Is a Maritime Career Waiting for You?

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Some Great Lakes mariners sail for the adventure, for the romance. For others, it’s a good paycheck in exchange for an honest day’s work.

Perhaps you find yourself drawn to the water, be it by heart or mind, but how do you find a maritime job?

Just as important – what do you want to do? The number of jobs actually on the boats or in support of them seems virtually unlimited.

If your workplace dream is a place on a ship, there are two paths to follow to work aboard a commercial freighter on the Great Lakes. You can either attend a maritime academy and enter the workforce as a licensed officer, or start at the bottom as an unlicensed crew member and work your way up.

“You can walk in pretty much with no experience, and then we’ll work with you from there,” says Mark Barker, president of Interlake Steamship Company.

Unlike in some industries, Great Lakes maritime companies are more than willing to help newcomers because the aging workforce could soon leave cargo ships shorthanded.

The Seafarers International Union of North America, which represents unlicensed sailors in both the United States and Canada, will even send prospective mariners to its Unlicensed Apprentice Program in Maryland, with tuition and room and board paid for by the union. The yearlong program includes an apprenticeship on a commercial vessel.

To get even a basic job on a ship, you first need the right paperwork: a Merchant Mariner Credential issued from the U.S. Coast Guard and Transportation Worker Identification Credential from the Transportation Security Administration or a Seafarers’ Identity Document and medical certificate from Transport Canada.

Although that can seem daunting, shipping companies and union halls can help with the applications.

After you’re listed through a union hiring hall, jobs are assigned based on seniority. (One perk of the apprentice program – graduates get the second-highest level of seniority.) In anticipation of the workforce turnover, companies are bringing on more workers than usual. Mark says it’s “building up bench strength during the transition period so that we don’t find ourselves in a jam.”

Entry-level jobs aren’t glamorous, and deckhands get stuck with the grimy work of maintenance painting, deck cleaning and handling lines, but after a year of sea time, unlicensed sailors can try for certification as an Able Seaman (AB) or Qualified Member of the Engine Department (QMED). Able Seamen still get their hands dirty maintaining the ship, but they’re also tasked with higher-level jobs like standing watch.

Between vacation time and winters off, a Great Lakes mariner can earn a middle-class living working six or seven months a year. Even beginning seafarers find it can be a lucrative career. Many positions do not require formal education – though hands-on is an education in itself – and on a boat, they get free room and board with little opportunity to burn through pay while sailing for weeks at a time. Advancement is expected to be swift as a generation of sailors retires.

Shipping companies encourage promising unlicensed mariners to “climb up through the hawsepipe,” the old nautical saying goes, referring to the hole in the hull for the anchor line.

“If you work in our fleet and you’ve got a bright future, we offer to send you to school and pay for your licensing,” says Mark. “So once you have enough sea time in place, we have agreements with certain schools that you can go to and get your license.”

Joining the licensed ranks is a major career milestone. Licensed mates and engineers take on supervisory responsibilities, like navigation and watchkeeping. Pay for third mates, the lowest rung on the officer ladder, can start at $60,000 a year or more. Laker captains can make more than three times as much.

The other route to a license begins at a maritime academy. Canada has eight, including the Centre for Marine Training and Research on Lake Huron. The U.S. has seven accredited academies. Just one is on fresh water – Great Lakes Maritime Academy (GLMA) in Traverse City, Michigan.

Along with a license, GLMA cadets earn a Great Lakes pilotage and a bachelor’s degree from host college Northwestern Michigan. The program costs about $85,000 for out-of-state students, but it offers a kick-start into a well-paying career. Earning requisite sea time and completing coursework outside of an academy might take twice as long.

Many of the cadets are older than the typical college student. More than 20 percent are military veterans, and many are nontraditional students who’ve decided on a career change in their 20s or 30s, though plenty sign up right out of high school.

As a young officer and a woman, Duluth native Ellora Martin is something of a rare bird in the industry. She attended GLMA after graduating from Duluth East High School in 2009. Her grandfathers sailed the Great Lakes, but she was inspired to pursue her own career on the water after working summers for local cruise company Vista Fleet.

“As I got towards the end of my high school career, I started researching how I could actually follow my dream,” she says. That led her to the maritime academy.

After graduating in 2015, Ellora took a job with Great Lakes Fleet as a third mate, working on several different fleet vessels. She’s now a permanent second mate on the Roger Blough, though she still occasionally fills in elsewhere.

Jerry Achenbach, GLMA’s superintendent, boasts of the academy’s 100 percent job placement for graduates. The industry’s demand for licensed officers is so great that academies across the country simply can’t keep up. GLMA takes about 60 new students each year.

