Becoming an Officer of the Watch
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- Medium: Video
- Owner: Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration: 4:46
- Copyright / Permission to Reproduce
More Clips
1. Relationships With the Crew
2. Becoming an Officer of the Watch
3. Importance of the Merchant Navy
Details
Becoming an Officer of the Watch
Mr. Guindon explains his role as officer of the watch on the corvette HMCS Chambly.
André Guindon
Mr. Guindon was born in Ville-Marie, in Témiscamingue county, Quebec. He entered military service by going to the offices of HMCS Montcalm in Quebec City in 1942. After three years of university military training at the Canadian Officers’ Training Corps (COTC), he attended Kings College naval academy in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He enlisted in the Navy on a corvette assigned to protect Merchant Navy ships from enemy submarine attacks. He provides interesting insights about the importance of the Merchant Navy.
Transcription
Becoming an Officer of the Watch
I had military training, at university, in the COTC: Canadian Officers Training Corps. That was the Army, but it was still military training. I did that for three years. I had military training, not naval training. We did our naval training in Cornwallis and then at the Navy College, King’s College in Halifax. After King’s it was off to sea. But even when you go to sea, you’re still green. You can’t take charge of a ship without training. And that takes time. In my case, after nine months, I obviously had to write exams, and they told me I’d earned my Watch Keeping Certificate.
Interviewer – What do you mean when you say, “even when you go to sea you’re still green”?
You don’t have any experience, you don’t know a thing. They take someone and stick them on a ship. You don’t know things just because you’re an officer. It’s not the way it works. You don’t know anything, and you have to train on the job. You have to live the life of a sailor. There’s only one place you can do that: on a ship.
The role of the watch officer
The watch officer guards the ship. He pilots the ship. Obviously, the captain is always on call, but the ship is run by the watch officer. In the convoy, it’s the watch officer who decides on the ship’s course. You have to know that the corvettes and escorts zigzag all the time. They don’t just stay on the sides, they guard the convoy by zigzagging all the time. So the watch officer is the one who gives the ship’s orders. As soon as there’s an alert, whether it’s during the night or for any reason, he calls the captain and the captain comes to the bridge and steers the ship. On action stations, for example. The captain steers the ship. The gunnery officer directs the defence guns. Corvettes have four-inch Oerlikon guns on the sides, and obviously, it was mostly depth charges, the barrels that were fired from the sides to explode underwater as a defence against the submarines.
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