm for our lot. Even if you have a spicy criminal drug record, you may have to jump some silly hoops to get a Med Cert, but fear not you WILL get it with persistence and some patience.

Here would be the most efficient path for theis step of the road.

1. Get a USCG physical from a clinic that is likely to have seen one of these physicals before, typically around $100-$125. Call around to Port clinics frequented by truck drivers or even near major Shipping ports (Most any major coastal city really) and you can find one. Make sure you bring a completed USCG Physical form with you, this can save you some time and hassle. The USCG does periodically update this form, most clinics just keep it saved in an uncontrolled electronic location. You need the CG719KE form specifically, this physical is basically a "do you have a pulse" check. Make sure you fill it out TRUTHFULLY. With that said if it becomes anything more than a simple physical or the Doctor is a stickler for something or is writing up more than they should, STOP and go to a different provider, you’ll thank me later. Some doctors are gung-ho, which is great for a cancer diagnosis, not for your “USCG pulse check” of which your career is now riding on. For efficiency purposes you should also use this time to get a DOT drug screen. Most companies and unions require one annually at minimum, I've even had hair follicle testing before, so give yourself some time off from the reefer and Speed balls, it’ll be good for ya anyway. Feel free however to take up heavy drinking and psychedelics if you need to take the edge off, no problems there apparently….Also if you do end up getting a hair follicle test I was informed that shaving your entire body bare doesn’t get you off the hook from the test, your still welcome to try anyway.

2. Apply for your TWIC card. You will have to show a few forms of ID, I would suggest a state ID and a Passport, but for this the TSA has a giant list of form of different identification that are also acceptable. Apply online and show up to a TSA screening facility to present your documents in person. If you do not have a Passport, make the application for one step 2B here. You will need one for Sailing the high seas. I would also make this an even more efficient run and schedule get TSA precheck, or my personal favorite the Global Pass. You will be flying to and from your assignments anywhere in the world, these will pay dividends on your first trip overseas. There is nothing better than waiting in an immigration line for hours after 26hrs of flying and traveling, with global pass you’ll walk past all the lines and thank me you did it. When you make the TWIC application, print your receipt, you will need it for Step 4 applying for your MMC.

3. Go to Pay.gov, using the link on the NMC website and pay the $140 application fee at the time of this post, print your receipt to a PDF to include in your MMC application package.

4. Go to the NMC website and complete your CG719B Application form. This is a form you will be submitting more and more in the coming years through your progression. If you would like assistance in completing and submitting this form, we would be happy to assist with this as well as any other step of this process you may be having difficulties with.

5. Submit your entire MMC application package to a USCG regional Exam Center (REC) via email. The USCG would like you to submit to your local REC, however if you live in a busy REC port, it may take longer for them to check it and submit to the National Maritime Center for the next steps, I like to send mine to Juneau Alaska, it doesn’t seem like they have much going on compared to some other RECs.

6. Wait for your MMC, TWIC and Med Cert, wait times to get these vary monthly, its best to check with the TSA and NMC to get accurate wait times, you can also look at the status online after a few weeks.

2. Build your Seatime in the Most efficient manner.

Now that you have your entry level credentials it is important not to get yourself pigeonholed into the plentiful and sometimes easy work on small craft, where wages don’t increase as much as you see with deep sea shipping. You must seek out Coastwise/International unlimited Horsepower SHIPS to get the Sea time requirements not only for your first but also your subsequent upgrades. Sea time is calculated by the USCG as an 8hr work day being the equivalent of 1 sea day, whereas 12hrs is calculated to 1.5 sea days. It would behoove you to find a ship that will give you the latter, since the chances are you are going to be doing 12hr days regardless of what your sea service letter states. How much sea time you get per day is complicated and not typically stated when you are hired on, so don’t count on it being 1.5 seatime. For Engineers, Horsepower and Kilowatts are the way the USCG and IMO have structured their licenses with Unlimited HP/KW being anything over 4,000hp or 1000 KW respectively.

Now it is possible for you to get on a 60ft long 4,001 HP tug and work your way up all the way to a First Engineer unlimited HP Motor License, then go to work on a 14,000HP ferry with 4000passengers onboard (legally speaking) but it might not be the best idea . The are a few major drawbacks to doing this, one being you still will not be able to get your unlimited international credential OICEW (More on this later), so your license is still worthless to getting on big ships. The second is that tug work IS NOT ship work. The only similarity they share is that they float, and they have engines. Most Tugs do not do near the amount of maintenance that a large vessel would do, mainly because they don’t have the capabilities. Most tugs contract out the big work to shore facilities while deep sea ships are the opposite. You will do most things onboard larger ships, minus the really major stuff that is just out side the scope for Ships force, like major structural repairs, pulling cranks, prop shafts or rudder stocks etc. The deep-sea shipping avenue will also give you a much wider array of experience from potable water systems, electrical distribution systems, sewage and plumbing systems, larger and varying types diesel engines, Fuel and Lube oil systems, Cooling water systems, fabrication and Machining as well as more employee and Plant management skills as well as many others. All of which will also give you much better job prospects not only at sea but if you may want to transition ashore someday. Who knows, maybe the single sailor life turns out not to be your thing and you decide to have a family and move back ashore, many people do.

