Maintenance at sea is a 24/7 task for the marine systems engineering department.
The roundsmen and watch keepers of the department are the eyes and ears to ensure all of the machinery is operating to specification.
They also carry out routine tasks such as oil and filter changes on the diesel generators and engine and various hydraulic systems used to run machinery and compressors.
And unlike your car, these oil and filter jobs come in larger sizes. Basically, the marine systems department is a job of numbers: RPMs, degrees Celsius, bars of pressure, running hours and the ever popular on a deployment, “days left until home.”
The watch, or shift workers, consist of various levels of expertise from apprentice mechanics to experienced engine room artificers. They’re capable of dealing with everything from simple tasks to managing battle damage.
One of the most important tasks, short of maintaining the main propulsion, is the maintenance of the ROD plants which produce our fresh water from seawater. When they work no one notices, when they don’t everyone does.
In addition to the watch are the technicians who carry out regular maintenance. They consist of shipwrights, who maintain fixed firefighting systems and domestic systems such as potable water and black water systems; electricians, who maintain the ship’s power generation; and the firefighters who maintain portable firefighting equipment.
There are also two integrated machinery control system technicians. Drawn from the engineering and electrician sections, they’re responsible for maintaining the propulsion control system, a computer based system that controls, starts, stops and detects any problems with the engineering plant.
Larger repairs will generally wait for the stability of a port visit. We don’t always have that luxury, however, and frequently must rebuild machinery at sea, sometimes in the most undesirable of conditions.
Safety precautions are fine but a stoker (see the naval word of the week below) must understand a new set of dynamics; that piece of equipment you just placed on the deck can and will move if it is not tied down. So will your tools.
Planned maintenance is limited at sea as much of the equipment is required to run. Much of this is carried out alongside or during planned periods of lower readiness at sea. Larger routines such as engine replacements and inspections are carried out by specialists in Halifax at Formation Maintenance Facility Cape Scott.
However, like any highly skilled mechanic, the marine systems engineering department takes pride in the work it does and the equipment it maintains – once in a while they have been know to affectionately name pieces of equipment – and they know the responsibility they possess.
“To float, to move, to fight” is a naval slogan. Without the marine engineering department, we’d never get the chance “to fight.”
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