Changing up the Watch Rotation System

Heroes Remember

Changing up the Watch Rotation System

Transcript

Until we got into the Persian Gulf it was fairly quiet and benign but once we got into the Persian Gulf, when we got through the Suez Canal and approaching the Straits of Hormuz the ship entered what was called a one and two watch rotation system where people are on watch basically twelve hours a day and off watch for twelve and split up between, we did a sort of seven, five, five,seven rotation and when you’re in a rotation like that people are either sleeping, on watch working, the engineers and the maintainers are running through their checks on the equipment. It’s just a constant cycle one after another and then when we’re able to get into port, we also maintained a one and two watch rotation where we had to keep half the ship’s company on board so that in case we had to sail at short notice we were able to man all our systems and sail if we didn’t have everybody back on board. One of the things I did to help morale was when you’re doing a watch rotation system like that and when you get into a foreign port, people will go ashore, hit the bars, or whatever, or take a room at a hotel downtown to get away from the ship overnight but if you do the watch change over on board at 8 o’clock in the morning, there’s not much chance for them to recover from the night before so we moved our watch rotation to the switch over at 12 noon so people didn’t have to be back on board til 11 o’clock in the morning and that seemed to really help the ship’s company morale because they were really able to relax and get off the ship.

Description

Mr. Bathurst speaks of his involvement in improving morale by changing up hours of duty in respect to watch rotation.

David Bathurst

Mr. David Bathurst was born March 21, 1951 in the United Kingdom. His father, being a member of the Royal Navy, saw a better future for his family in Canada and immigrated there and joined the Royal Canadian Navy. Following his father’s path, during his teenage years, he made the decision to enter military college and enrolled in Royal Military College as an officer cadet. Upon completing university he was immediately guaranteed employment and continued on to Esquimalt for training before moving back to the east coast and rose through the ranks to Executive Officer on board the HMCS Terra Nova, a key part of his career. Mr. Bathurst is now retired from the military and works as a real estate agent. He contributes his success in life to the elaborate training and experiences he had during his military career. Mr. Bathurst and family presently reside in the province of Nova Scotia.

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