So with all that said on Sea time, it is going to be difficult getting the quantity and type you need because of the saturation of entry level workers. But I would recommend a few places you could get past all this; the best option would be an advancement program run by a trade school. My personal favorite would be through Seattle Maritime Academy in Ballard Washington. This is a one-year program that gives you great beginner knowledge and skills as well as sets you up with your first shipping internship, it is also relatively cheap, and some of the credits can even be transferred to a major academy if you decide to bag the hawsepipe route and go to a traditional Maritime College. You also pick up a few perks on the way, one being your EPA universal refrigeration license. There are other programs that do some of this, but they are shorter and much more condensed, you won’t have as much time to learn the basics although some are excellent options for some people, especially if they already have a lot of similar mechanical experience.

The next best option would be to join the Military Sealift Command but do so at your own risk.

Here are a few things MSC WILL NOT be able to do for you.

• Allow you time home more than once a year, for a month maybe 2 if you’re cunning.

• Guarantee you a position in the Engine room after hiring, you could be a laundryman.

• Guarantee your going to be on a large diesel vessel, could be a tug or a steam ship/

• Guarantee you will get day for day sea time every day worked; some may even give you less than this depending on mission.

• Provide you with a positive nurturing learning environment for advancements.

• Provide you with a good competitive wage, wipers could get 25/hr (with my math)

• Provide you with reliable connectivity with loved ones while away.

• Guarantee you have good Engineering Mentors; this varies largely in the fleet.

Here is what MSC WILL do for you.

• Provide you opportunity to gain a shitload of sea time, this must considered separate from getting a shitload of GOOD experience however, which may vary in the fleet.

• If you work hard, you WILL advance quicker than anywhere else. I think Dr Jordan B Peterson had MSC in mind when he stated, “Opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated”.

• Fantastic experiences at sea and in port throughout the world. The job really is fun.

• Provide you with paid training opportunities (with cavoites and not always as much as you may want, it also needs to be approved by your department head)

• Make you tired, fatigued and disgruntled.

• Pay you a ton per year, but very little per day. Especially as an Officer.

• Not provide you with time off to take advantage of the training opportunities.

• Almost guaranteed your supervisor will be ill-equipped to be in a leadership position, not always due to lack of knowledge but due to high stress and chronic fatigue, perhaps for decades.

So MSC is not for everyone, it wasn’t for me. That didn’t stop me from spending almost 4 years there which made an immensurable impact on my life and my families. If you were to ask me personally, was it worth it? I would say for my career 100% YES, for my families probably not.

No matter which route you take you need to keep 3 credentialling goals in mind now. The first would be obtaining your QMED, next obtaining your REFPEW and finally your AB seafarer Engine endorsement.

QMED is your first Domestic Endorsement. To get your Qualified Member of the Engine Department endorsements you must serve in the Engine Department a total of 180 days in order to be eligible to take your first set of tests. QMED is a domestic umbrella endorsement comprising of 5 individual sub-endorsements, some are less important than others depending on your career path. They are Electrician/Refrigerating Engineer, Oiler, Fireman/Water tender, Junior Engineer and Pumpman/Machinist. Each sub endorsement requires a series of 75 question Tests taken at your local REC. If passed with a 70% you become endorsed with this. If you go for all of them, you will get QMED-Any rating. I would go for all of them at once, as there is no reason not to since all you need to do is study and remember the questions! Which is way easier now days than you think, with some awesome study guides available now. If not, the most useful credentials in order will be Oiler, Electrician/Refrigerating Engineer and Jr Engineer, the other two are no longer needed for any seagoing position to my knowledge. Not even at MSC as a Deck Machinist (DMACH) or on a steam ship would you need to have Machinist or Fireman Water tender with pumpman present in few places nowadays.

