Massachusetts Maritime Academy’s new training ship, the Patriot State, is heading to St. Thomas this week after stops in Puerto Rico and North Carolina. Students are taking part in a six-week voyage as part of the school’s Sea Term. If you’ve ever wondered what Sea Term is like, this is a great time to learn — as CAI reporter Jennette Barnes brings us along for a tour of the ship.
College students in brightly colored hard hats — green for freshmen, blue for sophomores — have formed a human chain, and they’re passing cases of food into a spacious walk-in fridge. They’re having fun calling out what’s written on the cardboard boxes.
“Two more boxes of buttery spread!”
“Buttery spread!”
“Mashed potatoes — a lot of them!”
“Mashed potatoes!”
It could be work-study at a college dining hall, but no — these are Massachusetts Maritime Academy students, also called cadets, aboard the training ship Patriot State.
Someday, many of them will be civilian officers on commercial shipping vessels or military supply ships.
But today, they’re unpacking five tractor-trailer loads of food, hoisted on board by crane, one pallet at a time. All of this — in preparation for the six-week trip that’s part of students’ mid-year term, called Sea Term.
It’s a few days before their Jan. 11 departure, when 540 students and up to 100 crew will embark on the first-ever training voyage of the new ship. It just replaced the Kennedy, built in 1967.
Andrew Fusco, a senior from Wrentham, is the training ship commander. That means he’s the top student leader on board, and he’ll be showing me around, along with a member of the Mass Maritime staff.
First things first: We get plenty of stair-climbing in. The ship has nine levels, and the elevator is for medical purposes only. We head up to the navigational bridge.
“This is where we'll actually control the ship and navigate from," Fusco says.
Windows span the full width of the bridge, like a windshield. A few students are seated at the digital navigation system.
They’re senior cadets assigned to navigation, which means they handle the planning of the route.
“They'll be the ones kind of running the show,” he says. “You'll have a licensed officer making sure they're doing everything right, but for the most part, seniors kind of run day-to-day operations. They're just overseen by staff members to make sure we're doing everything as safely as possible.”
The senior in charge is Jacob Thorpe, of Woodland Park, Colorado.
He explains what they’ve been doing.
“So right now, we've been working on laying out a track line, which is basically a series of waypoints from here to our different legs of the voyage, and our different ports,” he says.
They check it against their charts — both electronic and paper — to make sure the route is safe.
“We're going to go into New York City,” he says. “We're going to anchor there, take on some more fuel. From there, we'll head out, and we'll head south, to Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. And we'll do some anchoring drills there.”
Then, a stop in San Juan. Next, it’s Charleston, South Carolina; then St. Thomas, and finally Tampa, before they return to Buzzards Bay in late February.
Marine engineering and marine transportation majors participate in Sea Term three times — all but their junior year. That’s when they do internships aboard other large vessels.
But back to the tour. We’re walking one flight down, with Andrew Fusco, to the training bridge — something the old ship didn’t have.
It’s very similar to the main bridge, but at the moment, it’s empty.
“This is pretty much the same exact layout as the regular bridge, but it's going to be used for simulation-type purposes when we're underway,” he says.
The training bridge has the capability to control the ship if something were to go wrong on the main bridge.
“Which is really cool,” he says.
The goal of both bridges is to make students’ navigational experience during Sea Term as realistic as possible.
“We're going to have a small number of people up on the regular bridge, because that's how it is in the real world,” he says. “And everyone else will be down here [on the training bridge], … simulating how the watch would run, and things like that.”
Before, everyone was on the main bridge. Too many people, too few machines.
We’re headed downstairs again, to the ro-ro deck. That’s roll-on, roll-off — as in: vehicles can come on board.
It’s a big, open space, with an enormous metal hatch in the hull.
“It can actually get lowered down to the pier, and cars can drive right on up,” Fusco says. “And we'd be able to lash them in, so that they are secure when we're at sea. So this is going to be huge if the Patriot State’s ever launched for disaster relief.”
Relief workers could drive on and off the ship wherever it’s in port.
The Patriot State is part of a class of five new federally commissioned training ships called National Security Multi-Mission Vessels, or NSMVs. Mass Maritime’s ship is the second to begin service, after one in New York last year.
Each will be equipped to assist with federal disaster relief by carrying personnel and supplies.
Next, we make our way to the engine room. Actually, two engine rooms: one is a backup. Each has a diesel-to-electric generating system. They’re more efficient than the steam engine on Mass Maritime’s old training ship, Fusco says.
But the modern technology does not eliminate the noise. We stuff foam earplugs in our ears before he opens the door.
“When we get in, you’ll see these two ... massive diesel engines, and you’ll see the generators right behind them,” he says.
We step onto a mezzanine overlooking a maze of steel, and pipes, and cables.
“Right now, the plant is live," he says. "Engine Room 1, right now, is being used to create power and everything. We're not on shore power.”
We pop into the engine control room — much quieter. That’s where we meet Evan Vieira, a cadet from Hull.
He’s a senior majoring in marine engineering.
“Today I'm standing the 12 to 4 watch,” he says. “The other engineers with me are going around the engine room, taking rounds, … checking for, like, pressures and temperatures.”
He says life in the engine room isn’t much different than it used to be — it’s just a lot more digital. Screens have replaced many of the dials and gauges.
After the tour, Mass Maritime President Fran McDonald says in more than 130 years of history, the school has always used hand-me-down, converted ships.
Not anymore.
“This represents a significant investment from the federal government for a purpose-built training ship, from the keel up, designed to train civilian merchant mariners in support of the United States,” he says.
Once they return, seniors will be getting ready to graduate in just a few months.
They’ll be trained and ready — for whatever their mission may be.
