Pilots: burden or necessity? Reality vs Ideal

Pilots: a burden or a necessity?

Reality vs Ideal.

Captain Ricardo Caballero Vega

Panama Canal Pilot

We all know, for being part of the shipping industry, what is the role of pilots. They act as advisors to the Captains when ships navigate in restricted waters. Their knowledge on currents, tides, depths, and resources, plus their ship handling skills are paramount to the safety of the ship, its cargo, the environment, the integrity of port facilities, and more. Having a pilot aboard is a relief for the Captain, is having the most valuable resource while in confined waters, it is having the expert. 

But this isn't always the case according to a some deep sea ships' Captains. 

I can understand that our presence in the bridge could be unsettling for some of the crewmembers, but not for the "Big Man". Most of the time we are treated with so much deference that we feel at home ( at times even better, something I never tell my wife).

Normally, once I step aboard a ship the crew greets me with a "welcome Mr. Pilot"  and a broad smile. They do so irrelevant of the time of the day. It could be 3 am, and the crew still smiles even though their struggle with sleep deprivation.  (even with the current Covid crisis,  I know  that there is smile under their masks, and I also know, from self experience,  about their sleep deprivation).  

But maybe I am not so welcome as I thought I have always been, and their smiles are fake. And all the deference is part of an unwritten protocol that evolved itself in time, along with the shipping industry and the supply chain.  Maybe nobody wants Mr. Pilot to come aboard. If I wouldn't board the ship, they wouldn't have to go trough the harsh process of rigging the pilot ladder, play porter as they carry my bag, or serve cups after cups of coffee. Maybe they only smile because that is just the way most seafarers are, a bunch of hard workers with and incredible amount of patience and a never ending good mood.  It's their nature.

Am I welcome? I will never find the truth. Just because I am given a royal treatment, doesn't mean that they want me there.

Throughout my career as a Panama Canal Pilot, I estimate with a large degree of certainty, that I have felt welcome aboard 99% of the time. And, tailing right behind it, is the fact that I have felt needed for the ship to safely navigate the complexity of the Panama Canal. Needed, as arrogant as it might sound..

In reality it does not matter whether Pilots are welcome or not aboard ships. Pilots have been boarding ships since the day these became big enough for Captains to approach shallow waters shore or enter the intricate lay out of a harbor by themselves. At that moment it was too risky to proceed on their own so the figure of the pilot came to life:  a local dude with some "local knowledge" who would tell the Captain the safest way to bring his ship into the harbor.  

But we all know the history of how Pilots came to be. We all know that it probably dates back to biblical times. 

The question that remains, irrelevant if we are welcome or not aboard, is: are Pilots "always" needed on every ship, at every harbor in the world? 

The answer is yes. To protect national interests (environmental, economic, political) Pilotage is compulsory in every country with access to the sea or a major inner body of water such as a lake with maritime activity. But this only makes pilots necessary for the country in question, by law.  It does not make them a necessity, in the practical sense,  for the ship's Captain. That was the starting reasoning that began a debate between a ship's Captain and myself a short time ago, which, by the way, was the point giving rise to this article.

The Captain did not say that pilots were not a necessity in every port, but grossly estimated that 70% of pilotage in the world, though compulsory, was unnecessary. He added that pilots belonging in that percentage pose an additional safety burden to the ship and to themselves, (because of the boarding/disembarking process). In other words, a 70 percent of pilots around the world are not only useless, but a threat to their own safety.

Was he talking out of his own experience or is he part of a large group of Captains who feel the same way but refrain from speaking their minds? 

He talked about pilotage exemptions which are issued to Captains that regularly call to the same harbors and waterways in some countries in the world. "There should be more of that", he said, " I have taken the control of my ship from pilots who were not doing it right", he added. 

I wonder if anything bad would have happened had he not taken the control of the ship away from the pilot, but I did not dare to ask such a question. I knew what the answer would have been.

His story made me recall a book I just read about the tragedy in the harbor of  Halifax, Canada, in 1917.  Two ships, one loaded with ammunition, collided causing an explosion which devastated the town, killed over 2000 people, and injured many more. One of the reasons that caused the collision, it was later determined, was the fact that the Captain on the outbound ship had taken the conn away from the Halifax pilot.

This story, however, does not entirely support my argumentation, so I did not bring it up during our debate.  

Tell me then, I asked the Captain, why I always sense a kind of relief from Captains when I take control of the ship? His claim was that it should not be that way. "No one incapable of bringing the ship under his/her command safely into a harbor should be issued Captain's license, period". 

To a neophyte in these matters this would sound like a valid argument. But for us, ship handlers, we know it isn't. That condition is an ideal one, but not a real one. 

There are many things that are required for a ship to safely make it inside a harbor which are out of the control of the Captain: tugboats, standard orders, traffic, language and even jargon. That is why "local knowledge" is so important to safe piloting. 

To this observation I made, he said " the maritime language is English, tug boat's Captains and everyone else should master it". 

I thought about it and, for a moment, I felt he was  right. If that was the case then Captains would arrive with their ships and would be given all the information about the harbor and available resources, including names of tugboats, time to approach, dock number , and so on. It would be such an ideal scenario for many, except for pilots who would have to find a different occupation to make a living. I just said "ideal".