RFPEW is your first international Endorsement, RFPEW stands for Ratings Forming Part of an Engineering Watch. For this you also need 180days of sea time to qualify but luckily it will coincide with the 180days you got for your QMED endorsement. For RFPEW you won’t have to take a test, but you will have to complete onboard assessments from the NVICs or more specifically the Naval and Vessel Inspection Circular 07-14, Enclosure 3, Record of assessment tables, this is a fancy “technical way” of stating where to find the assessments and the instructions for doing them is all. You should start these assessments the first day you get onboard, if you wait until day 175 to do them, chances are they won’t be finished by day 180 for your application and you’ll begin to waste precious time that would have gone to your next endorsement. I should also note here, until Dec/31/2023 any officer in the engine department can sign these off for completion. After this date, only Qualified Assessors (QAs) can do so. There is no guarantee the ship you are working on will have one of these QAs onboard either, as it falls on the engineering officer to obtain this completely optional endorsement, QA costs time and money to get, with no compensation to the engineer. This is another good reason Seattle Maritime Academy, or a similar program would be a great option, as you can bypass a lot of this QA and assessment silliness as most of it is cooked into the curriculum now.

The Second International endorsement is what really takes the wind out of most people’s sails, I have seen it time and time again with aspiring engineers. The reason is you need 360 days and even more assessments to get this and sail as a QMED. What this actually translates to is, even though you hold QMED and RFPEW you cant actually get a job (Make more money) until you also hold AB-Seafarer Engine too. So the IMO has essentially extended from 6 months to 1 year you ability to increase your wages (for the most part). DON’T LET THIS DISCOURAGE YOU. This beginning 1 year of sea time still counts towards your first Entry level Officer license, 3rd Assistant Engineer, if this is the goal, you are not wasting any time still. In the long run it is just a brief delay of increased wage opportunities.

To summarize this stage of things, the best course of action would be a Maritime trade school program OR work for shipping company with plenty of QAs (MSC is one of them) as a wiper. You could also try joining a union (SIU/MFOW) but it is very likley you wont get much work and the work you do get will be on beat ass rust buckets, doing horrible runs. Just skip the union in your entry level position if you ask me, it will be a much better decision later on for you however. The day you sign on begin working diligently on your assessments. Understand also that the QAs are usually busy with ship work, so do all you can do to make it simple and easy for the engineer, I have seen this mistake many times over. I learned this especially for my Officer level endorsement assessments and appreciate it even more now as a senior engineer and QA who is extremely busy at times. An example of this would be writing in the dates and all other in for required like license #s, names, dates etc, as well as researching and getting background of each assessment (don’t expect them to teach it to you!). If you make the signature easy and overwhelmingly obvious you deserve it, they will do it. This is also a valuable lesson for you when you become an officer, nobody will do the work for you since nobody owes you anything. *Protip – Pay attention to the NVIC instructions as they relate to the assessments, it tells you exactly what is required for the signature. Knowing this can help you remove any ambiguity that would cause the assessor from giving you a signature, only show them if it is in your best interest however, if they are happy to sign then let them do it. Some assessors can be very hesitant because of how broad the task scope can seem, this will help you narrow things down and calm them down a bit. This may not work if the Assessor is actually a QA and knows the material already as they should.

You should also anticipate when you expect to complete your 180day and 360day sea time goals and have your application and assessments completed well in advance of this. You can always make the application without the adequate sea service requirement. The USCG NMC will, after evaluating you application package, give you a 1-year window from the application date to provide proof of the sea time. This will ensure the most efficient use of your time, the NMC wait times can vary from a few weeks to several months. It's never fun knowing your burning time you could have the credential in your hand, but can't use it because the NMC hasn’t finished processing it yet, it's better that they wait on you, then you wait on them! This is particularly true if your supervisor is trying to open a job position up for you or you miss an advancement opportunity because of it. Don’t waste your Sea time, and don’t waste your home time, this is the Key!

3. Determine if this career is right for you, it may not be.

If you have made it this far with your maritime licensing goals, you deserve to reap some of the benefits of the hard work and sea time you’ve earned. I personally feel you should stop here and make some observations and reflections on sailing as a career, specifically if it's something you have enjoyed thus far and haven’t found yourself in a constant pit of despair and depression. This reflection doesn’t need to be a step 3 by any means, but it's a question you should be able to answer at this point. This is the stage where you’re not in it too far, but you’ve also gotten enough experience to see what it's all about. You should consider yourself lucky to have made some good decisions, most Maritime Academy grads only find this out after spending 4 years and incurring tens of thousands in School loans, just to find out they don’t really like it. You should take advantage of this time before you commit yourself deeper, with your time you’re your money.