The biggest training constraint is the required sea time. There are only so many berths for students on commercial vessels, Jerry says. It’s a conundrum for an industry that will need to replace thousands of mariners over the coming years, the U.S. Department of Labor projects. Engineers are the most prized.

“What I tell the prospective cadets is if you come to GLMA as a deck cadet, you’ll get a great job when you graduate,” Jerry says. “If you’re a GLMA engineering cadet, you’ve got your choice of five great jobs.”

Engineers, who maintain the power systems and other machinery, also have more career options off the water, should they wish to settle down with a shoreside job.

Along with port engineering jobs, employment can be found with “any entity that has power plants,” from municipalities to large universities, Jerry says. “The skills that you learn as a watchstander in the engine room of a large merchant vessel translate to many shoreside opportunities.”

The graying of the workforce

Though shipping companies run lean crews of just a few dozen people on even the largest freighters, there’s still a shared worry about a looming shortage of experienced sailors.

Mark Blatnik, captain of the Roger Blough, says, “Last year the average age on this boat was right around 50 or 52. Used to be, years ago, a lot of young people. There’s going to be ... a huge void to fill within the next 5 to 10 years.”

“A lot of people came into the industry in the ’80s and so those people are now starting to retire out,” says Mark Barker.

The industry has ramped up its outreach and education efforts at schools and on social media. Interlake sponsors trips on tall ships to spark interest in sailing and works closely with special maritime high schools across the country that are prep schools for the industry.

“It’s amazing how many kids who live in port towns don’t even know there’s a port in their town,” Mark Barker says. “We’re trying to get the word out about what shipping is and what it means.”

Mark Blatnik was one of the young people who came aboard in the late 1980s. He grew up in Duluth, but didn’t know much about the industry. He tried college, but couldn’t decide on a career and didn’t like the idea of sitting behind a desk for the rest of his working life. A family friend helped him get a job painting freighters one winter; when the ships were fitting out in the spring, he tried sailing.

That season turned into a career, culminating in 2009 with his job as captain of the Blough. “I just tried to advance as far and as fast as I could,” he says.

Being away from family and friends for months is certainly a tradeoff – many work 60 days on, 30 days off – but crew members aren’t as isolated as they once were.

With onboard WiFi and satellite TV, it’s never been easier to stay connected from afar.

“You’re in cellphone range 90 percent of the time,” says Mark Barker. “When I first started sailing, if you wanted to call, you had to wait until you got to a dock and wait for the pay phone. And if your ship got on a bad schedule and you’re in at 2 in the morning, you’re never talking to anyone for a while.”

“I will vouch for the fact that it’s great having WiFi,” says Ellora. “They definitely try and make it as comfortable as possible for the crew.”

Companies even allow occasional family visits aboard the ships.

“That’s all a part of being able to attract people,” Mark says. “You have to have jobs they want in conditions they want to live in. We have exercise equipment now and healthy food options on the menu. … It’s not just a person’s job, they’re living there.”

Working shoreside

Operating an enormous laker takes a certain kind of person. Managing an entire fleet of them takes another set of skills and passions.

The University of Wisconsin-Superior trains the latter group with its Transportation and Logistics Management program for undergrads.

Dr. Richard Stewart founded the school’s Transportation and Logistics Research Center and the management program in 1999, following a long career in the merchant marine.

Transportation management deals with the five modes of transportation – air, highway, water, rail and pipeline – while logistics ties the systems and goods together through materials handling, warehousing, traffic management, inventory control and packaging.

Duluth-Superior offers a perfect learning environment – it’s an intermodal hub linking all modes of transportation. Professors frequently take students to port facilities and distribution centers to see firsthand how these oft-overlooked networks keep goods flowing across the world.

“There are very few places where you can take students to ports and airports and trucking companies,” Richard says. “Learning is best done when the community is involved, not just the educators. And we’ve long had a great rapport with the community.”

One of the program’s big draws is an internship with a transportation/ logistics company, government agency or not-for-profit organization.

Kate Ferguson, director of business development for the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, graduated from UWS with degrees in transportation and logistics management and computer information systems. She interned with Great Lakes Fleet in Duluth doing sales, marketing and vessel dispatching.

“I got to experience what actually working for a vessel company was like,” Kate says. “A six-week internship turned into a 13-month internship with Great Lakes Fleet, and they offered me a job when I graduated.”

For nine years she worked for Great Lakes Fleet and its parent Canadian National Railway, eventually moving into sales and marketing – negotiating contracts and rates. After a brief foray into supply chain infomatics with Essentia Health, she returned to her roots in 2015 with her current position at the Duluth Seaway Port Authority. In short, she markets, develops and advocates for the port.

“I always knew that my calling was in industry and on the Great Lakes,” she says.