According to my cyber interlocutor (we were chatting on social media), one of the reasons why there is a vast majority of Masters who can't handle their ships without the assistance of a Pilot,  is due to the ever increasing pressure from the demand in the supply chain. ( Oh Yes, it is you people who can't wait for your new cell phone to arrive by Christmas instead of March.)  In other words, the demand for ship's Captains has increased in such a way that shipping companies had to fabricate Captains from zero. 

Now we were having a serious conversation! Were we? He was saying that there Captains out there who can't do their job.

It got even better when he said that he did not want to hurt my feelings. That, again, he was not referring to all pilots, but to roughly 70 percent. A "tiny" portion?

Trying to elevate the debate to the scientific level, I insisted, how did you arrive at that figure Captain? His answer,  " I have called over 140 ports around the world, many times."

This is the kind of conversation that makes me reevaluate our space in the shipping industry. Not that I think that I have been lied all my life and my job is, to put it nicely, barely essential to fulfill a regulation or a state law.  I am compulsory, I am not (always) a necessity.  

Without getting emotional, chatting with this Captain made me realize that pilots are not only disliked by some of those who pay for our services  but also by those within the industry who wouldn't mind doing our job ... for free! ( or perhaps for a fraction of our pay)

Down to the bottom..

To me, his ideas were not overwhelmingly outrageous, if we lived in an ideal world. One in which port authorities, shippers, ship owners, and of course, insurance companies amongst others would not mind taking higher risks than the ones they already take today. 

Because, let's face it, who ( Captain) in his right mind would like to, after days of being out in the ocean, enter a harbor and dock the ship by his/her self? Unless the ship is fitted with a state of the art equipment (powerful bow/stern thrusters, azimuth propulsion systems, dynamic positional system, etc)  the answer is very few Captains would. 

 Think about  the Captain of an underpower bulk carrier with maximum draft, no thrusters and the navigating in confined waters, with minimum under keel clearance. No pilot? Really? 

And even in the case of the newest  Passenger ships with all their state of the art equipment, the cost associated with having a pilot aboard outweighs the risks of not having one.  Now, I am not saying that there are many ship's Captains, many more than one might think, that could do the pilot's job. The question that follows is: is it worth it? Is there any significant savings? 

I can  speak about my area of expertise, the Panama Canal. Here the responsibility of the navigation of the ship, once it is in canal waters, rests upon the shoulders of a Panama Canal Pilot. In the late 90s, before the operation of the waterway was handed over to Panama, a pilot by the name of Roberto De La Garza, as part of a thesis, conducted a study, namely a survey about changing the role of pilots in the canal. The outcome of the study showed that not one Captain that Pilot De La Garza interviewed wanted to change anything about the Pilot having full control of the navigation. The answer was obvious, having the control entails having the responsibility, which means legal liability. As simple as that. Besides the canal needs it to be that way in order not to disrupt the flow of the schedule of transiting ships.    

 Are Pilots a necessity? 

When I want to know if something is a necessity or a burden, I just do a simple exercise: remove that something and think of what would happen next. In our case, remove that 70% Pilotage in the world and watch how the supply chain goes completely out of sync. Believe me, remove pilots from the equation of shipping and, that new cell phone you are expecting for Christmas won't make it to your hands until sometime next year. Remove pilots and let the Captains dock their ships, and you will see how P&I Clubs and Classification Societies would have the strongest headache of their existence. Emails from shipowners would be crowding the hard disk of computers, asking "what the heck happened to my ship". 

 What might make a Captain (or Captains) feel that way (burden) about pilots?

For starters, we are all humans. That means that we carry all those survival instincts that make us territorials and activate the Alpha attitude ingrained in our behaviour. Some Captains ( and Pilots as well) are so full of that Alpha attitude that, sharing the command of their ships, heeding under the advise, or (worse), relinquishing control of their ships to a complete stranger, (Mr. Pilot) is emotional unbearable.

That 1% percent of the time, mentioned earlier,  in which I did not feel welcome aboard happened when the Captain gave me one of those looks that carry the message "I don't trust you driving MY ship", at the beginning of the transit. 

To be honest, I understand how  agonizing it must be for a well skilled Captain to watch how a Pilot struggles to bring the ship alongside. More so if such Captain is perfectly acquainted with how his boat maneuvers. 

 To me the name of the game is COOPERATION. We pilots cannot ignore what the Captain has to say.  I think that our responsibility and goals overlap with each other. We both want the same: make it safely into/out of the harbor. That is why we are paid for. The industry wants results, not absurd "who's the boss" fights. 

Pilots are necessary, just as ships Captains also are. It isn't always an easy interaction, but it is an important one. One that can determine the efficiency of the supply chain. This interaction might also make the difference between silent success and a loud tragedy. A tragedy like the one in Halifax in 1917.

Am I a burden? Yes, we are. If you consider a burden the fact that I prefer my coffee well brewed. Or that I like the pilot ladder properly rigged. Or that I also like to have a good day at work.  

We are here to help. Let's let us help you.

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