Some unlicensed mariners only really wish to become officers because of the better treatment they get onboard. This is not a wrong observation, it was one of the motivators for me personally, I wanted higher living standards on and off the ship. I was tired of cleaning bilges while the licensed engineers sat in the air-conditioned control room and drank coffee. Although I have learned a lot since that time, one lesson being those officers lacked a lot of leadership qualities that I have seen much better examples of in later years. A good concept to keep in mind here is from the Peter Principle, where supervisors or officers are often promoted to "a level of respective incompetence”. This is the real problem with the merchant marines, and you should ask yourself what your personal strengths and weaknesses are. Most of us would respect no sailor more than the one that has learned their craft well, become experienced professionals and are content to keep this station. In fact, as a First Engineer, I wanted nothing more than to have a department full of them. Even just one such individual I've found to be worth their weight in gold to a ship. Many Bosuns are like this, they have more knowledge than most deck officers and are much better leaders in many cases. This also goes for my own personal mentors, many of which were unlicensed engineers whom I hold in much higher regard than most officers I've worked with well over a decade now. In the military, battles are fought and one by Sergeants, NOT Generals.

Captain Bligh of the “Mutiny on the bounty” and the “Rum Rebellion” was a perfect example of such a thing. There was no doubt that Bligh was a superiorly skilled sailor, in fact he displayed this point quite well we he actually survived the Mutiny of the Bounty along with his cohorts. But Bligh still would have made a much better Bosun or Chief Mate than Captain. Many hawspipers can and do turn out to be poor leaders because of there tendency to micromanage and not take suggestions or have a rigid way of doing things. After all the way they did it worked, so it must be the only way, right? Well, that is probably wrong and there are many reason for it we wont discuss here now. Bligh lacked compassion and humility in this regard, don’t become a Bligh! Lord knows one was too many as it is! Just one such a Hawsepiper would make me regret writing any of this.

For my own personal journey to becoming an officer, I was driven by a combination of better treatment, higher pay and more time off. But the tipping point was when I saw the cadets, I had helped train in the REAL engineering skill sets become officers and, in some cases, move up to First and Second Engineers. This provided me with the absolute confidence that I was more than capable than my current position showed. I was also tired of Firsts or Chiefs, who had little hands-on experience “on the deck plates” or it was so long ago to not be practical anymore. I saw these types of engineers inflict misery on the unlicensed crew as well as cause extreme inefficiency. I wanted a chance to be the supervisor that would take advice and allow it to be implemented, Train whenever I could, Pay the crew what they deserved and be mindful of the way I could inflict misery on a crew as a supervisor. I try to remind myself regularly that I could become just another Bligh too and act accordingly to this.

You should not feel that becoming an officer is what makes you successful because it certainly hasn’t been true for many Sailors, like Bligh and others. In some ways the academies harm the Merchant Marine by killing chances of the experienced ones to move up or get higher paying jobs (which we will address later as well). If you find you are good at being a wiper, oiler or electrician and are satisfied with your skills and position, please consider staying before you become just another incompetent Jr Officer, you are very much needed where you are I can assure you this. But, on the other hand, if you feel you need a new challenge and think the upsides will beat the downsides and are up to the task than you should not allow the next steps to disrupt you. Good hawsepipers are becoming rarer and rarer but trust me you will be an invaluable asset to any vessel.

With all this said that before doubling down, allow yourself to enjoy the benefits of sailing. Do some traveling if that’s your thing, live in another country, take that long camping or hunting trip, pursue your personal passions a bit. They will need to be sacrificed for the short time, to get past the following step here. Trust me when I say, it is well worth the short time sacrifice for the long-term payoff, sailing gives you an amazing lifestyle and I wouldn’t trade this profession for anything.

Take Aways

Hopefully this gives you some better insights into what it takes for the beginning stages to Hawsepipe these days, coming from somebody that has ACTUALLY done it themselves. We hope this has helped you set the stage for the “Big Jump” to obtaining your License. This article is. by no means all-inclusive of everything relating to your MMC and the process to become a Hawsepiper, since many variables for you personally will play a role in all this. I would hope this article does help you make the decision to do it however. The USMM needs Sailors, and even more so than that, it needs good quality and highly experienced ones even more. The average age of the US merchant marine is 47, which I’m sure is skewed to the low side by all the academies pumping out 22-year-old grads that spend less than a year sailing, if that. This means that all our experienced old salts will be on the way out in the next decade. This also means wages will continue to rise along with quality of life onboard and at home, now is the best time to make this choice.

If you would like more information or how we can help you identify the most efficient career plan for you, please send us an email. Our goal here is to lend a hand in your journey up the ladder. We would love to help a fellow sailor with Career advice, Resumes, Studying, USCG applications and much more.

HowtoHawseipe is here to give you the tools you need to accomplish your career goals by giving you advice earned by our own experiences. We want nothing more than to see more quality the US merchant Marine strong, happy and full of high-quality individuals, especially the Marine Engineers in the bunch.

Best wishes to your success!

The HowtoHawsepipe Team