That calling was first nurtured as a teenage lifeguard in her hometown of Alpena, Michigan, on Lake Huron.

“I’d always be interested when a boat came in,” she says. “At that time it seemed like just one of those interests that you have. You don’t realize that there’s an industry behind it.”

Kate started at UWS as a computer information systems major, but an adviser persuaded her to check out the transportation and logistics program. “He had me go talk to Dr. Richard Stewart, and the next semester I signed up for the Transportation Economics class. And it was love.”

Even Richard’s standard disclaimers to students – it’s a demanding program and career; problems can and will need solving in the middle of the night – didn’t give her pause. Kate grew enamored with the marine transportation and port terminal courses, which led to her internship and eventual career.

Jobs are available around the world, but some graduates stay. Just the Clure Public Marine Terminal, home to the port authority offices, has at least three graduates of the UWS program.

Like elsewhere in the industry, shoreside managers are aging. “We slowly are seeing some young people entering the industry,” Kate says, “but there’s certainly going to be ... a big demand for new employees.”

Kate regularly speaks to UWS students and helps with the port authority’s outreach efforts, pitching kids on the industry. She also invites students into the local Propeller Club, for which she serves as president.

“It is a field that’s never going away,” she says. “If transportation and logistics is done right, you never know we exist, which is probably why people don’t realize it’s such a critical career. When you go to Walmart, that product is sitting on the shelf. You don’t care how it got there, but I do.”

Women on the Water

Globally, women make up just 2 percent of the maritime workforce, according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that women make up 26 percent of the water transportation industry; on lakers, some crews have just a few women or none at all.

Shoreside, only 2.3 percent of U.S. port authorities are led by women, says the UN-run World Maritime University in Sweden.

“I see it at every event I go to,” says Kate Ferguson, director of business development for the Duluth Seaway Port Authority. “The room is filled by 50- to 60-year-old gray-haired men, and that’s the reality.”

The industry recognizes the obvious gap, and women could be an answer to potential workforce shortages.

U.S. maritime academies didn’t accept their first female cadets until the mid-1970s. Today they’re about 8 percent of the cadets at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy. “We have got to make improvements,” says Jerry Achenbach, who heads the academy in Michigan. “We’re reaching out to get the word out.”

This year GLMA will host the Women on the Water conference, discussing issues like working in a traditionally male industry and balancing career and family.

Ellora Martin, one of six women in her GLMA class of 50, was the only woman on her first ship after graduation. She says, “I don’t want the guys to treat me any differently,” and no one has, she adds. After her story appeared in a local newspaper, she connected with a young woman interested in the industry but whose mother was a little leery. “And now the girl is going to the maritime academy and she’s loving it. Maybe once you see one person doing it …”

Sailing with the Coast Guard

The merchant marine isn’t the only career sailing on our sweetwater sea.

The U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards have strong presences on Lake Superior and the Great Lakes (though there’s no guarantee of an assignment here; crew go where they’re needed). Duties include icebreaking, buoy tending, search and rescue, and maritime security.

Pay for U.S. enlisted personnel begins at $20,000 a year – not much, but that doesn’t include benefits like free health care and allowances for housing and food. Pay increases significantly as you advance. Jobs with the Canadian Coast Guard – part of the federal government, not the military – start in the $45,000 range.

Other maritime careers

A whole host of related businesses support the shipping industry, from shipyards to port services to warehouses to dredging.

Superior’s Fraser Shipyards maintains vessels during their winter layup, employing welders, engineers, painters and many other tradespeople. Meanwhile, marine construction companies like Duluth-based Marine Tech keep the port itself in working order and the shipping channels open.

Ted Smith, the president of Marine Tech, says jobs in marine construction are ideal for people who love working outdoors – and working hard.

“We’re a seasonal business,” he says. “We work them like a dog all summer long, then they have the winters off.”

Once they’ve gone through the apprenticeship program with the union, pile drivers can make $38 an hour with a hefty benefit package. Crane operators can make $45 an hour. “If you’ve got any ambition at all and want to come to work for us, you can work eight to nine months out of the year and make six figures,” Ted says.

Dock work tends to come and go with the economy – when business is good, owners invest in maintenance – but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has harbor dredging work every year. Like on the lakers that dredging accommodates, qualified captains are always in demand. It’s another career route for mariners, along with jobs on boats like tugs, tour boats and ferries.

In all, maritime commerce on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system directly supports nearly 93,000 jobs, with yearly wages totaling $4.4 billion.

Sir Francis Drake purportedly said, “It isn’t that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better.” Between the pay, the opportunities to advance and, yes, that seductive big blue water, many mariners would surely agree.

Resources

Interested in a maritime career? Start with these resources: